Successions: Traversing US Colonialism Amber Robles-Gordon

August 28–December 12, 2021

American University Museum Curated by
at the Katzen Arts Center Larry Ossei-Mensah

Amber Robles-Gordon presents Successions: Traversing US Colonial- ism, a solo exhibition on view at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center in fall 2021. Successions is a conceptual juxta- position that celebrates abstraction as an art form while leveraging it as a tool to interrogate past and current US policies within its federal district (Washington, DC) and territories (including Guam, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands) that it controls. By highlighting nuances relat- ed to US governance in its federal districts and territories, Robles-Gor- don seeks to question who has access to resources, citizenship, and the right to sovereignty.

y mi bandera vuela mas alto que la tuya., Mixed Media Collage on Canvas, 18 x 24 in., 2020

Robles-Gordon creates artwork imbued with a layered visual language replete with cultural signifiers and abstract gestures. Successions is a celebration of abstraction as an artistic expression. Robles-Gordon uti- lizes iconic artists like Robert Rauschenberg, Alma Thomas, Romare Bearden, and members of the Washington Color School as vivid refer- ence points for her own dynamic use of color, form, and material within the works she created for the exhibition. These explorations will provide insights into a number of inquiries that undergird the construction of the exhibition. Successions creates a pathway towards discursive crit- icism around issues impacting marginalized communities oppressed by the United States’ hegemonic domestic and foreign policies. The exhibition features a new body of colorful abstract paintings, collages, and quilts created in 2020 and 2021 between San Juan, Puerto Rico (Robles-Gordon’s birthplace) and Washington, DC (where she current- ly lives).

USVI Political, Detail, Front, Mixed Media on Quilt, 86 in. x 90 in., in., 2021

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Robles-Gordon’s creative strategies were directly impacted as a result of sheltering in place in San Juan. The lack of access to materials and arduous circumstances she was confronted with in Puerto Rico and upon returning to Washington, DC catalyzed Robles-Gordon to impro- vise her approach to making works for the exhibition. Moreover, the ex- perience heightened her awareness of how communities on the margin are adversely treated during mo- ments of crisis.

Robles-Gordon’s also uses works featured in Successions to mine the stories, personal narratives, and aesthetics of the women of the Caribbean, particularly of African de- scent, in an effort to investigate the political, socio-economic, and envi- ronmental implications of placemaking, contemporary colonial policy, and notions of citizenship on these social groups. The debate over DC statehood, similar to Puerto Rico, has been a prevalent point of con- tention in the District but rarely featured in the national conversation. Robles-Gordon seeks to use her “backyard” as a metaphor that would

expand our understanding of notions of freedom, liberty, and justice.

A fully illustrated catalog with essays by Ossei-Mensah and Noel Anderson and in-person and virtual programs will accompany the exhibi- tion, enriching the viewer’s experience.

Recent initiatives of our Galería de Arte at Universidad del Sagrado Corazón, The director of Galería de Arte, Norma Vila, interviewed Amber Robles Gordon, our visiting artist.

Since its inception, the Galería’s mission has been to offer the university and general public a heterogeneous program that researches and documents current humanistic issues through Puerto Rican art. Beyond working the heterogeneous within the artistic manifestations, as an institution driven by its civic and academic mission, we have opted to provide space to projects and artists whose voices promote social justice issues. Intersectional topics such as gender, race, beliefs, values, and our diaspora are included in the Galería’s program and it becomes a teaching-learning laboratory for faculty and students. The Galería affords the opportunity to create interdisciplinary experiences and strengthen analytical and creative thinking.

But how to expose them to what happens outside the island? For this academic year, the Gallery decided to launch a visiting artist program and selected Washington, D.C.-based Afro-Puerto Rican artist Amber Robles Gordon. Having a visiting artist contributes to the training of students far beyond a class, it functions as an on-site journey, and strengthens ties with the community. Most importantly, visiting artists bolster our vision of lifelong education by challenging the “right answer” framework that limits the teaching and learning experiences.

At the beginning of the academic year, Robles-Gordon visited the island for the first time since she left Puerto Rico when she was very young. As our invited artist, she lodged at a residence adjacent to the campus, and gave a series of conferences to various groups of students. Her second visit to Sagrado was on November when gave a conference based on her work and artistic professional practice. She expounded on how she has broken with the stereotypes of Afro-Latin-American women and artists and how she uses her profession as support and defense of social justice. 

