Kelly Robert was born in Newport Beach, California in 1976. She lives and works in Massa, Italy and Brooklyn, New York.
Robert studied sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2001. In 2020, she completed her Masters of Fine Art at the New York Academy of Art (NYAA). During her time at NYAA, Robert received several merit-based scholarships as well as two sculpture residencies in Carrara, Italy.
Her inspiration is people who, after facing intense personal adversity and struggles, pull through the difficulty of the mo-ment and arise with confidence and strength. She purposefully exaggerates the twisting poses beyond the natural form to emphasize the energy and the power that are released in this moment of hope.
The figures are angular yet curvaceous. These undulating surfaces and gently pointed edges are reminiscent of nature itself. Robert feels these elements and the shadows they create allow the viewer to visually travel the piece similar to how one observes a rolling sand dune or a mountain range.
Whether sculpting in clay or marble, Robert meticulously sands the surface to a smooth finish allowing light to glide across the forms uninterrupted. The colors chosen for each sculpture symbolically represent the action the figure is making in that pose: red can represent the heat of battle, yellow could be a moment of electric excitement.
Robert has exhibited her sculptures in numerous exhibitions and they have been placed in several important collections.
Artist’s Statement
We humans are resilient. We weather life and the vast exchanges of raw energy from nature as well as from each other. Our ability to jump into action as a preservation of life is a beautiful sign that we are adaptable and desire hope.
I have been drawn to the epic tale. The story of an individual who comes to face a challenge so extreme that everything once filling their world quickly fades to reveal a totally new reality. There is purity and urgency in this hero’s journey. And everything seems to be hyper real and hyper symbolic.
I interpret moments of intense illumination and reckoning as physical gestures. I begin and grow out from the core of the human body as a source of energy that, when activated, can wind itself to generate light from darkness. It conjures the strength to honor a moment then lift through it. The modeled forms act as a landscape for the growing energy to glide across and maneuver throughout, again and again.
Figures that embody the feminine and the masculine, marry confidence and question, sensuality and isolation, and blur the notion of the ideal. A purity of intention, illustrated through pullings and tensions. I pose a stance with the ingredients of a hero. Exposure, armor, enlightenment, love, abandon and force.