Tasha Robbins: Malachim: Coming Out of Darkness

February 17 - March 3 | Opening Reception: Sunday, February 17, 2 pm - 4 pm

Robbins’ body of work is both an abecedarian adventure in paint and a personal meditation on the Letters of the Hebrew Alphabet depicted in, what is known as, angelic script, in an effort to keep their meaning in contemporary life.

 

Artist Statement:

Begun in 1988 as a combination "roots"/art + language project, An Angel Alphabet/Malachim: Coming Out of Darkness was completed gradually, over a period of ten years. The 22 paintings of the series form the oversize pages of an unbound book, in which the Letters of the Hebrew Alphabet depicted in a so-called "angelic script" loom large in gold, with iconic images that put a spin on the traditional "correspondences" of the Letters.

 

As a whole, this body of work is both a simple abecedarian adventure in paint and a personal meditation on the Letters, an effort to keep their meaning moving in life.

 

It could even be a metaphorical reading tool, helping to scry whatever messages might be becoming visable these days --- encoded in the night sky, in the flashes of light at intersections in a drawing or a poem, in the sparkles in the cracks in the sidewalk, or...........

 

Bio:

Now settled in Amherst MA, Tasha Robbins is a painter who has lived and worked in New York, Provincetown, Boston, Boulder, Santa Fe, San Francisco and New Orleans.

 

Her Portrait of George Scrivani with a Photo of Vali Myers and Gregory Corso by Ira Cohen (2001) appeared in the exhibition “Poetry and Its Arts” at the California Historical Society in San Francisco in 2005.

 

Portions of An Angel Alphabet/Malachim: Coming Out of Darkness (1988-98) have been shown at Berkeley’s Judah Magnes Museum (“Personal Landscapes/Universal Visions”, 1990) and in Philadelphia at the Borowsky Gallery @ the Gershman Y/University of the Arts (“The Hidden Garden: Three Artists Explore Kabbalah”, 2005).

 

From the Aspect of Mercy (2000-03), a triptych regarding the Quan Yin, has hung in the Florence Biennale (2003); at the Aurora Gallery in the artist’s native Worcester MA ("Psyche", 2004); and at the Goldmine Saloon, home of New Orleans’ 17 Poets! and Festivals for the Imagination (2004).

 

Her work has been reproduced in small press books and magazines (including Jeanne Lance’s Loose Arrangements [Smithereens Press, 1984], Aaron Shurin’s Elsewhere [Acts Books, 1988] and Codex [Meow Press, 1997]; FRAMMIS: A Tribute to Wallace Berman, MAG CITY, Gallery Works, tripwire, YAWP, and others), and can be seen on the web at www.salonfoxy.com .

 

A 2014 Acker Award recipient, she appears in The Outlaw Bible of American Art (Last Gasp Press, 2016).