Robin Melton Jordan was born in Pittsburgh and grew up in Kentucky and North Carolina.   As a daughter of a craftswoman,  Robin was both inspired and daunted by her mother's ability to learn and become proficient in any media she chose to explore.  This early exposure led to Robin's decision to move to New York City to study art.

Robin’s initial studies were at The Art Student's League, which she selected for its freedom and affordability.  There she received a year's scholarship to study drawing with Marshall Glaiser and sculpture with Sidney Simon. Later she studied woodcarving with Jose de Creft at his 23rd Street studio, and welding with Frank Costa at the Sculpture Center in NYC.

Robin began to explore crafts after receiving a scholarship at Haystack, in Deer Island, Maine to study knotting with Ferne Jacobs. This was the beginning of her rediscovery of craft processes influenced by her mother’s early activities that she had watched and tried to emulate as a child.  During these years, she showed jewelry at the Aaron Fabor Gallery and the Silvermine Guild Art Center.   

In 1999, Robin returned to fine art, integrating her knowledge of craft processes with her paintings, works on paper and sculpture. Jordan creates her sculptures by deconstructing found objects and reusing the pieces to sculpt.  Depending on what the recycled object contains—a hole for riveting or a colorful piece of plastic to catch light and movement—she reassembles the materials with the eye and hand of a craftsman. She discovers something nourishing about rescuing forlorn objects and restoring them, in her studio, to an aesthetic usefulness—a process that comments on our society’s wasteful practices.

Jordan recently hung Eleven Blue Balls @ X Initiative BOYA, in February 2010, and will be showing one of her sculptures in the Birthday show at the Pelham Art Center, May 7th - June 26, in Pelham, NY. She lives and works in her studio in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, NY. 

Reassembling detritus and recycling discarded objects and materials, spurs my creative energy. I examine the potential of objects that are free-for-the-taking—castoffs that have lost their value. Through the deconstruction of the object, I rediscover its potential and transform it into art— a process of intense dialogue and revelation.

The paper pieces I make are created with a similar sculptural process.  Old paintings, paper, bits of fabric, rubber and other collected discards are saved and recycled.  I use a razor blade or sewing machine to cut or perforate the edges, then reshape, delete and rearrange the shapes using a sewing machine to attach and tie down the loose pieces.

I grew up in the South where making art with found objects and recycled materials is an important tradition. As an artist, I cannot think of a better way to express and rejoice in the regenerative cycle of life than to harvest what is already around and use these transcendent materials in the making of my sculpture and assemblages.

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