ARTIST STATEMENT
“Offering” was a shrine that I fashioned to honor the feminine divine for an installation arranged by Chicago’s Cabinet of Curiosity. It includes my grandmother’s kid gloves holding 345 forms representing the ova that my mother and I produced in our lifetimes. I created this while musing on fertility, the feminine divine, my mother’s complicated perspective on a woman’s right to choose, how it differed from my own, and the different sorts of reproductive health care we each received. The exterior of the shrine features the following two poems:
ON READING AN ACCOUNT OF VIRGINIA WOOLF’S DEATH
i am thinking of a woman
who walked into the waters of a river
with stones in her pocket.
thinking of the water
of the rivers of my life.
thinking of the stones
in my pockets.
women are born
with stones in their pockets.
empty them
empty them
swim.
(found in Patricia Stoll’s writing papers)
STONES
An airplane bathroom can be a place of prayer.
I think it happened on her birthday.
The sun’s white glare on a sink full of flies;
Saltines and a thimble of water.
The slight curve of her belly embarrassed me.
But it had grown gargantuan.
She blamed her choice of sterility,
Offering her pain for those unborn.
(Gina Lee Robbins, 2020)
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Gina Lee Robbins is a Indianapolis-based visual and teaching artist who creates sculptural objects and installations. She’s been working in clay for over 30 years, and picking up interesting objects along waterways, wooded paths and city alleys for as long as she can remember. Her sculptures are part of private and corporate collections worldwide.
© Gina Lee Robbins