Gina Lee Robbins

Bio:
Gina Lee Robbins is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary and teaching artist. She’s been working in clay for 30 years, and picking up artifacts along waterways, wooded paths, city alleys and thrift shops for as long as she can remember. Her work as an artist researcher for CAPE, and as a teaching artist in several other scholastic, community and healthcare environments is an integral component of her own art practice. She’s exhibited her ceramic, fiber and found object sculptures, and curated exhibitions in locales such as: the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Masur Museum of Art, Harold Washington Library, Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, Rockford Museum of Art, Woman Made Gallery, Jack Olson Gallery at Northern Illinois University and Union South Gallery at University of Wisconsin.

Artist Statement:
I create organic and abstract objects using clay and found or repurposed materials. Calling on a sort of adaptive resonance theory, I combine textures to explore points of physical, sensual and conceptual tension. I assemble, carve, stitch, and weave until something otherworldly yet viscerally familiar almost breathes before me. Found and reclaimed materials, abandoned by civilization or nature, are irresistible to me. These artifacts serve as an archaeological study of my own physical and psychological journey, and a more universal exploration of what we, as inhabitants of this planet, gain, lose or discard as we progress along a timeline. In blending these materials to create organic forms, I further consider the implicit struggle and codependent relationship between built and natural worlds.