TELL ME: AMY ROBINSON GENDROU
Artist makes statement with tissue installation
A little Q&A
Amy Robinson Gendrou, 32, is a sculptor, photographer, mixed-media artist, mother of two young children and a teacher. Her installation, “Keeping the Thread,” is up through Aug. 8 in Buffalo Arts Studio Gallery (Tri-Main Center, 2495 Main St., fifth floor). Admission is free; hours are 11 a. m. to 5 p. m. Tuesday through Friday, 11 a. m. to 3 p. m. Saturday. For more information, call 833-4450 or visit www.buffaloartsstudio.org.
You started out as a photographer, but this “quickly gave way to mixed-media installation work.” Why?
While doing photography, and thinking about how viewers would encounter the work materially, it wasn’t enough to hang images on the wall. I wanted to make some space in viewers’ everyday habits to create a window or pause, so that they might reconsider – think a little bit differently about the material’s possibilities. I like being able to think about the sounds, the smells, the feel of the floor – designing every aspect of the environment.
You list “facial tissues, ink, thread, time” as the elements in this installation. Most art takes time; artists rarely list that as one of the “ingredients” in their pieces. Why did you include it here?
I’m interested in the accumulation of things over time; the tiny, incremental changes that are often overlooked. That is how change happens.
You kept a journal, typewritten directly on to tissues, from 2005 to 2009.The amount of time you spent journaling was dependent on what was going on in your life. You gave birth to two children during that time, for example.
Yes, my daughter was born in July 2006. I slowed down [on the project] then. And now I have a son who’s 1 year old. I really picked it back up again in November 2008.
The piece is made of around 1,000 facial tissues, some blank and some with typewriting on them. They are sewn together methodically with gold threads and are suspended from the ceiling. They drag on the floor.
The tissue structure has more strength than I thought it would have. And I didn’t want to create a distance for people; I wanted them to get inside and walk around. I like creating unexpected shelters, psychological or physical, that we can hide in.
The journal entries seem both mundane and intense: “can’t I ever be satisfied?”; “at wit’s end.”; “house arrest or domestic paradise.”What was going on?
I felt like I needed to build something out of all the thoughts that were running around in my head. Some are moments of frustration or anger, some happened when I had a bit more time to reflect and chose words carefully. For me, looking back and reading some of them, they really are a self-portrait.
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