VOLATILE TRAVERSAL EXPLORATIONS OF HOME AND BODY BOUND BY RECOLLECTION The San Francisco Art Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts / Master of Fine Arts in History and Theory of Contemporary Art / Sculpture by COLE M. ROBBINS May 2012 The Thesis of Cole M. Robbins is approved: Robin Balliger, Ph.D. Ginger Wolfe-Suarez Terri Cohn Claire Daigle, Ph.D. Director of MA Programs iii COPYRIGHT (C) COLE M. ROBBINS, 2012. thoughtWhat I bewould most -difficult - the 94806 99516 v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For the hours of endless conversations: I would like to dedicate this piece to everyone who has been a part of this creative adventure. Our encounters have influenced this composition significantly. Aleah Koury Salena Pritchard Thank you to the following sponsors of Strength In Courage - California to Alaska by Bicycle. Patty France Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland Maria Owens Go Pro Caitlin Morgan @ Signs SF Carl Hild The Pedaler Wally and Lois Willig Shebeest Carolyn Cole Outdoor PR Bill Miller Marilyn Hill In particular, I would like to dedicate this to my grandparents, Edith Nadine and Herman Max Robbins. To both of you, for your unconditional love, lessons in life and in the shop. Penny Graber To Kevin Robbins, who fought for me and taught me to do what I love. Carol Schatz To Carla Robbins, for our future of getting to know one another and forgiving the past. Amy Devereux To Ruth A. Askevold, for the life we continue to create and explore on our own map together. Loretta McCarthy To Donna, Rick and Randy Smith, for letting me introduce you to my artistic side. Nicole Dibble To Hugh McPeck, who taught me the discipline of it takes to call yourself an artist. Huntley Maddrey To the San Francisco Art Institute faculty: Robin Balliger, Ginger Wolfe-Suarez, Terri Cohn and Richard Benninger Dale Carrico for believing in my work and giving me new challenges to overcome. Drea Darnell Trace Line Drawing, 2012. The route taken between CA and WA. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS introspection 1 home 3 graduate school 21 the ride 33 pain 83 place 95 id entity 111 body as instrument 125 notes 136 bibliography 138 introspection • 1 Everyday, I walk into the studio, pace through narrow hallways and ride the winding roads; I contemplate the questions of when and where to begin as an artist. The influences of my past It is here, that and present physical and geographical locations lend themselves to creative endeavors, expres- conceptsI map theas- sions of lessons learned. Travelling between the private spaces of HOME and back into the sociate with public places where strangers cross paths and change directions, my daily routines are worked into the body, systems of exploration and discovery that is Returning with its in- GRADUATE SCHOOL. cisions and to a place to call my own, over-stimulated from the city lights and street shadows, I aggressively scars under release the tension built up in my body. In a room to call my own, I am surrounded by chain saws, ofan umbrellamemo- table saws, welding equipment and assorted industrial materials with sharp edges, stacked on ries, that I shelves that line the walls. Smithson wrote: “The tools of art have too long been confined to ‘the undress be- 1 fore you. It studio.” What happens when the studio becomes the bondage of creativity, instead of a space to is here, with- work through ideas in three-dimensions? What happens when the systems organized and arranged esin thesethat Ipag am- within a sculptor’s studio are disrupted? I lifted the steel frame, suspended from the ceiling by two anchored to wheels and decided to RIDE the road, kicking up dust along the routes marked on street signs. my truths, Riding the mountain ranges instead of the shorelines left my craving the salty ocean to my past. BODY The woven waves. It is here, in these pages, that I draw upon concepts associated with the body, with its inci- layers of my sions and scars under an umbrella of memories that I undress before you. I explore the time I spent beenstory sculpthave- on rooftops of unfamiliar buildings, writing down thePAIN and tossing suitcases of contra- ed by my dictions down the fire escape. Strapped across my body are the layers of language and landscapes asexperiences they are of time, in search of a safe PLACE to surrender. Today, I continue to record the rhythm and percieved changing chords across the fret board of experiences. Following in Smithson’s footsteps, I am as- thesethrough eyes, sembling a collage of texts in an effort to remind myself that there is, in fact, power in confronting the eyes of what we fear, a reminder to walk beyond and later return to the space of the studio. It is here, that I an artist. It am anchored to my memory of a past that often returns to surface as I sculpt my is here that introspection I search for IDENTITY as an artist. This is where the lines are forged from strangers’ stories and sur- an anchor. viving circumstances, and it is here I search for an anchor. LETTING GO OF HOME home • 3 The weeping willow would wrap its branches around my little body and I would swing around in circles all summer long until the snow began to fall. I would climb the narrow stairs through the door beside my bed, up into the attic, and I remember falling asleep late at night listening to the train roll by out on the tracks. I would walk those train tracks during the day, flattening pen- nies and climbing over railroad ties. Those are the few memories I have of living in that house on Woosley Street in Lansing, Michigan. Just after my baby sister was born we moved across town to Gilbert Street. I would spend the next ten years of my childhood, quickly adapting to the reality of innocence taken and adult arguments. And this time instead of stairs, I climbed trees, hid high above the ground and settled in between the pine needles caught in my hair and soaked in my tears. I wanted to run away from home and when I wasn’t trying to live in trees, and I was peddling my bike past one house and another until the streetlights came on at dusk. I remember all too well the morning my mom stood in the kitchen, skin and bones, hair falling across her shoulders, shielding her face as she stared at me and the boxes that were scattered on the floor. Surrounded by dishes wrapped in plastic bubbles and others broken and piled in the trash, the only truth I knew was that we were moving far away from the cornfields I would get lost in until after dark. We were leaving this house, my pink bedroom, and the yard where my cat Squeekers, and Casey my cocker spaniel were buried. I didn’t realize the duration of time spent down the driveway from the mailbox that read 2296 Gilbert Street would be the most significant in shaping the next the thirty years of my life. We found ourselves, a family, driving the highways that connected Michigan to North Carolina with everything we owned packed in a U-Haul truck. I was the passenger riding high above the other cars, knowing we were not be returning to the place I could once point to on the palm of my hand. Instead we moved to the part of the country defined as The Bible Belt.2 We found ourselves, days later, arriving at our new ‘home’ down back roads and dirt roads to sixty-four acres of land with a waterfall and a place where Dad’s dreams were to build a house to call home. I would enter high school at the age of 14 in an unfamiliar town, and an unfamiliar room to call my own with walls painted bright shades of lime green. I would wake in the middle of the night to my mom say- ing she would be returning in a few days, to not return at all. Home became a battlefield where I stuffed condoms in my pockets in search of love, found my Dad in a closet of pot plants and my sister sleeping the days away. Within a few months our home was occupied by a woman who filled a void for Dad, accompanied by a (temporary) stepsister and stepbrother. In order to satisfy their needs and destroy my fathers dreams, we all packed up and moved, yet again, to a house closer to a different town with enough room for everyone to disap- pear into their own worlds behind closed doors. Eventually, the slamming of doors would break the support and the crack the frame. The morning light would settle against the shattered glass and the wooden floors were gouged with the history of a rushed escape. I was tired of being the victim, tired of reacting to circumstances that were out of my control. I took to spending endless hours in my room, similar to a long narrow hallway, painted green in the basement, hidden away from the world I didn’t want to be a part of. Instead, I travelled by turning the pages of books and I released home the fear across the strings on the fret board of my guitar. home • 5 The year I graduated high school, I rented a hotel room in Durham, North Carolina and spent endless hours circling the pages of classified ads.