Saratoga News

Photograph by Edmund Lee

'What the Camera Saw' will be included in Robinson's show at the Gallery House in Palo Alto.

Throwaways

One person's trash is this artist's next creative inspiration

By Mary Ann Cook

Theresa Robinson may be one of the few people in the country who decries the fact that recycling has taken such a firm hold on public consciousness. The gains that the community recycling campaign have made cut down considerably on her art materials.

"I can see a big difference [in recyclable trash] in the last few years," says this Saratoga artist. "I used to be able to pick up several things on my walks or out riding my bike, but no more."

It's no longer so easy to find the household cast-offs that form the foundation of her artwork. But not to worry. Friends in the throes of remodeling their houses bequeath her their discards. Companions on trips that she and her husband take, such as a recent one to Patagonia, get into the act, too. They marvel at what she picks up to bring home. "What on earth are you going to do with that?" fellow tourists often ask and then, incredulous but fascinated, often join her in the search for unlikely art materials.

Exactly what she's going to do with these strays--pieces of wood or metal, all the flotsam and jetsam washed up in daily life--remains to be seen, for her and everybody else. She just knows she responds to that particular piece of junk and knows that eventually it will work its way into one of her three-dimensional art pieces. There to serve a purpose far different from its original one.

Storage bins full of trash, a work shed and an outdoor area form her studio. Trash is what she covets and what she transforms. Found objects have been the impetus for her work in the past few years.

Thus a used spiral burner from an electric stove now threatens as a snake, hovering over a box that contains a Robinson re-creation of Adam and Eve. This Adam and Eve are a plump, middle-aged couple, a bit reminiscent of a Midwestern farm couple who haven't turned down many helpings of pie in their life.

The piece is titled from a quotation in Genesis, "The Serpent Was More Subtile (sic) Than Any Beast of the Field." This First Couple is carved out of blocks of wood and is housed in a box lined with pages from a Whole Earth catalog--boxes being another hallmark of a Robinson piece.

"Boxes fascinate me. I like the idea of them. I like the fact that [my creations] have their little home, their womb. Sort of like a dollhouse." So when Gallery House, the Palo Alto co-op where she has been a member for 20 years, had a show with a box theme to celebrate its 40th anniversary one didn't have to look far to find an artist who may have inspired that theme. She's been boxing her creations for years.

Gallery House is at 538 Ramona Street, Palo Alto, and will have a show featuring Robinson's work Aug. 25-Sept. 19. The other artist in the exhibit is Betty Rogers of Los Gatos. Robinson has been working for the past year to put together the 15 new pieces that will appear in the show. A reception for the artists is Aug. 28, 6-8 p.m.

"I never plan ahead. There's no way of knowing what it's going to look like when I'm finished," Robinson says. "The few times I've tried to plan something, it never looks anything like my original vision of it."

What starts her creative urgency flowing may be a broken mailbox, an old fuse box, a Burma Shave can. Any of the detritus of 20th-century living can set her off to find drill, dremel tool, saw or carving implements.

The broken mailboxes thus are rein- carnated as two women having a dia- logue behind a fence. The piece is titled "Fe-Mail." The women are made of wood and boxed, natch, with the mailboxes serving as hats, and the fence constructed from a rake-like implement.

In another construction a fuse box houses a surprised couple caught in their underwear. The caption for this one is "What the Camera Saw." The man's torso and shorts are fashioned from a Burma Shave can. The woman is wearing a lacy undergarment which is actually rusted metal.

A small box camera hangs from the container fuse box. This one won a first in show at the Olive Hyde Gallery in Fremont. Certain components of a Robinson piece are now becoming clear--discards, odd juxtapositioning, creating new from old, humor and most of all, the unexpected.

But what kind of an art category does her work fall into? How can it be characterized? "People have called it sophisticated folk art," she says. "But that isn't technically accurate. Folk art is by its very nature, its very definition, unsophisticated, untrained. And I've been trained."

The cornerstones of her work are ambiguity, wordplay, humor and, perhaps most important of all, the unexpected.

"I know I've been successful when the piece surprises me," Robinson says. "I think my work is full of surprise, irony and the unexpected. Joan Brown [a noted Bay Area artist who died recently] said she knew when a painting had accomplished what she wanted it to accomplish when it surprised her.

"That's the way I feel. The fun is in being surprised. My work has been called whimsical, but I think it's too biting for whimsy. Too caustic."