Amber Robles Gordon is an artist known for recontextualizing non-traditional materials at different scales from two-dimensional artwork to her public works of art. Her intention is to emphasize the essentiality of spirituality and temporality within life. Robles is driven by the need to build her own distinctive path, innovate and challenge social norms, which is why her artwork is unconventional and unformulated. Her creations are representative of her personal experiences and the paradoxes within the imbalance of masculine and feminine energies in our society. Ultimately, she seeks to examine the parallels between how humanity perceives its greatest resources, men, and women, and how we treat our possessions and the environment.

From the experience of visiting the island, she created a body of artwork appropriately titled “A Place of Breath and Birth” which was to be exhibited in April 2020. However, this was cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The solution to this problem was to present her work in a virtual fashion.

Having the opportunity to coordinate her two visits to our campus, exchange experiences, listen to her motivating lectures, and see in her recent artistic production, sparked in me the desire to interview her. I hope you can get to know more about Amber Robles Gordon through this conversation.

N: Place of Breath and Birth is the title of your recent production developed in Puerto Rico. Would you please elaborate on the significance of the name?

A: The title literally came from my desire to know more about where I was born and where my mother spent her childhood. Puerto Rico (PR) is both my place of birth and the place where I drew my first breath.  At the time of my birth, most of my family – maternal and paternal – lived in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. I spent the first two years of my life in St. Thomas and then moved with my mom and dad to Washington, DC.  My mother—the primarily link to my birthplace—taught me Spanish and kindled my identification with ‘La Isla”.  During my 2019, trip, I began my search for family members who still resided in PR.  I felt that this search would cultivate a deeper relationship with Puerto Rico.

After my two visits to Puerto Rico in late 2019, I decided in early 2020 to rent an apartment in Puerto Nuevo to start producing the series “A Place of Breath and Birth.” Due to the persistent earthquakes, and the risk that they represent for the Sacred community, my exhibition was postponed, later with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, everything worldwide changed and I had to return to Washington D.C. New works produced under the title A Place of Encouragement and Birth were moved to an online platform. 

This would be my first opportunity to exhibit in the Caribbean and deepen my relationship with my birthplace, Puerto Rico, “La Isla del Encanto”. That is why I have titled the exhibition, Place of Breath and Birth. This was my original statement as an artist that gave rise to this series and it is still burning and guiding my discovery daily. The intention of the proposal for an individual exhibition at P.R. was to empower my five-year-old self. To give her the strength to fight for herself, her language and culture. I was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico and raised in Arlington, Virginia. My first language was Spanish, yet at about five years old, I came home one day and told my mother: “I was not speaking Spanish anymore”. From then on, I responded to my Spanish/English speaking mother in English only.  Later, I came to understand that I had surrendered my Spanish tongue—a critical part of my cultural identity— so that I could “fit” a version of myself that could possibly coincide with the prescribed box that others had for a brown-skinned girl such as myself.  Although in time, the name calling ceased, however, the micro-aggressions, insensitive questions, assumptions, and judgments about my brownness lingered. Throughout this life, time-after-time, I have had to choose to identify with my brownness/blackness over the other cultural ties that bind other Spanish speaking people with their culture.

Although, my personal narrative is the main focus of these works of art, I will continue to contextualize it within the political, socioeconomic, and environmental threads that define and are often used to control, alienate, or mistreat Puerto Ricans in general and Afro-Puerto Ricans. in particular. Also, my artwork is about the intersections of femininity, patriarchy, hybridism, and Americanism. Ultimately, I hope this narrative and this work of art will give voice to others who walk in shades of brown, who breathe within a feminine form and who do not conform to the rules… but are bold and proud.

Elemental: Tierra, Aire, Agua, Fuego, 18 x 24, 2020

N: That visit in September 2019 was your first visit to Puerto Rico. How was that first encounter?

A: Technically, my two-week trip to PR in September 2019, was my first trip there as an adult.  My mother told me that I have been to PR as a young child. However, I truly had no memory of those visits.  During the first trip, accompanied by my mother, we realized this was the first time we traveled alone together. I had my mother all to myself! She is an amazing human being:  She is always working, helping family, friends and organizations and causes that concern her. She is always DOING something. Thus, being able to spend time with her exploring the Sagrado Corazon’s campus, local art museums and galleries, El Yunque National Rain Forest, and other places imprinted on my mother’s childhood were immeasurable.  Moreover, I meet my boyfriend during this trip. So I have many good reasons to celebrate having been able to visit the island.

