Andrew Cornell Robinson (born Camden, NJ 1968) makes colorful and dynamic assemblages - paintings, prints, and ceramics alluding to memory. He begins seeking out beauty in discarded historical ephemera from printed imagery of people, places and things. They are deconstructed and re-imagined through drawings and paintings in which he builds up surfaces with layers of color, texture, and expressive form. Drawing inspiration from his immediate lived experiences working on his family’s farm along the Delaware River; being raised on the outskirts of Philadelphia, PA, and Newark, NJ; or living and working amidst the postindustrial landscape of New York City today, Robinson composes visual languages that reveal emotional intersections between place and identity, erasure and presence.
Robinson lives and works in Queens, New York, and is a member of the faculty at Parsons School of Design. He studied sculpture at the Glasgow School of Art and the Maryland Institute College of Art where he received a BFA; and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts. He was a participating artist in Debtfair a project in the Whitney Biennial. His work has been presented by galleries and museums including the Craft Council (United Kingdom), the Contemporary Museum (Maryland), the Ross Art Museum (Ohio), Saint Joseph’s University (Pennsylvania), Art Omi Sculpture Park (New York), et al. He worked with the Pritzker-prize winning architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron in the design of Powerhouse Arts, a new arts center along the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. He was a visiting artist in Haiti where he designed a ceramics studio in Port-au-Prince and led workshops with local artisans. He has been an artist in residence at Gutenberg Arts (New Jersey), Edward F. Albee Foundation (New York), Agastya Foundation (India), and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. In 2023 he was awarded a Queens Arts Council grant, and his work will be featured in a solo exhibition at the Ben Shahn Center for the Arts in New Jersey.