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The Keeper of the Clay

Robin Gianis Transforms Nature into Art

If art is infused with energy, then the tactile quality of hands magically molding clay leaves a lasting impression. Robin Gianis masterfully brings nature to life in her ceramics and drawings, capturing the intricacies of plants or creatures. “It’s my biggest inspiration,” she says, “I am honing in on things like anemones or petals or branches, the repeating patterns or rotations in nature. My work is not narrative. It’s more about texture and movement. I want to enchant people with a different language.” And in the language of ceramics, her fluency learned over the course of decades leads to a quality that uniquely identifies her work and yet is not monolithic. “I don’t play it safe,” she explains, “Part of the fun for me is to ask, ‘What would happen if…?’” While many times it may not achieve the wow factor, or as in the case of ceramics, literally crack or break, there are the moments when the end result is better than imagined. “It’s that feeling you get when something speaks to you.”

For Gianis creativity expands beyond her artwork, it is her life’s art that has been part of her home in East Hampton since the late ‘80s. Her partner Aurelio Torres is also an artist as well as her daughter Phoebe who works at the Mark Borghi gallery. Her son Orion is a student at the University of Montana. “I am a maker of all things: I sew, I garden, I needlepoint and I cook and bake.” It all becomes a meditation that connects her to her center, a necessary daily practice. Luckily for students in Bridgehampton, she has been a public art teacher for over 20 years for ages kindergarten through high school in her single classroom. “The hardest part is finding a chair that fits both a four and an eighteen-year-old,” she says with a laugh. The kiln in the classroom is mostly for student work, but the one she has at home allows for experimentation with multiple firings and different glazing techniques. 

Robin Gianis

Gianis finds the local art community a boon to herself and students, collaborating with different cultural organizations including the Parrish Art Museum and Guild Hall. “It’s very important if you are the only art teacher in a student’s life that you expose them to other artists in the community.” She takes this responsibility seriously, helping each student to discover what they have to say and how to express it. For her own art, her local connections create opportunities for collaboration and exhibition. “If someone wants to be surrounded by art and beautiful country there’s not a better place than here,” she says. Ashawagh Hall, the Southampton Cultural Center, and most recently Bay Street Theater have shown her work, the latest exhibition as part of the Women’s Art Center of the Hamptons. Many of her connections go back to her early days when she was in her 20’s managing The Barefoot Contessa gourmet food shop in East Hampton.

Summer represents a break from school but Gianis enjoys teaching ceramics at The Art Barge in Amagansett, “It’s a breathtakingly beautiful slice of heaven,” she says of the setting on Napeague Harbor where she can often see Aurelio windsurfing.

Nature, in the end, perhaps represents an operating metaphor for Gianis. It is about both putting down roots and sending tendrils to the sky.

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