An Artist’s Touch Made In Bridgeport–Celebrating The Work Of Robin Gilmore

Each month The Bridgeport Arts + Cultural Council highlights Bridgeport’s growing arts scene celebrating the work of amazing talent. You can meet assemblage artist Robin Gilmore for a special workshop/demonstration October 24, 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the BACC headquarters located in the Arcade, 1001 Main Street downtown. Read more about Gilmore provided by BACC below:

Robin Gilmore is an artist, teacher, arts administrator, and designer with strong roots in the Bridgeport community. She is a recipient of the Mayor’s Neighborhood Arts & Heritage Grant (Spring 2012) for her Art Cart project. Art Cart engages the community in “random acts of art” through an interactive art-on-the-street station. Gilmore also facilitates workshops in found art titled “Artifacts & Findings,” which utilizes unconventional techniques and materials in jewelry making.

Robin Gilmore on “Made in Bridgeport”

My story has had many twists and turns because it is about seeking. And as I seek I see art in everything. Which can be overwhelming for an assemblage artist because it is difficult to have and to store “Everything.” The process for my creativity always changes until it feels right, until it fits or clicks, until the work itself fills with energy and speaks for itself. The works become another puzzle to be solved–another story to be shared.

Currently I have set about doing smaller pieces, creating beautiful wearable works of art. Whatever’s available in my coffers will become the newest creations. This week it may be a discovery of old aluminum slides, the next, creating with old photos and samples of laminates for countertops. Broken old jewelry and wallpaper are turned into simple and light earrings. These small pieces came as a result of the larger pieces I have been making through the years.

All of this has led me to creating Made In Bridgeport and facilitating workshops I call “Artifacts and Findings.” The jewelry line is often complimented as true statement pieces as my work becomes stories and contextual amulets that are often intriguing and fun to wear. Many of the pieces created become Modern Myths: Storytelling with humor, sentiment and genuine insight.

Growing up in a family of factory workers in Bridgeport, CT and finding myself in industrial environments since birth, has served to pique this curiosity in the way things are made and how each part supports the process of the other. This curiosity has created a genuine interest in design, industry and entrepreneurship. My love of art began at an early age when I discovered its unique healing qualities, the light I felt inside as well as its importance in storytelling and self-realization. “There is a story behind everything that we do whether we are conscious of it or not.”

Made in Bridgeport is my way of melding my vision and my roots of art making with Bridgeport Connecticut’s Industrial History. I have always been told I’m making something out of nothing, so it is a reoccurring theme in my life.

For more on her work see here.