N: As our visiting artist you offered a presentation to 3 groups of the Art Program of the University. For those who weren’t there, would you elaborate on how you integrate your origins and beliefs with the use of various materials and vibrant colors?

A: I believe following one’s authentic internal voice is an essential part of integrating ones’ origins and beliefs and projecting this awareness into the use of whatever medium and or methods you choose to create with or live by. Creating art, is an essential method of self-joy and self-expression, and a means for sharing my concerns and connecting to a higher power.

I have known, I would be at artist since I was eight years old. Beyond being loved and cherished by my mother and father as a child; the other activities that triggered an innate and immediate positive response, was being encouraged and praised for my creativity. I recall the feeling of pride when my first or second-grade art teacher praised my artistry or being allowed to hang my artwork in the lobby of our apartment building—the Brittany, Arlington, VA—as a teenager. My life experiences have been intricately connected to my love of art and creating.

I was also encouraged to defend or advocate for the rights and appropriate treatment of myself and others. I have vivid memories, of getting in trouble, especially in school, for the right to speak my mind and claim my agency over my body and voice. I objected to middle school boys who slapped the derriere’s or snapped the bras of the girls they “liked”.  I recollect the sting of the slap and my disappointment, as the school’s vice-principal referred to these personal infringements, as love-taps. I remember the anger welling up inside me, from being chastised and or punished for yelling at or chasing the perpetrator.  It was clear that the boys were not held to the same standards of behavior as the girls.  These and other experiences throughout my childhood unveiled deep-seated gender variances and stirred a desire to explore the underpinnings of gender inequality, which is embedded throughout my artwork.

During my graduate experience at Howard University, I was exposed to different philosophers and their views.  In fact, the renowned debate between Black philosophers, Alain LeRoy Locke, and W.E.B. Du Bois regarding art as a form of individualistic and aesthetic expression, or art as propaganda to contribute to racial advancement and group expression was particularly meaningful for me.  This debate further reinforced the importance and privilege of my own creativity and creative process.  Using my art to give voice to others and further define my agency as women of color became even more fundamental.

N: How did visiting and living for a short time in Puerto Rico influence your work? How does this series titled A Place of Breath and Birth differ from your previous artwork?

A: I have wanted to create work about PR for most of my adult life. Growing up in the states away from most of my family and Caribbean life has fostered a longing for a pilgrimage to Puerto Rico, Antigua, Tortola, BVI, and eventually trace my roots to Africa. I initiated this process in September 2016, by reaching out to Edwin Velazquez Collazo, founder/writer of the art-blog, Puerto Rico Art News, and shared my art portfolio and my desire to exhibit in PR.  Since then, we checked in periodically, and in late 2018, Edwin identified an opportunity and put me in contact with you Norma Vila, (director of the Gallery) of the Galeria de Arte in Universidad del Sagrado de Corazón.

After visiting in September and November 2019, I decided to return to the island in early 2020 to live temporarily. Being in PR allowed me to focus on cultivating a specific atmosphere and environment to create and live within. I choose a third-floor apartment with two bedrooms and a sunroom and awarded myself the largest and brightest room —the sunroom— as my studio. It has four large windows and exposure to three-dimensional light every hour of the day. We filled the studio with about thirty-eight variations of plants, a futon, a printer, a storage shelf, and of course my artwork. While sitting on my futon I could watch the palm trees bend and dance to the shifts and variances of the changing weather. The standing view revealed both my immediate block life, vibrancy, greenery, music, and the loud barking little dogs below. Because I can see above all the other two-story buildings, I have an expanded vista, about 3-5 miles out, I can see the outdoor portion of the Tren Urbano, PR’s transit system. Then, about 15-20 miles away, I can see the outer fringe of city-life with looming lights and high rises.

