Biography

Aurora Robson is a visual artist known predominantly for her innovative, meditative work intercepting the plastic waste stream. Born in Toronto, Canada, Robson grew up in Hawaii and then lived in New York City, where she studied metal welding at Apex Technical School, earning her New York State metal welding certification and working as a metal welder in the film and construction industries. Robson then completed a double major in art history and visual art at Columbia University. Throughout her decades-long career, Robson has developed numerous techniques for sculpting with plastic debris, including fastening, weaving, sewing, threading, ultrasonic and injection welding, and most recently, 3-D printing. Robson develops these techniques and strategies not only for her evolving studio practice but also to share open source with creative and academic communities interested in reducing plastic footprints.

A recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Grant, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture, a TED/Lincoln Re-Imagine Prize, and a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, Robson is also the founding artist of Project Vortex, an international collective of artists, designers, and architects innovating with post-consumer and post-industrial plastic. 

Aurora lives and works in the Hudson Valley with her husband, 2 teenage daughters, two cats, several fruit trees, and a very expressive dog. 

Artist Statement

My studio practice is a form of serious play in which I develop and integrate innovative methods to transform post-consumer plastic into art. This practice is a meditative exercise in subjugating negativity.  I operate from a place of gratitude, curiosity, and reverence for life, so I create objects and experiences to share this operating system.

I’m driven partially by the fact that people continue to think of plastic as disposable when it is the opposite. For over two decades, I’ve been illustrating formal aspects of recurring nightmares I had as a child through my art, while developing techniques to highlight the potential of post-industrial and post-consumer plastic as a viable art medium instead of a toxic waste nightmare for the planet. Plastic pollution is an insidious, destructive material that continually enters our water, food chain, bloodstreams, human amniotic fluid, and even the air we breathe. It is far more appropriate for art and design applications than the vast majority of applications for which it is being used today. In art, its longevity can become an asset.

Working with other people’s post-consumer plastic (bottles, barrels, buckets, caps, and other plastic items) allows me to engage with people and communities so that I can help create the conditions for hope through art. I see plastic pollution as a problematic yet connective issue that offers humanity a shared challenge. If we overcome this challenge, it will indiscriminately serve all 8 billion of us (and also change the nature of my studio practice). Despite being a massive problem for life on earth, plastic pollution also has the potential to unify people and change self-destructive cultural norms.

Essentially, my practice is a love poem dedicated to the intersection of nature and culture, intended to soften the edges in between. 

curriculum vitae (click for PDF)