Robin du Plessis

Robin du Plessis is an artist based in New York. She received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and has worked as a fabric designer and teacher. Her work incorporates multiple formats, using scale and materials to address the human relationship to a changing environment.

“My work is about how we organize, describe, and make sense of our surroundings. I use repetition and accumulation to make images built up of many small things that look at the relationship between living things and their environment through the use of scale, mass, layering, and detail.

I walk in the woods every day, picking up mushrooms or moss or branches that find their way into my work. They might be photographed and manipulated, or the start of a drawing, or sometimes just a reference of a color or a texture. I use these artifacts as the basis for work that looks at the ways the environment is changing as a result of climate concerns through evolution and mutation. In addition to the artifacts my references include museum archives, scientific journals, botanical illustrations, and my work as a woven fabric designer.

Fabric design is about function and beauty, and in the case of these designs, extravagance. Intended to be woven on transparent silk chiffon with velvet and metallic accents, the designs are a suggestion or visualization using gouache of what could be made on a loom using the silk devoree process. Silk devoree, or cut velvet chiffon, is made by employing a chemical gel to selectively dissolve cellulose fibers, leaving behind a pattern of sheer and opaque silk. The silk is most often woven with a velvet technique that uses light, shine, color, and texture to create intricate embossed or lace-like patterns. The use of metallic fibers, embroidery, and printed dyes adds to their dimensionality.”  Robin du Plessis