MEET TONY ROBINSON, ARTIST  

Tony Robinson has never seen the Eiffel Tower with his own eyes.

But that didn’t stop him from re-creating it – using a photograph, his imagination, and some toothpicks.

“I don’t know how many toothpicks,” the 42-year-old Hope Hall resident says.

The Paris landmark is just one of the architectural and mechanical objects that are the subjects of Tony’s art. The materials are unusual – popsicle sticks are the primary medium – and so are his model-making talents.  

“It’s amazing to see him make something from nothing,” says Gladys Krasicki, workforce readiness coordinator at Hope Hall.  “When I saw his Eiffel Tower, I was flabbergasted.”

Tony has been a Hope Hall client since April, 2008. He grew up in Trenton.

“I started drawing when I was in sixth grade,” he says. “My mom sent me to art school when I was in junior high school.”

Drawing in pencil “was my passion,” Tony recalls. “I used to sit down at my kitchen table and draw everything on the other side of the room – the pots and pans, the stove, the window – and my mom used to come home from work and say, “you’ve got talent.’ But then I got into a lot of trouble.”

Ultimately, he was incarcerated. He also become a Muslim, meaning he could no longer draw human beings or other living things.

At Hope Hall, “I had time on my hands and I was trying to figure out what to do to make time go by,” Tony says. “I asked a friend of mine to bring me some popsicle sticks. The first time I tried it I couldn’t make nothing. After about a month I started (envisioning) some things.”

Tony’s first successful piece was a cleverly detailed replica of the ‘Trenton Makes the World Takes’ Bridge that crosses the Delaware River.  “It was the first thing I actually built that came out good,” he says. “It took about a month. It took a lot of time as far as trying to get the pieces to go where they go.”

Gladys notes that “not having the right tools was a major hindrance” for Tony. “He had to improvise. It was an obstacle he was able to overcome.”

Says Tony, “once I got halfway through it I realized I have some kind of talent with this.”

The Eiffel Tower was his second piece.

“A friend of mine went on the computer to get a picture of it, and she sent it to me,” Tony says. “It was a really small picture, and it wasn’t up close for the detail. That’s why I never knew about the elevators.”

Nonetheless, his Eiffel Tower is impressively intricate. It’s a feat of what could be called artistic engineering. The same goes for his Battle Monument, a majestic downtown Trenton landmark.

 Tony also has built a variety of houses and vehicles out of popsicle sticks.

“I’m working on a plane now…a military plane,” Tony says. “I just started it.”

 Patience is a pre-requisite for this sort of work; technique counts as well.

“It’s hard, cutting the right size pieces and making sure they fit to make it accurate,” Tony says. “To make it look like what I’m envisioning.”

He gets immersed in the creative process.

“I do it from my head. I feel like I’m not even in this building when I start putting things together,” he says. “It’s just like when you’re reading a book, or drawing. Once you get into something, you focus.”

Tony is always looking to do “something different from what I’ve already done.”

His next project?

“A helicopter.”