Resilience: Featuring Jane Bauman, Deborah Lynn Irmas, & Michelle Robinson

LAUNCH LA is proud to present Resilience, with Los Angeles–based artists Jane Bauman, Deborah Lynn Irmas and Michelle Robinson and their new works steeped in observation, meditation and fortitude. These new series are entrenched in personal experiences and passion, fostering hope through the resilience of nature and the act of making as a response to chaos and uncertainty.    

Michelle Robinson’s multi-disciplinary practice encompasses photography, painting, embroidery, needlepoint and installation art often using self-directed research and digital applications to address environmental and other important personal and societal issues.  In this series, Nature Abides, Michelle reflects upon some small but meaningful gains, moments where nature has persevered despite the continued pressure of humankind's presence on the planet.

"In my work, I practice a form of ‘activist melancholia’, intended less to heal and more to spur action, to build empathy for non-human bodies and discourage complacency with the ongoing struggle for the health of our ecological systems.  The work consists of several vignettes, small stories worth noting for the resiliency they convey. On the Channel Islands, several species have been recommended for removal from the endangered species list following extensive efforts to restore habitat and remove invasive species. Young trees are beginning to emerge from scorched soil in the Winema-Fremont National Forest, four years after a devastating wildfire burned over 400,000 acres. The California Red-Legged Frog is making strides towards recovery with the collaborative help of institutions in California and Mexico. Urban plants are remarkable at surviving, even when our artificial structures nearly crowd them out. I pay homage to these instances ofresilience through tenderly embroidered portraits. Such handwork is slow, laborious, and contemplative, requiring me to observe with heightened attention. These are bittersweet stories; a few incremental steps forward against a relentless tide of destruction. By focusing on these little moments that might pass unnoticed, I am allowing myself the possibility that we are not past the point of recovery."

Michelle Robinson is a multi-disciplinary artist living in Los Angeles. She studied environmental design, animation, and visualization at Texas A&M University, producing short films shown at the Walker Art Center, the Dallas Museum of Art, and The AFI National Video Festival. Michelle completed her MFA in Visual Art at the New Hampshire Institute of Art in 2019. Michelle has been an artist and supervisor with Walt Disney Animation Studios for 31years, most recently serving as Head of Characters on the Oscar-winning Encanto. She has been a mentor in Disney’s Artist Development Program, taught computer lighting and texturing at the California Institute for the Arts, and is a regular visiting instructor at Texas A&M University. Exhibition highlights include solo shows at Launch LA, The Wright Gallery at Texas A&M University, and the Cecelia Coker Bell Gallery at Coker University in NC. Her work has been published in Fiber Art Now, Precog, Frames, and the book Desert Forest, produced in conjunction with an exhibition at the Museum of Art and History in Lancaster, CA.  She has been awarded residencies with the Joshua Tree Center for Photographic Arts, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, PLAYA, and Oak Spring Garden Foundation. She has juried shows for the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art and Shoebox Projects and co-curated an exhibition about the Los Angeles River at Shatto Gallery. She volunteers with several organizations and advisory boards, including Textile Arts LA, and is a member of the curatorial collective Monte Vista Projects.

Deborah Lynn Irmas is a Los Angeles based visual artist whose practice is informed by the large part that textiles played in her childhood. Her work has evolved into a recognition of her mother's history, her Salvadoran birthright and her own bi-cultural narrative. Growing up in a household surrounded by fabrics and yarn her mother used, Deborah Lynn developed her own practice of creating works both honoring and advancing fiber art and painting. 

"I make non-representational art to explore relationships between line, color, shape, paint and textile. I work between the intersection of crochet and paint. The color palette of cool tones is a unifying component of my work. The textile works have evolved from crochet on canvas, to large canvases, to removing the canvas entirely and letting the wall hold the work. The wall has become part of the structural element of the work. The crochet works appear to be organized, evolving with order and clarity. Yet they are made from a form of chaos and a sort of “unregulated” geometry, that is not contemplated or considered and often results in a distorted shape. They are free flowing throughout the process until the culmination, where they are pulled tense at certain points and emerge into unexpected conclusions. The crochet stitch is humble and an unrepeatable invented pattern. Sometimes garments are cut up and reconfigured (a form of collaging), which for me carries intimacy, inheritance, and transformation.

Another component of this series, is painted works on wood panel which also explore shape, line and color using collage as another attempt towards transformation. These works are often self-portraits and whimsical. Like the textile works they begin with chaos and are eventually resolved with structure and clarity.

Deborah Lynn Irmas completed her BFA in Visual Arts and also received a degree in Textile Pattern Design, both from the University of California, Los Angeles. She continued courses in Fashion Illustration, Graphic Design, Printmaking and has been a long-time student of the esteemed artist Tom Wudl.  Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Latin American Art and she has exhibited in Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Pasadena, Puglia, Italy as well as the Torrance Art Museum, Santa Monica Art Museum and the Venice Family Clinic Art Exhibition + Auction.

Jane Bauman Her most current body of work are botanically inspired paintings dealing with tangibility and what we value as a society. Jane was born in Burbank, California and considers growing up in Los Angeles County to be a formative influence. Surf culture, the 60's hippie movement, psychedelic music and the Hollywood movie industry were all there and combined to make for an enriched environment while developing as an individual and artist.  

My current work takes its primary subject matter from plant and floral forms grounded in landscape. I make botanically inspired paintings using stenciling materials with acrylic and metallic spray paint. My use of spray paint echoes my early years doing street art in NYC in the 1980’s. The work is rooted in the ecology of Southern California with drought, flood and fire as well as spectacular sunsets, desert flower blooms and heavenly temperatures. My studio opens onto a slightly overgrown garden and it’s as if the plants are participating in making the art. I’m having a conversation with the flora. The paintings in this series are small, intimately scaled, with multiple layers that invite the viewer to come close to see all the details. My use of fluorescent and metallic paints gives the paintings a subtle shimmer – a reflection of the everchanging light and movement of the natural world. An underlying motive of desire runs through the work – a desire for tangibility, for connection and beauty.

Upon receiving a BA from Santa Clara University, Jane Bauman attended graduate school at the San Francisco Art Institute where she became an active participant in the punk/no wave culture of the late 1970s where she began a practice in street art as well as making studio paintings and sculpture.  Moving to NYC in 1980, Jane became a part of the East Village Art Scene where she was represented by Civilian Warfare Gallery. In addition to showing her work extensively in NY and Western Europe. She collaborated with David Wojnarowicz, Huck Snyder, Paul Benney and Mark C. including extensive work at Pier 34.  Returning to Southern California in 1989, Jane became a Fine Arts Professor at Coastline College. She taught six Study Abroad Programs from 2003 – 2013 in Florence, Italy which had a big impact on her art. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Cooper Hewitt Museum of American Art (NYC), the Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art (NYC), the Historisches Museum Saar (Saarbrucken, DE), and Musée de Cloitre des Cordeliers (Paris, France). She is currently represented by Despoina Damaskou in Athens, Greece and is a member of the 515 Bendix, a Los Angeles art collective. Recent art projects include an illumination of Dante's Divine Comedy, an ongoing endeavor, and Florabau, a mixed media body of work about the Southern California environment, water and desire.