In this Episode of Art is Awesome, Host Emily Wilson spends time with Oakland based sculptor Stephanie Robison.
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area.
This week on 'Art is Awesome,' host Emily Wilson chats with Stephanie Robison, a sculptor living in Oakland and the chair of City College of San Francisco's Art Department. The episode delves into Stephanie's background, from growing up in Oregon and being encouraged by a high school counselor to attend college, to falling in love with sculpture, particularly stone. Stephanie discusses her creative process, the resistance she enjoys from materials like marble, and how her grandmother inspired her love for making things. She also shares her experiences with exhibitions and her thoughts on teaching.
About Artist Stephanie Robison:
Originally from Oregon, Stephanie currently resides in California teaching sculpture and serving as Art Department Chair at the City College of San Francisco. Robison holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Marylhurst University and a Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture from the University of Oregon.
Her work has been exhibited at Marrow Gallery, Marin Museum of Contemporary Art and Orange County Center for Contemporary Art in California, Robischon Gallery in Denver, Colorado, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Joseph A Cain Memorial Art Gallery and Greater Denton Arts Council in Texas, Yeiser Art Center in Kentucky, Site:Brooklyn Gallery in New York, Foster/White Gallery, Whatcom Museum and Tacoma Art Museum in Washington, and Peter Robertson Gallery in Alberta Canada.
Stephanie is represented by Marrow Gallery in San Francisco, California and Foster/White Gallery in Seattle, Washington. Her work can also be found at Robischon Gallery in Denver, Colorado.
The sculptures of Stephanie Robison plays with multiple oppositional relationships. Working with industrial fabrics and wood, she creates large-scale installations that examine relationships between culture, nature and the built environment.
Her latest series of work combines traditional stone carving and the process of needle felting wool. By merging incongruous materials such as wool and marble, she works to synthesize and fuse: organic and geometric, natural and architectural, handmade and the uniform industrial. Focusing on materiality and color with this new work, Robison creates charming, often humorous or awkward forms referencing aspects of the body, relationships and the environment.
Visit Stephanie's Website: StephanieRobison.com
Follow Stephanie on Instagram: @SquishyStone
For more about Stephanie's Exhibit, "Incantations for the Average Person" CLICK HERE.
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About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:
Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women’s Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.
Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil
Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast
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CREDITS:
Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson.
Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions.
For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com
2025-0311 - AIA - EP045 - Stephanie Robison
Host Emily Wilson: [00:00:00] Art is Awesome can now be heard on KSFP 102. 5 FM every Friday at 9am and 7pm. Please follow the show and rate us wherever you get your podcast media. If you like what you hear from today's artist, you can find links and information about them in our show notes.
Artist Stephanie Robison: I'm often talking internally to myself, like, why, why do you love this so much?
Like, can't you pick a different thing? That's not as, not as resistant. There's just something magical about the material itself. The marble just flies off. I mean, it's just like this dance that you're doing with the stone. It's just so much fun.
Host Emily Wilson: That's Stephanie Robison, the guest on today's episode of Art is Awesome.
I'm your host, Emily Wilson. I'm a writer in San Francisco, often [00:01:00] covering the arts. And I've been meeting such great people that I created this bi weekly podcast to highlight their work. Stephanie Robinson is a sculptor living in Oakland. She's also the chair of City College of San Francisco's Art Department.
Stephanie grew up in Oregon. No one in her family went to college. So she didn't think she would either. A high school counselor encouraged her to go, and she ended up studying art and falling in love with sculpture, particularly stone. Stephanie has had shows at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art and Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, as well as in galleries in Colorado, Texas, New York, Kentucky, Washington, and Canada.
Currently, she has her third solo exhibition at the Marrow Gallery in San Francisco, Incantations for the Average Person. [00:02:00] It's on view through March 29th. I met Stephanie at the gallery right after she'd installed the show. We talked about her making things with her grandmother, juxtaposing the hard and the soft with her pieces, like stone and felted wool, and wanting her art to provoke reflection.
Artist Stephanie Robison: I'm always seeking out forms that are referencing something, but it doesn't go point to one specific thing. So I'm trying to get a form that looks familiar, but you don't quite know what it is. You're not able to name the thing. And for me, that feels like it's opening up doors. And I always love artwork that I see from other people that really makes you think about something differently.
And so for me, that's what I'm after is like making work that think that makes me think about something differently.
Host Emily Wilson: The work itself is reflective, Stephanie says, with one piece usually taking more than 50 hours.
