Alumni Atelier: Liz Robb experiments with a new landscape
Written by Lilli Donohue, Photographs courtesy of SCAD
The SCAD Alumni Atelier program allows makers to explore the south of France while living in SCAD’s Lacoste campus and utilizing their studios as retail spaces. A little twist is that the studio is actually a cave! For alumna Liz Robb, M.F.A. Fibers, this is just one of many unique aspects of her residency in Lacoste this summer.
Liz Robb is no stranger to the life of a traveling artist. Based out of Los Angeles, she does a residency almost every year. From the top of her head, she listed, “Iceland, Oaxaca, New York, Joshua Tree, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft,” and the list goes on for places she’s done a residency in. She said, “Over the pandemic, it became painfully clear that travel is the motivator.”
The Alumni Atelier gives artists an interesting position to travel. The south of France is full of small villages that all have a unique character and new media to experiment with. For example, Robb plans to visit the town of Roussillon where they have ochre mines. She can use these natural pigments to dye wool or other textiles she makes in the studio. Sourcing materials is not always as easy as living next to a pigment mine though. “Planning doesn’t always work, you have to surrender all control and have no expectations,” she said. Over the course of her many residencies, this is a mindset that came from practice. Now she has a system or deliberate lack of one. “I just bring a carry-on and source things wherever I am, that’s fun for me,” she said.
Robb’s work is very influenced by all of the places she goes, especially because of what materials she has available to her. Through her residencies, she builds collections and then works on commissions based on the collection once she goes to her home studio in Los Angeles. “My work changes as I move. In Mexico I used cochineal. My work was bright there,” said Robb. She also added that the rich pottery culture allowed her to experiment with bead making, weaving them into her work.
At the end of her two-month residency in Lacoste, Robb still has a lot more traveling to do. She has a solo exhibition going up at the end of July in San Francisco as well as a sister show in Lacoste. Both exhibitions will feature the collection she is working on currently. At the end of August she will fly home for the closing reception, but first picking up her dog in South Carolina, a quick stop in Los Angeles before hitting the road to the Bay.
Follow Liz Robb’s work on Instagram or her website.