These variances of space, environments, and time influenced this body of artwork by effecting my interpretation of and relationship to spatiality.  In these pieces, I convey both my internal feelings and external environment by the layer of materials so that they create divisions depicting various planes of existence throughout these compositions.  This formula allowed me to manifest multiple representations of atmospheric ecosystems. My time in PR provided the environment and time, to focus on expanding my perspective of and a sense of ownership of self, of land, culture, and of elements through the landscape. In this context, my commitment to sketch at least every other day, yielded sketches, primarily a combination of line drawings and geometric shapes, which lead to sacred geometry like renderings and some figuration. Later, these sketches from integral parts of the overall design of the entire series. 

N: Sometimes as artists we devise a platform and strategies that later require adapting the idea to the circumstances. This project has not been unrelated to circumstances beyond our control (earthquakes, power outages, COVID-19). Do you consider that these circumstances have had an impact on the development of your work, be it emotional, mental, or cultural?

A: I have had to be malleable in my behavior and expectations regarding this exhibition and about the circumstances that impacted this endeavor. However, my level of commitment to the process and the incremental revelations that surfaced during my time in PR were so defining and nourishing, I had no choice but to move forward.

N: Referring to the title of your project A Place of Breath and Birth. Do you still think Puerto Rico is a place of breath? And, if so, in what sense?

Puerto Rico will always be my Place of Breath and Birth, and I welcome opportunities to continue to learn about, build community and experiences to further know that part of myself and heritage. 

I also become aware that, I am imprinted by my mom’s memories of her childhood home. During my visit, I witnessed the change in accent and the increased level of attachment and comfort she felt in PR.  Apparently, this was also observed by you, Norma (director of the Gallery), I remember you mentioned that she sounded more Puerto Rican every day on the island. I think I also witnessed the charm of the island through the way my mother felt – how she cooked, danced, and delighted in her Afro-Latinity; all the things that have influenced my sense of identity. 

COVID-19 Times 

N: How was your studio practice interrupted by the lockdown?  How has your work changed because of the lockdown?  

A: Yes, there was an interesting continuum of things in life that impacted my production in the studio, in my life, and even in the planning of this project during these first months of 2020. I used the first phase of my residency on the island to locate my house and my studio in Puerto Rico, which took longer than expected due to the tremors. Once I was located in my apartment, I began the second phase; exploring, photographing, and searching for resources to incorporate into the art. Then, the lockdown happened, and another level of limitations ensued.

In Puerto Rico, the quarantine was extremely strict. Most businesses were required to shut down. Only, the local government, supermarkets, some restaurants (mostly fast food establishments), and pharmacies could remain open. I could no longer go to the art supplies store when I needed supplies. Yet, I still had deadlines to meet for upcoming exhibitions and or projects. I had to conform myself to using whatever was already in my possession to create this body of artwork.

N: What are you working on right now?

A: Right now, I am working on artwork for my solo exhibition, Secession, at Katzen Center, in the American University in September 2020. The Place of Breath and Birth series will also be a part of that exhibit.  This exhibit will also include the other set of artworks, 8-10 quilts, I worked on while in PR.

N: What are you reading, both online and off?  

A: I am not an avid book reader. More often, I listen to audiobooks and or listen to informational videos. I also spend a lot of time reading online articles about art in general from a select number of online art publications: https://hyperallergic.com, https://bmoreart.com and https://www.artsy.net. Daily, I read numerous online articles and posts about current issues, such as politics and social justice issues and happenings.

N: Have you visited any good virtual exhibitions recently?

A: I was drawn in by the work of María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Untitled, from the series When I am not Here, Estoy allá, 1996. The exhibit also features artwork by James A. Porter and Carmen Lomas Garza. Eye to I: Self Portraits from the National Portrait Gallery, at the Boca Raton Museum of Art. With the term “self-conscious” as its starting point, the exhibition Eye to I is a cherry-picking of self-portraits by major artists in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.

With the term “self-conscious” as its starting point, the exhibition Eye to I is a cherry-picking of self-portraits by major artists in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. With a wide range of depictions spanning over a century, this thoughtful presentation straddles themes from cultural identity to body positivity. Catch up with it in this six-minute video tour.

N: Have you taken up any new hobbies?  

A: Honestly, although I am now back in DC and I have not had the time to start a new hobby yet. Most of my time is divided into creating artwork, administrative tasks, cooking, grocery shopping, exercising, and spending time with my family and loved ones.

N: What is the first place you want to travel to once this is over?                

