Robert Weiss Tells His Stories Through Art, Teaching

Robert “Bobby” Weiss explores life through art and encourages his students to do the same.

“I teach because I love teaching,” the studio art and film teacher said. “I am here to help my students find their individuality and to nurture their creative spirit.”

The upper school fine arts instructor has been with The Hockaday School since 2022, with a previous eight-year tenure at the Episcopal School of Dallas. 

With a last name apropos of his beyond-his-years persona, the painter, filmmaker, sculptor, music video director, theater scenic designer, and art historian’s curriculum vitae boasts too many pages to recite.

Anyone who’s been to an exhibit of the artist’s work or has attended a screening of his films knows diving into Weiss’s world is an immersive trip worth taking. And the artist is worth meeting — his storytelling ability another impressive aspect of his multidimensional talents.

After attending Booker T. Washington High School for Performing and Visual Arts, Weiss’s encounter with contemporary figurative painter Jerome Witkin during his time at Syracuse University set about a deep friendship between mentor and mentee, inspiring the young artist to pursue teaching alongside his artistic endeavors. 

“As fate would have it, I met my idol on the one-year anniversary of him losing his son,” Weiss recalled. “He took me under his wing, and his faith in my work inspired me to pay forward what he so graciously gave me.” 

And the film instructor has done just that; Weiss’s students have continued their studies at the University of Texas, University of Southern California, and New York University film schools. 

Screenings of Weiss’s documentary, Song of the Cicada, have left audiences spellbound. The full-length film offers a look at life and death through the eyes of Dale Carter, a mortician whose stranger-than-death life experiences play out on screen. 

Meeting with the high school educator, it’s hard to associate him with anything even mildly macabre, but through his craftful documentation of Carter, Weiss takes viewers on an exploration of the human psyche. 

“Death has to be viewed through a filter,” conveyed the mortician in Weiss’s film.  “Like a camera has a filter, a lens; that filter is what we use to make that loved one look beautiful again,” he said.

Whether with a sketch pad, a paint brush, or a camera lens, Weiss weaves the intricacies of his complex characters into his work. 

“I tell a story through my art, blending experiences with my deep appreciation of art history,” he said. “And with each piece, regardless of genre, I convey a part of who I am.”

Pausing to reflect on how he utilizes art to challenge his students’ perspectives, Weiss said, “Inevitably, we are all the characters we write, and our story is never fully written; I want to help people explore their hopes and fears while they become the protagonist in their own story.”

The artist, who clearly delights in the wearing of many hats, recently created the scenic paintings for Dallas’s Ochre House Theater’s Daddy’s Rabbits and Patti and Theo. 

“Doing scenic painting has been something I always wanted to do. My sister was a Broadway stage manager for many years, and we went to see a lot of shows together. Painting sets at Ochre House Theater has been a great departure from painting on a canvas and, considering that a lot of my paintings are interior spaces, it comes very natural to me; it has not only loosened up my hand, but also my mind to try new things,” he said.

Weiss is represented by Dallas’s Ro2 Art Gallery in the Tin District, and his paintings can be experienced in ongoing solo and group curatorial exhibitions. The script for his third film, in which Dale Carter will again appear, is near completion; the filmmaker assures fans that the movie won’t take a decade to film as did the last one. 

The artist, adjusting the brim of one of his many hats, spoke about his latest movie project with excitement, maintaining that he carries a deep sense of gratitude alongside his eager foresight. 

“I’m always striving to reach my personal best, and because of the revolutionary artists who helped pave my path, I am compelled to bring that full circle guidance to the creative minds that come to me for tutelage,” he said.