Artist Stephanie Robison: So this piece [00:03:00] here is made out of marble, carved marble, and then needle felted wool. So I'm, I'm carving the marble with both power and hand tools, and then mostly sanding by hand, just because I like to get a really careful surface, and the needle felted wool is obviously by hand, so it's very meditative, a lot of time involved in each of the pieces.
Host Emily Wilson: Stephanie has always liked putting different textures together, in spite of teachers who told her she shouldn't.
Artist Stephanie Robison: For me, when I'm putting two materials together, I like to think about how they're similar and how they're different. And I like it when one material can kind of mimic another one, but still stay true to itself.
I think, I think I've always liked soft and hard. I remember in grad school, we had lots of visiting artists and Mary Kelly ended up being one of our visiting artists that came and she came into my studio and kind of looked around and she's like, you know, you should keep [00:04:00] soft things soft and hard things hard.
And so she was really at that moment saying that it wasn't a good choice to mix those things. And I think much respect to Mary Kelly, for sure. But for me, that was like, you know what, I'm going to figure out a way to do this successfully.
Host Emily Wilson: Stephanie got her love of making things from her grandmother, who took care of her.
Artist Stephanie Robison: She was such a great playmate. She made me understand and think about the world in a different way. You know, I didn't really, I don't remember having toys. I just remember having so much. Joy, like, in her kitchen was the, that was the heart of the house and she would get out all the cookie cutters for me and get me a big piece of cardboard and she would trace my body on that cardboard and she would let me trace out all these cookie cutters and so we were just always having a lot of fun with things that weren't Meant to do a partic, or I guess maybe they were meant to do a particular thing and then we use them for something else.
And so that always made me think about things differently. And when she [00:05:00] passed away, actually the only thing that I took from her estate and. And my, the rest of my family thought I was a weirdo, but she had taken this old Folgers coffee can and she had riveted this old teapot handle onto it. She was just constantly sort of putting these odd things together and it just was such a lovely, I just, I love, that's like my, one of my prized possessions.
Host Emily Wilson: Stephanie recalls something she made as a toddler after a beach trip.
Artist Stephanie Robison: My mom has this memory early of me taking me to the beach and I found this piece of driftwood and I was like, Mom, this is a snail. And she's like, Oh, sure. You know, I think she said it was like three or something. And she didn't see it.
And then she said, as soon as we got home, I went into her fingernail polish and started painting the thing. And then I brought it out. She could see it. The thing survives even to this day.
Host Emily Wilson: College wasn't a priority for Stephanie's family.
Artist Stephanie Robison: My high school counselor was really the one that, that I credit for [00:06:00] actually getting me to college.
They were like, okay, let's talk about college plan. And I said, oh, my family, we don't do that. And they said, well, Stephanie, you have a 4.0. You're in college prep classes. Why wouldn't you go to school? I was like, I don't know. I don't know how to do that.
Host Emily Wilson: At college, Stephanie felt she could study whatever she wanted, and that was art.
Artist Stephanie Robison: I just started asking people questions like, well, what did you major in? Everyone that I asked, including the president of that college, they weren't doing anything related to their degree. Meaning, For my, what, 19, 20 year old brain, what that meant was I could do anything, and eventually it would work out, you know, I could get a job doing whatever.
So I, I ended up just taking more and more art classes and finally deciding, I'm gonna major in this. Because my parents had no idea really what college was about anyway. It was all foreign to them, and so they weren't really saying, Oh, well, you know, don't do that. So it was, it was kind of like I was left to my own devices, which was really great.[00:07:00]
Host Emily Wilson: Stephanie planned to major in printmaking and drawing. But when she took a sculpture class, That was it.
Artist Stephanie Robison: As soon as my hands hit material, it was like, oh, I don't have to think about what I'm making anymore. It just came naturally to me, that engagement of like hands with material. It just felt so natural.
Whereas when I was doing a drawing or I was doing a print, it was always like, okay, I sit there for a while like, oh, what am I going to make this print of? What am I going to make a drawing of? It was that moment. It was a little bit of a struggle. And so it felt really good to hit something and hit a stride with a particular thing. And then I was just hungry. I wanted, I wanted everything. I wanted to know everything about every material.
Host Emily Wilson: A teacher recommended Stephanie go to a stone carving workshop. She loved it.
Artist Stephanie Robison: So I went to Eugene and did the 10-day intensive stone carving. And that was, I think in 1998 or something and loved it. But at that time, I, I just couldn't afford [00:08:00] to have any of the materials or tools and tools were quite a bit more expensive back then, even though they haven't changed a lot, but I still have my original chisels that I bought during that same week.
