ABOUT THE ARTIST | Born in Boston, MA, David Lipson’s passion for art began to emerge at 8 years old with the copying of his favorite cartoons in the Sunday newspaper. This foreshadowed what was to become David’s 17-year career working in the animation industry on TV shows and feature films.
There were detours along the way. At age 13, David’s career in the arts completely changed direction when he discovered the electric guitar. He became completely consumed, and at age 16 began two years of study with his idol, Mike Stern, who was Miles Davis’ guitarist at the time.
After graduating high school with a solid D+ average but some significant skill as a guitar player, David was accepted to the prestigious Berklee School of Music in Boston. He dropped out after a year and a half, moved to Hollywood, CA, enrolled at the ridiculously named but acclaimed “Guitar Institute of Technology,” joined many bands (among them School of Fish who was signed to Capitol Records), performed hundreds of shows over the next 6 years with several bands, and somehow discovered oil painting.
David enjoyed painting so much that he moved to New York City and enrolled at both the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design, to which he won a scholarship.
This change in direction fortuitously led to David working on an animated commercial for a friend. Suddenly he had a whole new career on his hands. In short order David worked his way through the ranks, producing and executive producing animation for a wide variety of commercials, feature films and popular TV shows such as Lizzie McGuire (Disney), the “TV Funhouse” segments on Saturday Night Live (NBC), The Venture Bros (Cartoon Network), School House Rock (Disney), The Howard Stern Show (CBS), and the Emmy-award winning Word World (PBS).
After the sudden passing of David’s sister Caroline in March 2005, David reassessed his life.
He decided he had enough of the 80+ hour work weeks and crushing deadlines of animation and, within a month, left his highly lucrative and successful career behind. With no solid plan in place and in his 30’s, David simplified his life. His main concern was to find a way to pursue not only the things that he felt passionate about and that would allow him to utilize his many different skills, but some type of career that would allow him to pursue his new goal: to enjoy life more.
With a new outlook and feeling reinvigorated, David began to explore many new ideas, one of which happened to be building robots from random junk. This became his new passion. Fast forward several years, and David has sold hundreds of his one-of-a-kind robots to companies and collectors all over the world. His work has been shown in museums, published in books, featured in magazines, and included in TV segments. David absolutely loves creating robots and looks forward to spending each day in his robot workshop.