SELECTED RECENT COMMISSIONS 2004
Stafford Performing Arts Center, Lobby, Houston, Texas La Gorce Country Club, Lobby, Miami Beach, Florida Equiserve, Canton, Massachusetts
Komazawa House, Setagaya, Tokyo, Japan

Perusing the list of materials Priscilla Robinson puts into her handmade paper/mixed media work one comes across this lovely English word: aspidistra- the houseplant immortalized by prescient writer, George Orwell. By the act of putting this plant matter, nandina, oak, and tree leaves as well, into a piece like Transformation she literally joins her domestic surroundings to the gallery wall, making of the ordinary, something extraordinary.

In the alchemical, something from nothing art, of papermaking, the process of pulping organic matter is associated with the late autumn of the year, the endless and ever beginning most secretive point of nature’s cycle when the crops are tilled back under the earth to magically compost under winter snows, and provide the nourishing material for the upcoming summer of forms. The hand of the papermaker and plant nurturer alike, create from a soup of natural substance, through cooking, watering and drying processes, fundamental changes in the world around them.

The seeds of Priscilla Robinson’s abstracted forms lie already in the matter sea of her paper pulp, and take only the artist’s patient skills to blossom into full-blown life. Priscilla Robinson was trained as a painter, and her cast paper relieves are paintings in a sculptural dimension. In a mixed media, paper and wrought iron piece like 27 Resting Butterflies she gathers her strength to engage the physical space of the viewer in a mode of transform and transport. Is this a section of the wing drying moment at the long end of dawn, before migratory flight? Or the first physical actualization of life beyond caterpillar consciousness? Or is it an origami invitation to afternoons spent in the
topsy-turvy gravity of butterfly time?

As materials from her Taos garden find their way into her Hollander beater, so nature and her cycle of birth, growth, death, decay, and rebirth inhabit the center of Priscilla Robinson’s centrifugal output. Have a dream of flying upward on the great white wings of Transformation in an open expanding spiral. Aspidistra and all, these scale-defying wings are the skin shed by a changeling angel, or a moth you might ride to the moon.

Priscilla Robinson’s communion with the natural world governs her artistic intentions. Whether rhythmically undulating, or rectangularly situated, her muses live in the spectacular soaring heights and sunlit sights of the Southwest. Donning and shedding their resplendent robes, the seasons observe in succession the processes of Procession. The artist evokes rites of planting and passage, spectacular celebrations of abundance, and generous days of atonement and gratitude whereby the great gardener might return us to respect for our planet and ourselves.

Jon Carver
New Mexico Artist Series, 3D Art Techne
2004