Stephanie Robison

 First Time Art Party Participant

Plug

Artist’s Website

www.stephanierobison.com

Artist’s Statement

My work as a whole examines the relationship between people, culture, nature and the built environment. I make sculpture that reflects my surroundings, extracted or compiled from seemingly mundane objects that surround us: clouds, bricks, towers, barricades, smoke, signs, scaffolding, pillows, umbrellas, flags, a staircase, a boat, the body. I create objects that often reference another thing or mimic another material. I enjoy combining materials and forms that quite often contradict their final aesthetic/functional appearance, such as marble carved to appear soft and fabric that is sewn to be rigid and architecturally structured. 

The early years my grandmother and I spent together making forts out of dining room chairs, blankets, and the old hide-a-bed have had an influence on the way I think about and respond to the world today. In that way, the work is autobiographical, but the intent is to communicate beyond my personal experience. Through play, my grandmother inadvertently showed me that objects could function in more than one way—they could exist as something other than what was intended. I strive to create sculptural objects that reference more than one thing—forms that are indescribable but remain familiar or unite opposites in an attempt to reconcile them. It is this edge between the comfortable, everyday aspects of both the forms and material, and their uncomfortable, awkward, often contradictory nature that interests me.