A: Huh, that is a good question. Since 2015, I have traveled to Thailand, Italy, Miami, Morocco, and Puerto Rico. So, although I absolutely welcome the opportunity to travel again, I do not have a specific place in mind as of right now.  Future plans include continuing my familial pilgrimage, by spending more time in Puerto Rico, visiting Tortola, and then tracing my African roots.

N: If you are feeling stuck while self-isolating, what is your best method for getting unstuck? 

A: I am fortunate that my self-isolation has included my boyfriend and my mother, brother, and niece who live a few blocks away.  So, when I am feeling stuck or frustrated, we go for a walk, visit family, plant some plants, or simply watch a good Science Fiction movie. 

N: What was the last TV show, movie, or YouTube video you watched?  

A: Right now, we are watching the Star Trek Discovery series. In mid-May we gathered at my mom’s house on a Sunday evening and made a YouTube collection of the songs she would play (vinyl long-playing 45s records) on either Saturday or Sunday mornings before we did our chores.  This collection included songs from when we were between 5 to 17 years of age.  Among them are: “I love Trash”, “ I left my Cookies at the Disco” by the Sesame Street crew; three of Tracy Chapman’s 1988 chartbusters: Fast Car and Talkin’ Bout a Revolution, and Mountains o’ Things. On the Latin side we focused on Juan Luis Guerra y 440’s Ojalá que llueva Café, Bachata Rosa, and Burbujas De Amor; and Puerto Rican Yomo Torro’s “Don’t Bury my Clothes”.

Alma Thomas’ Apollo 12 “Splash Down,” 1970

N: If you could have one famous work of art with you, what would it be?

A: I would love to live with Alma Thomas’ Apollo 12 “Splash Down,” 1970.  I was eight years old when I first saw Alma Thomas work.  My mom, then a student at Georgetown University, was taken a course on African American Art, which included a project to see Thomas’ work exhibited at Howard University.  My mom says I stood in front of her work—my eyes huge while holding my breath—mesmerized by her work. 

N: What are you most looking forward to doing once social distancing has been lifted?

A: Recently, I have been craving tuna salad sandwiches from El Meson or the “Tres Leches” dessert at La Casita Blanca, local bastions of Puerto Rico’s Cocina Criolla (traditional Puerto Rican cuisine). Also, I hope that I can attend my opening at American University in fall, 2020.

Silver of the interview/tour I did at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Amber Robles-Gordon: The Sweet Glitter Juju of Life

Amber Robles-Gordon‘s work is deeply personal. Her mixed media paintings and sculptures draw upon her journey through motherhood, genealogy, healing, and being alive today. They represent her technical and scholarly growth as an artist, and are inspired by her professional development in the Washington, DC area. A recent graduate of the Howard University MFA Program (2010), Robles-Gordon is a board member of Black Artists of DC (BADC), and takes part in a diverse and multigenerational arts community. She is also an arts advocate who participates in several cross-cultural and cross-town initiatives that characterize Washington, DC‘s history of individual and grassroots organizational support for artists. Robles-Gordon has expressed that this rigorous and nurturing technical and conceptual dialogue has enriched her artistic process and her life; it has affected her approach to materials, techniques, and her vision as an artist. She notes the influence of many artists who have inspired her to see art-making as a profound engagement with oneself and the world.

Her two- and three-dimensional pieces fit within an expansive notion of painting and sculptural form. She uses wood or painted, stretched canvas, or chicken wire to support an accumulation of media in low- or sharp-relief. These assemblages require a close look to interpret their individual parts. Collectively, each object contributes to the palpable energy of the overall piece—hinting at their previous functions and the ?lives? of their former owners—configured by the artist‘s hands.

