What is Not Observed (#1)

Michelle Robinson is interested in bringing intimacy and animation to forms that are ubiquitous but often invisible or ignored. The body of work titled Transmission is focused on the Los Angeles River and the structures that surround it. The river takes many forms as it passes through the city, from concrete wastelands to semi natural wilderness. Power lines and telephone poles have replaced trees as the dominant vertical elements in the landscape; freeways and bridges cross its 51-mile length. There is a terrible beauty in that tension between the natural and the man-made, and in the river’s role as a conduit for power, communication, waste, and life. She is fascinated by entropy and the way in which nature inevitably reclaims that which is abandoned.

This piece is photo transfer onto cheesecloth coated in encaustic wax, with additional encaustic paint, stitched onto cheesecloth and canvas.