KAREN ROBINSON
Title: Honeybee butter dish
Dimensions: 4” X 5”
Medium: cone 6 clay
Date Made: June 2019
Retail Price: Not for Sale
Artist’s Statement (meaning/inspiration, etc.): Wild honeybees adopted us a few years back. They now live in our hives, and there is not much I enjoy more than fresh honeycomb dripping with honey spread on hot, buttered toast. Cone 6 off-white stoneware. Lid: thrown and altered, incised, bees shaped and applied. Base: press molded; decorated with slips, stains, and underglazes; Mishima inlay.
Title: Flirting Cups
Dimensions: 3.5” openings
Medium: Cone 6 clay
Date Made: November 2019
Retail Price: Not for Sale
Artist’s Statement (meaning/inspiration, etc.): The cups have a life of their own. Placed one way, they pretend to ignore each other. Placed another way they are definitely interested. Cone 6 off-white stoneware, thrown, decorated with slips, stains, ceramic pencils, and underglazes.
Karen Robinson, Studio Artist, TC5, B.Sc., B.Ed., BFA
A ninth-generation and life-long resident of Nova Scotia, Karen Robinson studied clay, fabric design and sculpture at NSCAD and at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. Karen then ran a full-time clay studio, and taught adult and children’s clay sculpture at NSCAD’s Extension Department. Life’s challenges sent Karen into other directions. While recovering from a life-changing illness, she spent twenty-five years pioneering improvements to school health and safety and indoor air quality (IAQ), to school operation as well as to the design and construction of healthy new school buildings. This work achieved national recognition, notably the Canadian Institute of Child Health’s National Innovation Award of Excellence in 2005, and The Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal for Community Service in the Health Field. However, Karen was never far away from her life-long passion for clay. Marvelous things can be made from “mud.” Karen served on Craft Nova Scotia’s Standards Committee, the Cumberland County Arts and Crafts Association Market Jury, and was Co-founder of Crafts Antigonish. Karen’s work has appeared in numerous juried shows locally and nationally, graced the cover of Fusion Magazine, and been carried in Canadian and US galleries and gallery shops, including the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia’s Gallery Shop and the Gardiner Museum. Playfulness and function fit together into pieces that, as Karen says, she hopes “will make people smile.”