words//lucy bennett

“Gordon Bennett” is cockney slang used to express feelings of frustration and/or anger, and translates loosely to something like, “God Damnit!” As a child, this bit of slang always amused me since my Gordon Bennett–my father–is probably the kindest, most temperate man I know. The first time he heard the term “Gordon” was in a bar in London, on one of his many Lego business trips and was shocked by the man to his right’s sudden exclamation of his name. After discovering the meaning of the phrase, and entertained by its irony, he immediately called us at our home in Park Slope, Brooklyn to recount the story. When I was young, Gordon was always being sent to exciting and far away places on business. He was an art director at the New York advertisement agency Lowe Worldwide, where his job consisted of conceptualizing and developing the visual aspects of television commercials. From the age of eighteen, Gordon knew advertising was the career he wanted to pursue and enrolled in the School of Fine Arts at Syracuse University, majoring in this field.

Although he chose to pursue an education and career in the arts, Gordon was not an artistic child. He describes himself as an aggressive, rambunctious, and angry child. Despite his mother’s knack for crafts and constant art projects, Gordon didn’t gravitate towards art; he preferred sports and would have followed an athletic path if it weren’t for his scrawny build. Gordon and his father spent a lot of time in the garage of their Valley Stream, Long Island home tinkering with tools.  When he wasn’t playing sports, he was building something. When he wasn’t building something, he was taking it apart.  Gordon’s natural affinity for handiness, which quickly exceeded his father’s, amazed his parents.

Regardless of his disinterest in art, Gordon excelled in his high school art classes and found it came naturally to him, unlike the academic subjects. In this way, art school happened out of default; it was something he was good at. In school, Gordon was one of the best students, experimenting with risqué concepts, which made even his teachers uncomfortable. Gordon “understood the product had to have a benefit; it was shocking how few students and teachers understood that.”

After graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Syracuse University, Gordon bounced from advertising job to advertising job. He worked under such legends as Sal Auditori and, most notably, Ralph Ammirati, co-founder of the Ammirati Puris Lintas advertising agency. Gordon worked as Ammirati’s assistant art director at his first agency, in which there were only two other employees. This was an experience which Gordon regards as more of an apprenticeship than a job. It was during these seven years that Ammirati mentored Gordon and beat him into the art director he was to ultimately to become. “Ralph set impossibly high standards,” Gordon explained, “which he applied to everything in his life and for that reason he was considered crazy, but it was because of these standards that I learned to approach advertising in a way I had never known.”

In 2003, three years before the end of his final advertising job (a fourteen-year stint as art director at Lowe Worldwide), Gordon passed by a boutique window in Bridgehampton, New York and discovered his new passion–a passion which would eventually become his new career as well. In the window stood about fifty little junk robots, small, poorly crafted and made mostly of wood, yet Gordon was inspired and rushed home to try his hand at building one. After much experimentation, trial and error, Gordon began a series of his own robots, under the name Bennett Robot Works; using found metal objects from garage sales, flea markets, and dumpsters, Gordon uses power tools to create sophisticated, large, retro industrial robots, which have gained a large internet fan base.

In 2005, Sorab Bahkshi, the owner of City Foundry, an industrial antique store on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn known by photographers and product stylists as a great source for inspiration and props, agreed to partner with Gordon and carry a few of the robots. In addition to the in-store exposure, Gordon’s website programmer and designer of bennettrobotworks.com, the site on which he sells the sculptures, sent the link to numerous sites that are viewed by techies around the world. This triggered an explosion of online sales and web exposure. It wasn’t until advertising photographer Martin Wonnacott purchased nine robots (after photographing them) that Gordon realized how special his creations really are. In 2006, Gordon stopped working as an art director and became a full-time sculptor, turning the basement of his Park Slope apartment into a studio. Shortly after, Conran’s UK, a world-famous design store, bought nine robots to sell around the world, a move that is one of Gordon’s proudest achievements. Most recently he’s had write-ups in the New York Times, London Financial Times, and was featured in the book Dot Dot Dash: Designer Toys, Action Figures And Character Art. In addition, the robots are set to appear in Oliver Stone’s new film Wall Street 2.

Gordon is now having to deal with imitators–the sign of true success. He’s not phased but rather flattered, secure in the originality of his art. It’s hypothesized now that everyone will have two to three careers in his or her life; Gordon Bennett has already had two, ahead of the curve, per usual.