By Mary Ashlyn Moore, Graphic Designer

“Installation In White,” the first exhibition by “super senior” Samantha Robinson, was featured in the FORM Gallery, March 17.

Much of Robinson’s exhibition reflects how she began her first series of work: completely from scratch. While plaster and acrylic made up the bulk of her design, the paint covered used artifacts, transformed by pinches and cuts.

“You can touch [the paintings] if you want!” She exclaimed. An audience member replied, “NO! No one is supposed to touch your work!”

It’s OK – we’re still in Hempstead, not at MoMA.

Four canvases, which Robinson physically stretched herself, filled wall across from the glass-surrounded gallery. Although each image featured a vintage, off-white color, each was unique in their technique.

Sliced with a knife, the first from the left was textured with blunt, repetitious lines. While the third was of similar character, Robinson referred to it as more “De Kooning” in its more varied and circular form.

Her work of her “heart and soul” – and by far the most textured – replicated small pentagons of a honey comb, where hundreds of shapes were pitched into a complex piece.

“I wanted to replicate what I saw in nature, whether it was in branches or cement…my goal was to paint experimentally, not realistically,” said Robinson.

Inside the gallery, were hundreds of old, painted New York Times papers, angled and cropped to transform the room into a collage.

The point of putting the newspapers all around the room was to put the audience on the brink and encompass them completely.

“Although the walls were already white, I wanted to create my own white experience..and to encourage the audience to find shapes and lines within the crooked New York Times,” she said. “It’s essentially an exploration of form.”

Front and center, two glass panels were suspended away from the wall with large nails, acting as a hard book cover for all the loose papers. Manipulated with paint as well, the rectangular objects were “saved” from a sculpture room in Calkins Hall.

A Fine Arts Education major, Robinson launched her compositions in a shared studio room at the beginning of the semester.

Robinson has dedicated herself to not only her painting, but the development of the arts as well.

Since the President of FORM graduated last semester, “Sam has been very supportive. She helps me with the paperwork I don’t understand,” said Deborah Ni, Secretary of the FORM club. Ni, along with many friends and family, not only attended the opening, but offered teamwork and support to make the show possible.

The subtle, subliminal message Robinson communicates in her work is innately drawn from nature. While the artist is the first to show in FORM so far this semester, “Installation In White” only scratches the surface for what the University will expect from the arts in the future.
 

University artist Samantha Robinson working on her second canvas, called “her heart and soul,” though still untitled, in her studio. (Mary Ashlyn Moore/The Chronicle)