And I still use them. The tools are definitely the same tools that Michelangelo would have used in his day.
Host Emily Wilson: Stephanie loves the challenge of working with stone.
Artist Stephanie Robison: I'm often talking internally to myself, like, why, why do you love this so much? Like, can't you pick a different thing that's not as, not as resistant?
But I love the resistance, I think. Also, there's just something magical about the material itself. For me, I, I love the dust of it, even. When you're chiseling marble and you understand the bedding plane of the stone, the marble just flies off. I mean, it's just like this dance that you're doing with the stone.
It's just so much fun. And then limestone, it's similar, but, but also different and, you know, depending on the limestone, it's just such a pleasure to hand carve limestone.
Host Emily Wilson: Stephanie moved to the Bay Area when she got the [00:09:00] job teaching at City College. She loves working with students.
Artist Stephanie Robison: Probably the majority of the reason I love teaching is because I love learning.
I'm addicted to learning. And the students teach me a lot. They're always doing something that I've never thought of before, or, you know, asking questions that I, my brain didn't ever go down that path. It's really a great exchange.
Host Emily Wilson: Along with teaching full time at City College, Stephanie chairs the art department, but she still finds time to make work, like this show at the Marrow Gallery, Incantations for the Average Person
Artist Stephanie Robison: I started looking at what I had and kind of laying out those pieces and naming some of them and kind of going through that process.
I was thinking, man, these feel like, little spells in some ways or little, um, I don't know if spells is the right word, but I think what I, what I ended up using to title the show was in incantations for the average person. And I think I was just thinking like, well, we all need these kinds of mantras or these [00:10:00] sayings that we can, we can use to kind of conjure up a certain thing, right?
Or some call them affirmations, I guess, right? So I think of each of these pieces as. sort of a device for that.
Host Emily Wilson: I asked Stephanie the same three questions I ask all the guests. When did you know you were an artist? What's some work that made an impact on you? And what's the most creatively inspiring place in the Bay Area?
Artist Stephanie Robison: When did I know I was an artist? It's a tough question. I definitely have to say after graduate school.
I think it took me that long to really start to feel comfortable to even. show my work to people. I think I was hiding my work before that quite a bit. And, um, and so just to get that comfort level and say, Oh yeah, I am going to do this. I am, I'm going to pursue this and I am going to [00:11:00] try to, to give something back.
That's meaningful to, you know, to our history as artists. Oh man, this is, this is tough cause there's so many, but Eva Hesse, the show at SFMoMA in 2001, the retrospective, had a massive impact on my work. I was still in college, you know, undergraduate, and I think I talked somehow into a couple girlfriends coming with me and we did a road trip.
And of course they were not interested in art at all, so I had to pay their admission to the museum just to drag them in there, and um, but that show was, it was so worth it. I, I think it impacted me more than I knew at the time. For sure. And years later, I could look back and see how much. Seeing her work in person, the visceral quality of it, was just really amazing.
Ooh, that's [00:12:00] also a tough one because I feel like I haven't even scratched the surface on places to be in the Bay Area. I feel like it's so diverse and there's so many layers. Um, but I've spent quite a bit of time at Fort Mason. Having taught there for a number of years, we had a campus, it's, it's since closed, unfortunately, but we had a, a campus there and I had the benefit of having a, a sculpture studio that I was teaching in right in building B.
We had, uh, my table saw was out looking over the ocean. I had a view of the Golden Gate and of Alcatraz and it was just really magical to be out there. I still think just our area is so beautiful.
Host Emily Wilson: Thank you so much to Stephanie Robison, our guest today on Art is Awesome. And thank you for listening. Stephanie's show, Incantations for [00:13:00] the Average People, is at the Morrow Gallery through March 29th.
Please follow this show and join us next time when our guest will be Mary Graham, her work can currently be seen at Beautiful Scars at Jonathan Carver Moore on market street and at the Berkeley Art Center in Archives Yet to Come.
Art is awesome is a bi weekly podcast coming out every other Tuesday. It's created and hosted by me, Emily Wilson. It is produced and edited. By Charlene Goto of Goto Productions. It's carried on KSFP LP 102. 5 FM, San Francisco on Fridays at 9am and 7pm. Our theme music is provided by Kevin MacLeod with Incompetech Music.
Be sure and follow us on Instagram at ArtisAwesomePodcast [00:14:00] or visit our website. Till next time.