Artist Statement

Robb Putnam shapes his work from blankets, clothing, thread, and other humble fibers—materials softened and fragmented by human touch over time. Throughout his work, these remnants become vessels for exploring the fragile terrain between exposure and shelter, tenderness and unease. His forms, whether figurative or abstract, seem to hover in the space between memory and invention, carrying the residue of touch and the suggestion of wounds that never fully close.

Putnam’s earlier animal-based sculptures are both lovable and unsettling—overgrown toys, stray creatures, or imaginary friends who feel caught between worlds. Their seams strain, their skins appear torn or hastily repaired, revealing interiors that seem too soft to withstand the external forces of lived experience. These beings invite us near even as they retreat, embodying the emotional contradictions of creatures who crave connection but bear the marks of the tearing and mending they have undergone. They are tender misfits, bearing the stories their bodies cannot help but tell.

In the recent Exiles series, these concerns shift into more abstract terrain. Rounded, orb-like forms swell outward or curve inward like breaths held or released. Their surfaces bloom with freckle-like spots, bristle with thorns, or gather into tangled webs of thread—gestures of defense, longing, and tentative reach. Drawing from the psychological notion of our inner “Exiles”, the works embody the parts of ourselves that hold old vulnerabilities, waiting beneath layers of protection. Their stitched membranes and fragile skins suggest a liminal space between forming or unforming, negotiating the delicate boundary between what remains hidden and what pushes toward light.

Putnam’s drawings drift in a related dream-state. Severed cartoon heads hover and collide as if wandering through a fractured memory. These orphaned fragments attempt to knit themselves into a whole yet never quite succeed—echoes of innocence glimpsed through a fevered lens. Like the sculptures, they occupy the threshold between play and disquiet, gesturing toward identities in flux.

In his sculptures and drawings, Putnam traces the murky places where empathy brushes against fear, and where the impulse to reach outward collides with the instinct to shield oneself. Through forms stitched from castoff materials and memories alike, Putnam reveals the fragile architecture of emotional life and the quiet, persistent hope that something whole might still emerge from what has been torn apart.

Robb Putnam is originally from Seattle, WA. He received his BFA from the Maryland Institute, College of Art in Baltimore, MD and an MFA from Mills College in Oakland, CA. He currently resides and maintains an art studio in Oakland, CA.