A Theresa Robinson piece may not be easily labeled, but certain traits, such as humor, are always there. The humor in her work is rampant. In the titling, in the execution, in the choice of materials, in the view of life that's offered.

"Do I Dare to Eat a Peach?" she calls an autobiographical statement of the Robinson marriage. It is a depiction of a man looking up at a single peach on a tree branch. "This is pretty much us. I tend to rely on Karl's judgment."

Her husband is Karl Robinson, a retired pediatrician whose office was in the Westgate area and then near Good Samaritan Hospital. And the quotation is from T.S. Eliot's "Prufrock" poem.

They met at Northwestern, where she majored in interior design. After their marriage, they lived in France in the Chateau Roux in the Loire Valley, where Karl served as an Army physician.

"It was out in the country," she recalls. "We loved it."

That time in France may have been an influence that led them to Saratoga. They weren't sure where they wanted to settle, but while visiting friends they drove up Big Basin Way. Theresa felt an immediate affinity. "This is where I want to live," she said.

The Robinsons have two children, both of whom are involved in theatre arts. Daughter Karen teaches theater at the North Carolina School for Art and is married to Richard Garner, who established the Georgia Shakespeare Festival in Atlanta.

Son Dean is an aspiring actor in Los Angeles, a member of the avant-garde group, the Actor's Gang, founded by Tim Robbins. "People say that some of the faces in my pieces look a lot like Dean, and I can see that." Another autobiographical touch.

Both Robinson offspring were influenced by their kindergarten years with Betty Peck, Theresa says, and both were active in VITA (Valley Institute of Theatre Arts), the troupe initiated by Bill Peck and Judith Sutton that brought Shakespeare to the Mountain Winery.

About her artistic beginnings: "I always loved to draw. And I've always been drawn to textiles, to the tactile. I seemed to go through a process of getting more and more three dimensional. Needlework, painting on textiles, printing on textiles, padding some textiles."

Before the children were born she worked as a decorator for five years. Once settled in Saratoga she joined watercolor groups, worked in different genres--etching, ceramics, printmaking, took classes at West Valley and De Anza.

After breaking her leg skiing, weeks of immobility forced her to find artwork that was small, lightweight. She found the answer in pen and ink, using a fine crow-quill pen. Someone suggested she make note cards from the drawings, and she is still producing these. They are on sale at the Los Gatos Company, as well as Gallery House.

Los Gatos Company also sells her series of winged women and other of her wooden sculptures. The cards are the pen-and-ink equivalent of her wooden creatures, with famous sayings on each one. "Should life all labor be?" (Tennyson) features a portly middle-aged matron dressed for cool weather in sweater, cap and long skirt, blowing bubbles through a wand, scarf trailing in wind. Other samples: "The goal of life is living in agreement with nature" (Zeno), and "Live dangerously and you live right" (Goethe).

Next in her art evolution came wooden scraps friends would give her when remodeling. "I'm a born scavenger. I want to make use of everything." Some scraps went into collages. From others she started to carve figures or faces.

A chance remark may set her off. Take, "All it Takes is Time and Money." This is a depiction of a beauty shop, using spring coils for the hair-curling machine, croquet mallets for the two women's bodies and croquet balls for their heads. A purse from Goodwill is another component.

When her daughter admired a contemporary of her mother's, fresh from the beauty shop, the contemporary responded, "All it takes is time and money."

"Diana, Goddess of the Hunt" makes use of a wooden crutch, which is the goddess's body and a Viking headdress made of antlers. A dustpan and hieroglyphics are also worked in. The tools of housewifery are a recurring theme in her work.

Robinson also exhibits at the Gallery on Main Street in St. Helena, has shown at various galleries in San Francisco and won an award from the Rosicrucian Museum Show for "Godot est Arrive."

A piece called "In One Spirit/Meet and Mingle" also won distinction, traveled around the world. It shows Western- and Eastern-clothed figures facing each other.

She works outside, wearing a mask because of the dust she creates. In the winter she switches to collage, since she can do those indoors. Jazz, biking, swimming and travel are her non-studio hour interests. She says her work is full of irony, depth and drollery.

"My goal is to use up everything in the shed in my lifetime, to make order out of chaos. That's what artists want to do, it's said. It's just that my chaos keeps growing. Things keep trickling in. I don't think I'm going to make it," she says with a grin.

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