Robles-Gordon gathers and reshapes the sweet glitter juju of life into her work. Individual moments, personal vignettes, and more universal themes are equally woven into it. She examines spirituality, the phenomena of childbirth and motherhood, and the assignment of value to every little thing. She considers the blessings and burdens of femininity, and what it means to be a woman. She recycles fragments of garments, handbags, and accessories to engage the ways that these vanity objects—often used to define beauty—are also traps. She explores various metaphysical systems as a source of inspiration after an accident gave her the opportunity to test her faith and healing ability. Glitter-coated streams of paint add sparkle and shine to a range of discarded or thrifted objects. She breaks them down and reassembles them into collaged arrangements that are influenced by artists such as Romare Bearden, James Brown, Francine Haskins, Frida Kahlo, Georges Seurat, Frank Smith, and Alma Thomas. Robles-Gordon fuses varied influences into compositions that balance blank space, color, and hyper-materiality. She creates a subtle tension, and the possibility of opposing readings in her placement of assemblaged elements amidst dripping paint—which may represent the lyrical expression of painful experiences. These works belong to the series Milked, and simulate the outstretched wings of birds-in-flight against blue or yellow skies, butterflies, or the seductive curves of women‘s undergarments. Her affinity for lacy details, gloves, doilies, slips, and purses consist of a range of past and present accessories and small objects of home décor. She chooses from things—her own and others‘—to pull apart and reform; to give new life, and to scatter between various works like a sprinkling of fairy dust.

She plays with notions of masculine and feminine energy (as objectified) to address distinctions between the admiration of beauty, and its ethereal source or essence. Found dragonflies, dolls, deconstructed fan parts, remote controls, billiard balls, trophies, curling irons, hood ornaments, handles, and sparkly red children‘s maryjanes refer to male/female dynamics, and popular culture references, like fairy princesses, Oz, and what it may mean to be “?behind the eight ball.”

Robles-Gordon‘s collage sensibilities were influenced by artist-activist Romare Bearden (1901– 1988). Bearden‘s prolific work in collage shaped a visual narrative style that conveyed a palpable sense of 20th-century black life in America. Robles-Gordon states: I identify with Bearden‘s collages because I employ similar techniques and processes of cutting, pasting, reconstructing forms, faces, and concepts from photographs, magazines, and other paper sources to convey a message. I interpret his method and collages as a form of visual journaling. Through making collages, I have established a relationship between texture, symmetry, harmony, and compositional balance.

Inspired by Mexican surrealist, Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), Robles-Gordon considers Kahlo‘s ability to overcome tragedy, illness, and grief as an expression of her strength, and its role as a source for her paintings. As one of the best-known women artists of the early 20th-century, Kahlo used life‘s obstacles as a way to hone and articulate her artistic voice:

Kahlo was a master at rendering her dreams, pain, and innermost thoughts and feelings. I am inspired by her personal connection to her art and its role within her life. Further, her artistic treatment of women and the depiction of her traumatic life have influenced my desire to create works reflective of my experiences as a woman.

In Bearden and Kahlo, Robles-Gordon discovered the arts to be a meaningful ways to convey personal narratives and relevant sociopolitical issues. She admires each artist‘s work as an embodiment of cultural pride, and as a means to stake a position on identity, subjugation, and giving voice to the voiceless. By combining personal elements with timeless and universal themes, Robles-Gordon uses collage, and non-traditional painterly devices to examine contemporary social issues: accumulation and waste, beauty and femininity, motherhood, spirituality, and the nonsensical or unexplainable juxtapositions that characterize daily existence.

In the work of pioneering abstract painter Alma Thomas (1891-1978), Robles-Gordon reflects upon Thomas‘s interpretation of primary color schemes, geometry, and composition. From French artist Georges Seurat‘s (1859-1891), she learned about the process of optical color mixing. Robles-Gordon states:

Thomas left small spaces of white canvas in between her brush strokes, creating the appearance of mosaics or stained glasswork.... [By studying this,] I began to evaluate the value, purpose, and aesthetic aspects of my art.... [Seurat] used white space to enhance the perception of color. He created a technique called ‘pointillism,‘ in which an image is rendered using tiny dots of primary and secondary colors. When the image is viewed from afar, the eye fuses the colors and creates intermediate colors.

She applied these concepts of color and technique to a body of untitled works in the series, Identification of the Matrix Grid. Begun in 2004, these pieces evolved from an artistic inquiry that used grid structures to create multi-colored layered matrices based on squares or rectangles. She cites Thomas and Seurat as sources for her grids: In my early works, I used torn, colored paper to create figurative paper mosaic compositions. Ripping the paper revealed its white fiber pulp, and provided areas of white space between each portion of color. Many of my paper mosaics appear from afar to look like Thomas‘s paintings until you come closer and see the texture of overlapping paper. The manner in which Thomas and Seurat used color and white space has influenced the way I visually perceive color and has informed my placement of color in the majority of these works.

