Interview with Thomas Robey, Participant in the "Inquiry as Collection" Show

Interviewer Question: So I understand the 3 pieces of work you submitted to the: “Inquiry as Collection: Wundercabinets, Collage, Assemblage” show was inspired by an assignment from teacher David Francis of the Pratt Fine Arts Center? What were the rules or instructions for creating your pieces?

Thomas Robey: The course at the Pratt Fine Arts Center was not so much centered on a curriculum with assignments; it was an intense workshop in which each artist could feed off the energy and perspective of the other participants. The three consecutive days offered a context for me to explore an artistic medium that I related to the historical phenomena of Wundercabinets. David Francis facilitated my understanding of the current approach to cabinet assemblage, and how I could integrate some of my other interests into my pieces.

Interviewer Question: Your displays had a magnifying glass and also a list of descriptions—why did you include them in your submission?

Thomas Robey: My pieces rely on assembling a large number of small items. Their arrangement is meaningful to me, but could take on other interpretations for other people. My hope, especially for the assemblage of rodent parts http://hope-for-pandora.blogspot.com/2007/08/opening.html (“Gratiaedonatus oriens”) is that the viewer is first curious about all of the items; the magnifying glass permits close examination. I wanted to provide the interested viewer with information that could help them move their inquiry to another level. Instead of labeling that piece, I opted to make a key.

I tried to facilitate interaction with the other pieces as well. In http://hope-for-pandora.blogspot.com/2007/08/8005-spw-ne.html 8005 Sand Point Way NE, each glass microscope slide can be removed for closer inspection. They are each numbered so that they can be easily restored to fit within the scala naturae hierarchy. My third piece http://hope-for-pandora.blogspot.com/2007/08/seattle-colors.html “Seattle Colors” is interactive because the individual berries have the possibility of rotting or degrading over time. The artist/curator must restore the berries to fit with the rainbow color scheme as different source berries are available with the season.

Interviewer Question: Since your task was partly to create an assemblage, aside from collecting things, how does your project reflect your personality? What is different about your project compared to those from other students?

Thomas Robey: I am a scientist. Not only that, but my research uses mouse models of heart disease to study heart attacks. As such, I am very familiar with rodent anatomy. Dissecting owl pellets for http://hope-for-pandora.blogspot.com/2007/08/opening.html “Gratiaedonatus oriensoffered an opportunity to explore a different way of working with mice. My familiarity with rodents also offers the foundations of a bridge I hoped to build to connect science with a non-scientist observer.

Interviewer Question: Does your art have a dominant message behind it at all? Are you trying to say something about the world or yourself?

Thomas Robey: My intent in creating these pieces was to try and raise awareness of nature in the context of an urban environment. Whether it is rodents, local berries or items found in the vicinity of a given address, there is an element of wonder that urban-dwellers may experience when presented with an assemblage of strange-looking items. The irony is that these items are just under our noses. Creating these wonder cabinets is a way for me to connect with my context.

Interviewer Question: Have you worked in this format before? If so/not, what do you see as its strengths or weaknesses?

Thomas Robey: I have curated collections of rocks, fossils and found natural items since I was a boy. This is the first time I have worked with assemblage or attempted to present the items in a way that also offered a message.

Interviewer Question: Since you are not a full time artist, how did you feel about participating in the show?

Thomas Robey: I appreciate that David Francis offered the opportunity to participate in this group show. Contributing to Inquiry as Collection is an honor for me and has introduced me a little bit to how art shows are planned and presented. More importantly, presenting at COCA has also introduced me to a new community – one that might offer an avenue to better connect art and science.

Interviewer Question: What sorts of comments did you get about your entries?

Thomas Robey: I was pleased to see that folks were using the magnifying glass to inspect the items and the identification keys.

Interviewer Question: Are you going to continue creating art? If so, in what genre?

Thomas Robey: I really like assemblage and the concept of the wonder cabinet. I have a lot of ideas about how my training as a scientist can inform novel expressions of creativity. My schooling will require me to move quite a bit in the coming year, and I plan to make an address themed cabinet for each location where I live: Anacortes, Spokane and Fairbanks.

As an aside, I want science outreach to be an important part of my career. I think that the intersection of science and art can be a rewarding area in which to explore new ways to highlight science’s role in society.

Thomas Robey pursues many approaches to elevate awareness of science in society. He writes about these ideas at his blog, Hope for Pandora. http://hope-for-pandora.blogspot.com

Interview Questions for David Francis, Curator, "Inquiry as Collection" Exhibit

Interviewer Question: Mr. Francis, as Curator for the: “Inquiry as Collection: Wonder Cabinets, Collage, Assemblage” show, what was your purpose in assigning this project to your students at the Pratt Fine Arts Center?

David Francis: The show wasn’t “assigned” as a project. It wasn’t a formal part of the workshop at Pratt, except that toward the end, after about 20 hours of intensive time in the studio working with specimens and boxes and collaborating intensely with the class, it occurred to me that the work we had produced reflected a fascinating array of backgrounds and approaches and that we had the beginnings of a show right then and there and that, owing mostly to timing and coincidence, I was in a position as a board member and curator at CoCA to make that happen on fairly short notice.

