About

In a search to connect more deeply with my environment, sense of place and what it means to care for it, I construct teetering, suspended structures that investigate the complex, sometimes invisible links between all things. Inspired by moments of odd ingenuity that happen when the typical solution breaks down, I work without a fully predetermined pattern or set of plans, piecing together wooden scraps, strings, matchsticks, broken glass, and other found objects, responding to space and material relationships as they develop. Working this way leaves the pieces vulnerable to each other and external forces. If one part fails, so do many others. In my practice, I reference ecosystems and the intimate relationships that form webs between parts in an effort to mimic and embody those ties, those webs of interconnected relationships, so I test, react and intuitively construct pieces until a whole emerges.

Within this physical process, I work in a way that allows me to adapt in the space. When systems break down, approved ways of doing things fail, I am investigating how we reengage with our surroundings to bring ingenuity back to an individual level through our everyday choices. Often in this world, we gravitate towards the ready-made, have an IKEA mindset. The ingenuity has been done for us and we don’t think about or question it. But as resources and physical surroundings deteriorate and change, how do we have to re-engage with the world around us to find our own solutions? By working with broken, found, and mismatched materials, I am forced to search out my own absurd answers to such questions. 

Kate Robinson is a MFA graduate of University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a background in painting, drawing and printmaking and current practice in mixed-media and site-specific installation.