As a member of BADC, Robles-Gordon has positioned her art as a part of an artist community that values African-inspired techniques and philosophies as a tool for exploring personal and artistic awareness. Her series, Cosmic Black, was created for the 2009 BADC exhibition, The Black Exhibit. Like the 20th-century exhibitions devoted to the color black as an expression of the sociopolitical issues associated with blackness, the focus of this show was to reinforce principles such as ?black is beautiful? and the positive attributes of the color.

Within BADC, fiber and textile artist James Brown, and mixed-media artist Francine Haskins have inspired Robles-Gordon‘s professional development. In Brown and Haskins, Robles- Gordon appreciates how each artist has contributed to an expansive understanding of the possibilities of textiles, fiber arts, and found objects in her own work. She also sees the work of artist, professor, and AfriCOBRA member, Frank Smith as an inspiration for developing mixed- media canvases and sculptures that combine sewing and painting. The physicality of Smith‘s work comes from layers of painted, cross-hatched squares, stamps, or other materials featured in kinetic arrangements. The wall-mounted draped textiles in her series, Heal Thyself Series, pay homage to Smith‘s quilted paintings, his use of space and brilliant palettes. Robles-Gordon says of these three artists:

In their own individual styles and techniques, Brown, Haskins, and Smith create two- dimensional figurative and abstracted compositions that appear to have varying planes of visual movement and rhythm that document, explore, and celebrate African and African American history and culture. Through exposure to their works and my relationships with Brown, Haskins, and Smith, they have supported and challenged me to continue my exploration of textiles, cloth, and sewing and have strongly encouraged my desire to go beyond the conventional practice of presenting works in frames.

In Robles-Gordon‘s recent work, familiar elements—straps, curling irons, gloves, shoes, dragonflies, and fans—take on new meanings and forms on her characteristically canvas, chicken wire, or wooden supports. The compositional possibilities are as limitless as her stockpile of materials and their conceptual associations. As the work moves this direction, her structural sensibilities—that once relied on grids and matrices—are being transformed into less regimented, more three-dimensional, and visually-interactive compositions. She states:

Though the matrix is still at the core of most of my compositions, the works are no longer defined by a grid format or flat surface. Taking away the boundaries of traditional framing encouraged me to allow the materials, colors, and energy to hang, flow, and ?leap off? of flat canvas, which ultimately leads to the shift from two-dimensional to three-dimensional works.

These developing concepts are best revealed in the Heal Thyself Series, the Chicken Wire Series, and At the Altar. Heal Thyself consists of wall hangings made from textiles and other media mounted on canvas. The Chicken Wire Series is comprised of mixed media works woven through and sculpted around a chicken wire base. At the Altar is composed of folded and draped canvases that are brightly painted and adorned with an array of found objects from plastic fruit to things associated with childbirth and maternity.

Tosha Grantham is an artist, writer, and independent curator. She is completing a PhD in African Diaspora Art History at the University of Maryland College Park.

Amber Robles-Gordon is a mixed media artist who lives in Washington, DC.

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Upcoming Exhibitions:

Wired (solo exhibition)

(June 17 – July 17, 2011)

Pleasant Plains Workshop

2608 Georgia Avenue, NW,

Washington, DC 20009

Opening Reception: June 18, 2011 from 6-9 pm

Curator:

Kristina Bilonik Tel: (202) 415-1466

Website: www.pleasantplains.com 

Delusions of Grandeur (group exhibition)

(July 8 – August 30, 2011)

Featured Artists: Shaunte Gates, Jamea Richmond Edwards and Amber Robles-Gordon)

Commissioned exhibition by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

Mandarin Oriental Hotel

Exhibition Space

1330 Maryland Avenue, SW,

Washington, DC 20024

Opens: July 8, 2011

Contact:

Jamea Richmond-Edwards Tel: (571) 288-1086

Pen Arts presents:

Lace (Solo Exhibition)

(October 31 - November 5)

Robles-Gordon will be the keynote speaker for the DC Branch' of The National League of American Pen Women November meeting.

National Headquarters Pen Arts Building

1300 Seventeenth Street N.W.

Washington, D.C.  20036-1973

Opening Reception: To be announced

Contact: (202) 785-1997

Website: www.americanpenwomen.org