On a general level, the purpose behind linking my Pratt class “Assembling the Modern Wonder-Cabinet” (currently offered Oct. 12 – 14, 2007 and March 7,8,9 2008; www.pratt.org) to a show at CoCA is to bring different arts organizations together for what I hope will be the first in a longer series of collaborations and projects. When I curated “Shard” for CoCA in early 2006, my purpose was similar in that I tried to bring artists from Cornish (students as well as colleagues) into direct association with CoCA.

Interviewer Question: What were the rules or instructions the students have to follow?

David Francis: Main activity: Starting to create objects and review strategies for display & assemblage. (What categories or taxonomies will the cabinet organize? In what sequence will they be displayed? etc.) Consider hybrid objects like Nick Bantock makes – a dried fish head attached to a toy wheel, etc. (By day’s end, students should have created at least three objects for the cabinet and have a preliminary sense of the desired size and organizational strategy.)

For Session 2, students should bring in the materials for construction of the cabinet itself, whether a simple cigar box, a converted dresser drawer, or larger fabrication. The cabinets need not be finished for session 2, but the boards and / or nails, etc. should be obtained for bringing to the workshop. ALSO: bring in pedestals and display boxes, glass jars and rubbing alcohol, “wet specimens,” collections of objects for exchange, antique books…varnish for finishing box or paint or wallpaper, old newspaper for shelf background…Review aesthetic principles of combining art objects with science specimens – wonder cabinets were being made before these disciplines had become separate. Considering adding “classic” or “typical” elements such as horns, fossils, mummified specimens, skulls, “soft tissue” specimens in jars, prehistoric artifacts, miniature works of art, etc. Cabinet hierarchy: since cabinets are representations of the known world in miniature, consider sectioning the space into such categories as animal / vegetable / mineral / God (also called a scala naturae).

Interviewer Question: Is this an assignment you give every year? Have the types of projects the students produce changed much over the years? Is this influenced by politics or culture or some other factor?

David Francis: I’ve been teaching versions of this assignment at Cornish for a few years, but haven’t noticed much change of the kind you describe. Gauging student interest in a project, especially for a required humanities class, and attributing it to a cultural phenomenon might require a larger sample population. Nevertheless it’s interesting to speculate about why Wonder Cabinets now?, i.e., why is there a resurgence of interest in this at this moment in history? Aside from Lawrence Weschler’s great book Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, which nearly won the Pulitzer for non-fiction in the mid 90s, I’d speculate that it has something to do with all the attention devoted to the disciplines, to “interdisciplinarity” as it’s occasionally termed, as well as the globalization phenomenon that echoes the sudden expansion of the world some 400 – 500 years ago (at least in the West).

Interviewer Question: Were you surprised, either pleasantly or unpleasantly, by any of the projects your students submitted?

David Francis: I became more and more inspired by their work and the collaborative nature of swapping specimens & exchanging ideas.

Interviewer Question: In the context of “Art” or “Inquiry as Collection” how exactly do you feel your assignment develops the student’s artistic talent?

David Francis: Well, an emerging artist can have all the talent in the world and still toil in obscurity. I guess I implicitly urge working with other artists, in a community or a workshop setting, developing talent in terms of an experimental approach, a not-too-serious engagement that remains grounded in questioning and exploring – that’s why the word “inquiry” is important, but not so much of a purely “scientific inquiry” as an inquiry of the imagination, a poetics…and if someone can learn to develop that kind of – I guess “attitude” might be another synonym – they’ll be sure to make art a lifelong endeavor. The often-invoked pedagogical cliché that “it’s about the process, not the product” is worthy of frequent repetition, especially when artists make what they feel are “failed” pieces.

Interviewer Question: Would this be considered a “beginners” art project, or is the role of collection more interesting than that?

David Francis: The same critique is often used to disparage collage as a second-class kind of art or beginner’s medium--where collage is an art form for people who “can’t paint.” A brief glance at contemporary art, a single visit to the Henry or the Frye or SAM will make it manifestly clear how important collecting is to art of all kinds, not just from a socio-political perspective about how and when various works of art become commodities to be collected and owned, but from an ahistorical, nuts & bolts perspective, a praxis that while learned early on in the education of an artist, never ceases to provide a resource –to use the show as an example, almost every artist can be seen to be a collector, often in a quasi-scientific way as if to comment on that dominant mode of assembling items: each box with its collection of “found objects” suggests endless narrative possibilities, little stories from which countless meanings can be spun. From Thomas Robey’s boxes with their dismantled rodent bones taken from owl pellets, to Wonderly’s classic hoard of doll heads, Lin’s tiny replica of buried strata, Reid’s “please touch” mini-museum of turning raccoon skulls, Henderson’s blend of architectural elements and nature, Livingston’s rows of fossil corals, the work from the Pratt class is embedded in combinations of “scientific objects” with “art objects,” much as Wunderkammern offered an interdisciplinary prospective on knowledge.

David Francis is Curator of the “Inquiry as Collection: Wonder Cabinets, Collage, Assemblage” show from August 26-September 27, 2007

Did the Artist who put this together get an A?

For some reason, I can't get the name "Chucky" out of my head, after I saw this one. Just another one of the attractions you will find at Shileshole through the 27th. Doesn't it feel like the name for this should be in French, or something like that?