Amber Robles-Gordon

 Casting and Protection Work

Series, Mixed Media on Wood, 2025

Casting and Protection Work : Every network of fibers throughout my body wants to see, smell, hear, taste, and create art. I am casting new perceptions of these items, materials, and belongings. I am challenging previous understandings of what I deemed essential and yet memorializing these mirrors of both girlhood and womanhood to pass on to others. 

Creating is My Practice

For me, creating is a form of practice. My creations and practice are built on combining concepts, techniques, and mediums to convey a message or concern. Often, when combined successfully, these elements become one of my aesthetic languages. The specific aesthetic language utilized in these works is called With Every Fiber of My Being, a reference to the materials and methods I used to create this installation and a body of work, primarily of textile and fiber, which originated in 2023. 

My aesthetic languages have become a "bridges or even portals" that facilitates deeper communication and understanding of who I am and the course of my life. I am constantly reconciling what I need to do—what avenues I need to explore—with the cyclical urges—about every two to three years—to share a message through one of my aesthetic languages.

This series and my aesthetic language also refer to my beliefs regarding the benefits of creating: I have to create, and it brings me joy! This sense of pleasure starts at the bundles of axons within my brain and travels to every hair fiber, and through the intricate system of nerves and muscles, it reaches the tips of my fingers. Every network of fibers throughout my body wants to see, smell, hear, taste, and create art. 

There is something so centering and pleasing about selecting thread and fabric and threading the needle. My senses are calm and focused on the process…stitch after stitch, adjust, tug on the thread, or let the stitch lay. Working with this method and materials also inherently allude to women's work and worth and our society's stagnant attitude toward gender equality. Yet, we are the genetic and literal thread that binds us to all.

The Artwork: 

This series, Casting and Protection Work, comprises four diptychs, each with a mixed-media sewn embroidery hoop and an accompanying mixed-media assemblage collage featuring the doll.  The four embroidery hoops combines hand sewn portion of handkerchiefs, doll's clothing, and my own memorabilia. Aesthetically, my intent is to juxtapose the starchiness of the handkerchief by the colors, fabrics, textures, rhythms and cultural representation sewn around it.  The four artworks on wooden rectangular substrates will feature four dolls from my doll collection. Each doll is placed in a fantasy based multi-layered environment in order to surround them in light, color, and a mixture of faux nature to centralize its essence and connection to the earth. While I have fashioned simple white under clothing for each I will not cover missing hair patches or hide any unimaginably thin waists. 

In these artworks, I am casting new perceptions of these items, materials, and belongings. I am challenging previous understandings of what I deemed essential and yet memorializing these mirrors of both girlhood and womanhood to pass on to others. This is casting and protection.

My Doll Collection

As part of my art and life practice, I consistently work towards reframing, releasing, and healing my childhood, girlhood, and inner child. While this purging and healing practice is not new, the current global unrest, war, genocides, political dishevel raging fires, and storms have hastened and intensified my purging process.

During the past 15 years, I have slowly been letting go of my doll collection. My Doll Collection, an assortment of 15-20 dolls—compiled from my mother's and my own travels, gifts from my grandmother, and those I've found in thrift stores—is one of my most cherished collections. At its height, this global collection of dolls included examples from Asia, the Caribbean, South America, and the United States. 

Anthropological evidence exists that dolls have been part of the human experience since 2000 BC and that ancient cultures worldwide have used them. Throughout the centuries, dolls have been made of bones, clay, cornhusks, fabrics, paper, leather, and modern plastics.

Our ancestors engaged with dolls in a way similar to children today: to project, practice, and mimic multiple aspects of human life, such as caring for, nurturing, and educating children to fit into their native culture/ethnic group and prepare for their adult roles.  

Compared to ancient dolls, from the 1800s onwards, modern dolls are typically classified as "Fashion Dolls" and reflect the visage and representations of teenage or young adult women or as baby dolls that resemble infants. Dolls can also include figures in the shape of animals or anthropomorphic figures (https://collectorsheadquarters.com/is-there-a-difference-between-action-figures-and-dolls/).

The dolls are entry points to personal beauty and link me to the global-woman and their respective cultures. Additionally, they connect me to and contributed to my sensibility of adornment, both of the body and of my external environments. 

