Kristine Robinson (1970-2022), who made abstract sculptures and drawings with various processes and materials, graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a B.F.A. in 1993, and went on to earn an M.F.A. in 1995 from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University. Immediately after college, Robinson moved to New York. To support herself and her artwork, Robinson was an apparel and home textile designer in computer-aided design and her portfolio included many notable clients. She was invited to exhibit her artwork in group shows in New York, Austin, and Virginia galleries and had residencies at Skowhegan, VCCA, Jentel, and others. Most recently, she held the position of master art teacher at the Nysmith School for the Gifted. According to Fellow Tricia Keightley (10), Robinson was an active member of the Williamsburg, Brooklyn art scene in the early 2000s and moved to Virginia to be near family when she was starting her cancer battle and drew until the last weeks of her life. “It was inspiring to see someone in such a struggle turn to creativity as an outlet,” said Keightley.
Artist Statement:
"My drawings and sculptures offer a chaotic grab bag of feelings that poke
fun and frown at, and embrace the pitfalls and delights of contemporary
American culture. For example, in the drawing Pretend Brutal Youth, hard
core punks posture in baby blue, and in the sculpture Fan, Peanut, Plant
natural disasters—a ceiling fan stacked on a house plant pinned up with
hair clips on top of a fantastical peanut character with fragmented
bedposts for arms and coffee table props for legs—make merry. My
continued interest in the swell of absurd American television reality shows,
such as Sunset Tan and America’s Next Top Model, mixed with responses
to environmental disasters such as Hurricane Katrina set the perfect storm
of exaggerations in my sculpture Alien Taco Culture where an oversize
shark-meat taco is featured attached to a fragmented garden trellis, growing
a lopsided penny tree, all driven by roller skates. In my art, the pitfalls of
American life are stretched and blurred and the materials function like parts
for a mock up theater event or a spin off of a documentary but with no punch
line or definite history in sight.
While I continue making sculptures and drawings it is important to me that I
maintain an electric mix of ideas as exemplified by my sculpture Camp
Lemon Jeans or my drawing Yellow Sabbath—the mix of crude images and
shapes; the “patch and sew” Southern aesthetic; and the surreal punch line-less Monty Python humor—while still using materials such as tinted resin foam,
paper mache, cast objects in hard plastics or resins, and cut wood. Currently
I am expanding the scale of my sculptures and drawings with greater sprawling layouts. While I increase the size I have chosen to still maintain the signature
details that give the work that off-key and humorous punch as well as not losing
the sturdiness of the materials and preserving the non-slickness or “made in the
back kitchen sensibility.” The sculptures are becoming more like stagy objects,
game show and theater props while still having their own leftover memories to tell
and encapsulating the very character of all the things I find simultaneously
unsettling and comforting.
I have also been experimenting with the drawings by switching some of the
materials’ roles in the 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional works by incorporating
more hand drawn parts in the sculptures, like the pineapple motif in the abstract
dress of End of Trading Posts and Sight Gags and more 3-dimensional sculptural components into the drawings such as Shy In The Woods where I adhere cut out parts to the paper butonly enough for it to stick, resulting in paper, paint and edges sticking out and having funny bulges. The result is the most recent drawing I have completed, Magnified Baseboard Cuts , lightly adhered cut outs hang limply down and over, so both sides are visible and the entire drawing becomes 3-dimensional."
