Robin Masi Background Information

Biography

Robin Masi is an artist and a writer. She graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University with a BFA and received her MFA from the Academy of Art College, San Francisco. She is attending Harvard Graduate School of Education's Arts in Education Program. She has exhibited her conceptual costumes, abstract figurative paintings and charcoals in exhibitions in New England, California, Washington D.C. and New York. Her play, Vanishing Point, has been performed in Rome and New York. Masi's current project include a site-specific installation entitled The Witness Project exhibited at the Fitchburg Museum of Art in September, 2003 and at the Carney Gallery, Regis College, in September, 2004.

The Witness Project includes large-scale panoramic black-and-white charcoal drawings recreating the buildings at the perimeter of the World Trade Center site in a 360 degree view, conceptual costumes, and sound. The conceptual costumes include previously worn wedding gowns, a priest’s vestment and men's vests. These have been collaged with photographs, text from interviews, and line drawings of the buildings. Graphic material includes newspaper headlines, photographs, and interview transcripts. The sound component of the installation includes original music composed by Ken Field avant-garde composer and musician, interspersed with interviews with New Yorkers, including a family who lives in the neighborhood, a Jesuit priest who ministered to the rescue workers and a St. Paul’s Chapel volunteer and representative. One of the goals of the project was to convey the physicality of the site for those who would never get to see it at the time it depicts (January – June, 2002). In addition, is the exploration of the duality that exists when such catastrophe occurs: namely, the outpouring of positive experiences emerging from such a horrific and tragic event. It is this duality that is at the core of the project.

Masi has exhibited her current series of 2D mixed-media drawings and conceptual costumes. In 2001, her work was accepted into several juried exhibitions: Red, curated by Harry Cooper, Associate Curator of Modern Art at Harvard University Art Museums; Beauty, curated by Elaine Scary, Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value, Harvard University; and in the national juried show New Art 2001 at the Kingston Gallery, Boston, curated by Bill Arning of the MIT List Visual Arts Center. She was also featured in the Tufts Alumni/ae Juried Exhibition and was part of a three-woman at University Place Gallery.Recently, a piece from the project was accepted into the Biennial Drawing Show, Mills Gallery, Boston.

In 2002 Masi’s work was on view at the National Prize Show, curated by Lisa Dennison, Chief Curator of the Guggenheim Museum; and The Empress’s New Clothes, curated by Kathy Bitetti, Executive Director of the Artist’s Foundation. During fall of 2002, Masi was part of three 911 memorial art exhibits including: Artists Respond to 911, Fitchburg Art Museum; Paradox, Artists and 911, Somerville Arts Museum, and The 911 Exhibition, Fulton Street Gallery, Troy, N.Y.

Masi has produced, written and designed costumes for Vanishing Point: Scenes from the Life of Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi. Vanishing Point was performed in Rome at the Palazzio Venezia with the Gentileschi paintings as a backdrop in December, 2001. The piece was also performed in April, 2002 in New York at the Italian Cultural Institute. The performances have been held as costumed staged readings in both the Italian and American languages.

In 1993 Masi co-founded The Varo Registry of Women Artists, a virtual gallery for contemporary international women artists (http://www.varoregistry.com). The Varo Registry is the recipient of the BBC Web Education Guide and the American Library Association's 1997 Best of the Web awards.

She is also works as a consultant representing children and youth placed with the Department of Social Services with the Educational Surrogate Parent program through the Massachusetts Department of Education. Masi has taught foundation, life drawing, illustration, and painting at several different colleges including the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, UMass Lowell, Northeatern University, and with the Art Institute of Pittsburgh .