Today we’d like to introduce you to Jill Robinson
Hi Jill, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I started to learn sculpture three years ago in a pottery class in Mar Vista. It was after the pandemic and I didn’t know anyone in LA and wanted to do something social and learn something new. Another potter told me about a studio in Culver City. I kept taking classes and realized I was really interested in making art, especially sculpture.
I thought about the places I’d lived and kept coming back to two things: my love of being in the woods or in the mountains and the experience of being in true wilderness, and my fascination with the idea of the West–now that I live here, is it the West of my imagination, or is it something else?
So, most of what I make is about exploring these two things.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I don’t think art is a smooth road. It’s a constant struggle of faith and doubt. Faith that you are doing what you need to do, making what you want to make, and doubt that it will resonate with anyone else. You make something and have to let it go, or let go of the possible outcome that no one else may even be interested, let alone want to buy your art. I had a show I was really excited about, with a lot of exposure and several pieces in the show. I didn’t sell a thing and it was a bit disheartening. You question what you are doing. But you keep going anyway. So you focus on the process. You spend a lot of time in your own imagination and memory and that can seem weird sometimes but it seems to be where inspiration likes to live. So living in the present and living in your imagination at the same time, there can be a dissonance.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
One day I decided I wanted to make a sculpture of a cowboy boot. I grew up in a rural area of Ohio and I’m familiar with boots, and grew up with them. So it wasn’t a kind of costume to me, or something from a TV show. I was thinking of someone in my family who had to move away, a person I missed who left and moved to the city but still kept the boots they’d had when we lived on a farm. I just dove into that memory and felt like this was something that I needed to make. After I made the boots I realized that making them was also me processing loss and a time in my life that seems almost like it wasn’t real, because I also left that place and wasn’t able to go back to the same people or the same life, though the place is still there. I didn’t think they would or wouldn’t appeal to anyone, it was more like a therapy session. Really I was making it for myself to see if I could translate this memory into a recognizable thing.
Boots and also clothes have a history of a person, they are sometimes even part of someone’s personality, or at least their style–what they are comfortable with and who they want to present themselves as. I like to take on other kinds of sculpture, other subjects, but when someone comes to talk to me in the studio it’s usually about the boots.
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
Like every industry, AI looms large in art. There will be tons of AI generated paintings, stories, etc but they won’t be connected with an actual person. It feels like reading science fiction, an alternate view of reality or future reality. Sometimes science fiction has been pretty accurate in portraying the future. It is interesting though to have a conversation with Chat GPT just because of the sheer speed of a comprehensive response. It’s a very useful research tool. But there is no emotional response. At least not yet.
Pricing:
- Commissions starting at $300 for sculptural work
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.jillrobinsonstudio.com
- Instagram: @jillrobinsonstudio1
Image Credits
Jill Robinson
