Robin Bell :: Photography

Robin Bell is having a show at the Spring Street Gallery on August 25th.  Her works are almost entirely digital images that combine ideas from painting, block printing and photography.  This work is experimental and nearly all of it began by accident after she signed up for the wrong class at art school.  It was a computer class for advertising and it taught how to make digital ads for things like the Bahamas and eyeglasses. It also gave Robin the opposite technical foundation that a traditional photographer would look for.  Instead, it pushed her on to invent digital methods to create abstract composites of real images that come out of Block Island.  Everything became a conversation between understandable and iconic scenes and their isolated and pure idea.  It all came from a wonderful enrollment mistake.

Every photo is from somewhere on Corn Neck Road on Block Island, within hiking distance from Robin’s home.  This pretty much limits her to a field, a dock, a pond, and one old house.   But there is lots of color, especially blue—blue is everywhere on an island. And there is lots of weather, so every day a different shape or color stands out, which is a take off point for more art.

Robin lives part time on Block Island and New York City.  She has studied at the School of Visual Arts and the International Center of Photography, both in New York, and the New England School of Photography in Boston.  They have all been great.