Pat Gerber with the Robot Consortium

People in Your Neighborhood: Pat Gerber
of the Robot Consortium
by Joanna Wilson

Meet Pat Gerber (on the left!)

Our first profile on Akron Empire is Patrick Gerber from Massillon, Ohio.  Pat is married to a great lady named Jodi and has four kids he’s always bragging about.  During the day, Pat works as a shipping inspector at a local company that distributes metal gratings for industrial and architectural needs.  At night, Pat is busy running the Robot Consortium.  This means making wooden robots to sell at local arts & crafts shows, retail stores and on-line.

The Robot Consortium includes all sorts of creatures...

I met Pat when we were vendors at the same independent crafts shows around Northeast Ohio.  You too may have seen Pat with his very popular, wooden robots at Akron’s CraftyMart, Rowdy Indie Craft Fair and Oddmall, as well as Bazaar Bizarre in Cleveland.  Pat hand crafts his adorable robots from re-purposed hardwood taken from shipping palettes that are destined for local landfills.  He cuts, sands, shapes and finishes the wood, strings together the body pieces and adds the eyes, faces and personalities to each one.  He makes them in various sizes, the most popular ones range from about 6 inches tall to 24 inches.

plain woodbot looking pensive

Pat at his table at Cleveland's Bazaar Bizarre in February.

Pat shared with me that he began woodworking when he was a boy in his father’s basement workshop.  At first Pat sold wooden kitchen utensils and bandsaw boxes.  Pat explains further, “The robots were kind of an accident, they looked different than they do now, I made 4 originally when I did my 1st Craftymart so I would fill up my table. I didn't think much about them at first but they all sold early and people kept coming up and asking if I had anymore and that’s when I started to mainly do robots. I don't get bored making them because I can make many different characters.”

Viking robot ready to pillage!

My favorite in the Wizard of Oz set: the flying monkey (left).

Pat has created a line of fat headed woodbots, viking robots, vampires, mummies, frankenstein’s monsters, robots with mohawks, girly-girl robots, robots with the visible circuitry from the innards of a computer and even robots as the characters from the movie The Wizard of Oz.  Of course, my favorite is my own wooden robot I’ve nicknamed Cecil.  I added the fez.

My own robot I've named Cecil

More recently Pat has added wooden owl lamps to his catalog.  These night creatures have plexi-glass eyes with a light bulb behind them which light up and glow when hung up against a wall or sit atop a table.  Photos for these owl lamps can be seen on his Facebook page for the Robot Consortium.

I love this sad little pirate!

You may have also seen Pat’s robots for sale at Hazel Tree Interiors (143 W. Market Street in  Akron, OH) and at Thirteenth Floor Gallery (currently undergoing a move in Massillon, OH).  You can see more from the Robot Consortium on the Facebook page or you can contact Pat through his Etsy store at Robot Consortium.  You can also find him at Oddmall again this year on May 12, 2012.

Devil Bot

Do you know an interesting person in the Akron area?  Send your suggestions for Akron Empire profiles to: AkronEmpire [at] gmail dot com.