APiF: Please introduce yourself.
Erin Robinson: Erin… or sometimes just E.
APiF: What is your professional background?
Erin: I’ve been a childrenswear fashion designer for many,many…did I say many??? Many years :-). I’ve designed for large companies such as Gap, Osh Kosh, Children’s Place and Sears. I started off designing womenswear first then segued into costume design/styling for TV and movies and then found myself wrapped up into the children’s design world.
APiF: What is a Brooklyndolly?
Erin: Well, my Grandmother used to call me Erin Doll when I was a little girl and it sorta stuck when I had to choose my email name years ago. I had been living in Brooklyn for such a long time and have been inspired by all of the shades and diversity of beauty I was surrounded – thus Brooklyndolly was eventually born.
APiF: What inspires you?
Erin: Travel is a huge inspiration. To step out of your comfort zone and sit with myself in a foreign place tremendously opens up my mind. I’m very observant of my surroundings. Mostly simple things like how the clouds, trees and grass, bags are blowing in the wind, bee’s on flowers… I can really take in the simplistic nature. I’m obsessed with tree bark texture. I found myself collecting piles of the shed and making things from it. I just recently acquired a hornets nest and I’m blown away by the craftsmanship and engineering of it. It is so incredibly beautiful. I’ve been looking at the scalloped texture on it and in my mind I already can see it in a painting.
Architecture, interiors, photography can also move me. I am extremely visual and my mind is nonstop with creative activity. I also get inspired by other creative minds. I love when we collect and start rambling off visions and ideas and are able to nurture one another to making them manifest.
APiF: What do you want to express with your art?
Erin: It depends. It’s just mostly getting things out of my head into reality the best way possible. Many stories of my spiritual beliefs are incorporated in most of my drawings. The Lotus, Red Bracelets, Dimes, The Sun…are represented and have profound meanings to me. Mostly related to rebirth and re-invention…the ability to rise.
And if I’m able to inspire and have someone relate – even if it’s their own interpretation of what’s going on – just make them feel, then I’m good, I’ve done my lil creative job. There is a quote by the late comedian Richard Pryor that I love that says: “Art is the ability to tell the truth about ones self.”
APiF: Please complete this sentence: Customers who purchase a dolly image should feel…
Erin: … like they took a piece of my giving heart home with them.
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