COLLAGE IN THREE DIMENSIONS: AURORA ROBSON’S EXUBERANT SCULPTURES FROM PLASTIC WASTE

For several decades now, the Canadian-born artist Aurora Robson has been “rescuing from the waste stream” all sorts of plastics — bottles, bottle caps, packaging, and more — and using them as the raw material for her environmentally conscious art. She has developed techniques that allow her to create her sculptures without causing more pollution. Her assemblage art-making methods are essentially those of collage — in three dimensions. Seen here: “Plantpocalypse,” 2020, plastic and paper debris on found hard hat, 21 x 19 x 19 inches (55.3 x 48.3 x 48.3 centimeters). Photo by Marshall Coles

AN ARTIST RESCUES FROM THE TRASH A RICH HARVEST OF ART-MAKING MATERIALS

by Edward M. Gómez

When it comes to items made of plastic, Aurora Robson never met a thrown-away bottle, bottle cap, packing tie, industrial part, or interesting-looking packaging component she hasn’t liked — or for which she has not been able to find some worthy use as raw material for her highly original, assemblage-sculpture art.

Aurora Robson, "The Monkey and the Mole," 2022, welded plastic debris and steel mounting rod, 8 x 8 x 9 inches (20.32 x 20.32 x 22.86 centimeters). Photo by Marshall Coles

Robson was born in Toronto in 1972 and moved to New York City when she was 18 years old. There, she studied metal welding, became a certified welder, and began making metal sculptures. Although, earlier, she had not finished high school, she passed the entrance exams for admission to Columbia University, where she earned an undergraduate degree in art history and visual art, graduating with honors. She studied with the artist Jon Kessler, who was known for his mixed-media, kinetic works combining analog and digital components. Kessler’s art often critiqued technology itself.

Robson once noted, “Kessler taught me that art about art was boring.” More recently, she observed, “I’m interested in the idea of learning through serious and playful inquiry as opposed to tortuous drudgery or other ways of learning. I’m interested in art as serious play and as a form of cultural service.”