Tag Archives: robotsforever

Buy this robot zine.

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It’s been a long January, friends. Michigan is cold, sunshine is lacking, the post-New Year’s blah is floating around, and for me, that has meant one thing: hibernate as hard as possible. As we approach February, a new month that is both short and closer to spring than the one we are currently in, I have decided to come out of hibernation to give you something: It is a robot zine. It is about feelings. I want you all to order one right now because they are small and I made them with all of my feels and love and they are only 2 dollars.

Here is where you click for the zine, aka a tiny little magazine made with paper and a copy machine and some staples.

This is the first in a series of little stories I want to tell. Robots are given the task of having feelings. They just get programmed to have them, and are left ot figure out what to do with them. Kind of like us, right? There’s some funny, there’s some real talk, and, in this issue, there are lasers.

Order one, tell me what you think, and keep an eye out for the next issue.

xo

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Why make the same thing over and over again?

ProcessWhy would you make the same thing over and over? Georgia O’Keefe endlessly painted flowers. Frieda Kahlo painted so many self-portraits. Chuck Close painted face after face, in a very similar style. Even so, we see change in them. We see growth and evolution somehow, when we look at their work as a whole. There’s something unique in every petal O’Keefe brought to life.  I wonder if they knew that when they were making each painting. I wonder if they ever thought “Why do I keep making these?”. I wonder if they ever felt a little crazy for the repetition.

Today, a friend of mine asked, “Why robots?”, and it hit me hard for some reason.  Maybe it’s because I’m hanging my first real show this month. The number of robots on every surface and wall of my home startles me every morning when I come downstairs. I’m faced with them, and I can’t look away, nor do I want to. I love them. So I felt like it was a good question, and one that deserved some thought. Why paint or draw the same things for years?

My initial response is that I went to school for Industrial Design, so I worked with 3-D objects, in perspective, and the robots came out of that. Years of drawing vacuums and toasters will h
ave an effect on a person. Also,  I loved someone who reminded me of a robot. He had a heart, I was sure of that, but he didn’t know exactly what it was for, or how to use it. I imagined that my made-up robots had hearts, and were also confused by them. That felt universal, in some ways. Having the ability to feel millions of different emotions, but not being able to have control of them, is frustrating. I felt frustrated with the robots in my life, and the robot that I was sometimes.

So, I know why I started making them, but the real question was, why didn’t I stop?

The answer that I finally came to was that the robots feel like home. They are the constant that I can come back to. My friend suggested that we create the same thing over and over again because it evolves and changes with us. Maybe there are small changes in the moment, but over time, there’s a really significant difference from where you started. Even as it changes, it remains yours. The robots are always mine, no matter what they look like. So, I make them because they are mine to make.  Like many things we think we need to over explain, the simple reason is good enough, because it’s true.