The Sorting Process 

Each year, I have to set new sorting parameters! I will never let go of my Black Barbie dolls, the art dolls created by artists Francine Haskins and Imani Whiters, nor a doll I made in a workshop led by artist Sherri Roberts-Lumpkin. However, the remaining dolls were recategorized as potential materials for future artwork.

This year, I chose to deconstruct four dolls. As I undressed these dolls of their cultural clothing and regalia, I found that many had more than 25 push pins throughout their frames. In fact, while the dolls were unique and represented their creators' ethno-cultural environments, the pins used to "hold them together" were pretty uniform, practical, and likely rust-resistant. Known as "straight pins," they are generally nickel-plated steel pins that vary in length and thickness according to their use. Used globally, they are indispensable in the sewing process of pattern making, cutting, draping, sewing, and finishing. 

These pins were everywhere. They fastened the dolls' clothes and adornments to their bodies. They suggested "fake earlobes," which were used as earrings, on their heads as headdresses, at the pelvis as skirts, and so on. 

However, working with just the doll's clothes and accessories doesn't tell the whole story. As I progressed, I realized the parallels between these dolls and the lives of the women who constructed them, played with them or bought them for their own little girls. Additionally, I questioned how do these pins potentially mirrored my life and other women.  I don't contend that either the dolls themselves or their creators need healing, through my artwork, I assert that dolls continue to be a symbol of the feminine aspect and its interaction within a globally dominant patriarchal system. Further, I propose that dolls provide an intimate avenue to the culture of womanhood, including how we are perceived and valued within their homes, culture, and globally. They, like all art forms, are also a power-filled projection of their creators and can often consequently symbolize the harmful impact—bigotry, sexism, devaluation, and censorship— of women's lives within patriarchal systems. Therefore, I choose to use my art to heal each doll—a symbol of the global-woman—as I have healed myself in the artworks featured in my series "Remnants: A Visual Journey of Memory and Renewal." Thereby subverting the undertones of patriarchy, I decided to recontextualize the dolls within a new environment by applying the aesthetic language of embroidery hoops. 

Handkerchiefs & Embroidery Hoops

I began working with embroidery hoops around 2011. Similar to my other aesthetic languages—my work with fabric and chicken wire—these hoops have become an element of my cycle of creation. They have resurfaced and claimed time and presence in my life and current artwork. And yes, I consider this part of my practice a gift and a privilege.

For centuries, handkerchiefs and embroidery hoops have been created and used globally as individual objects. Both men and women initially used handkerchiefs as a hygiene tool for clearing perspiration or noses, covering a sneeze, or as symbols of love/affection or status symbols and fashion statements. Women in India used embroidery hoops in the 17th century, and later – they appeared in England and throughout Europe in the 18th century. Both are also featured in folk or religious dances or celebrations. Today, handkerchiefs and embroidery hoops are associated with women's things and often reference specific historical periods—the /or matters referencing certain periods and accepted behaviors for women.

Artwork 

1. From St. Croix to A. Robles-Gordon's Studio, made from the clothing of my doll from St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, handkerchiefs, my clothing, and lace hand sewn on a embroidery hoop, 18 x 18 in., 2025, $2,900 

2. Of the water, the land and future galaxies, mixed media on wood, 17 x 29 in., 2025. $4,500

3. From Pakistan to A. Robles-Gordon's Studio, made from the clothing of my doll from Pakistan, handkerchiefs, my clothing, and lace hand sewn on a embroidery hoop, 18 x 27 in., 2025, $2,600

4. Land of the pure and light, mixed media on wood, 17 x 29 in., 2025, $4,000   

5. From Afghanistan to A. Robles-Gordon's Studio, made from the clothing of my doll from Afghanistan, handkerchiefs, my clothing, and lace hand sewn on a embroidery hoop, 18 x 27 in., 2025, $3,000 

6. and she walks on fire, mixed media on wood, 17 x 29 in., 2025, $4,200

7. From Spain to A. Robles-Gordon's Studio, made from the clothing of my doll from Spain, handkerchiefs, my clothing, and lace hand sewn on a embroidery hoop, 18 x 18 in., 2025, $2,600

8. Spectrum, mixed media on wood, 17 x 29 in., 2025, $4,200