Sculpture In addition to locating Hill's work "at the crossroads of the mundane and the mystical, where he physical object pulls us into invisible realms," Raphael Rubinstein has remarked upon the "sense of epic labor" accompanying many of her sculptures, as well as how "hers is a hybrid art in its seamless joining of the found and the handmade." Denise Carvalho describes Hill as "attached to the potentiality of materials; whether they are found, purchased, or inherited." In the 1980s, art writers discussed Robin Hill's sculptures in the context sculptors such as Tom Butter,
Saint Clair Cemin,
John Duff, Fortuyn O'Brien,
Robert Gober, Steve Keister,
Mel Kendrick, and
Joel Otterson. This generation of sculptors were known for conveying content from "gentle craft substances: fiberglass, beeswax, veneered wood, string, paper, pigment and fabric." That era's critics recognized Hill's life-size, weighty, abstract sculptures for signaling a revived interest in body art, as well as the figure, which remains the hallmark of 90s sculpture. In Michael Brenson's 1986
New York Times art review, he describes her work ''At Arm's Length'' as suggesting "hills, bones, and cliffs, but it can also bring to mind the characteristic body shift of Greek and Renaissance standing figures." In the 1990s, Hill started exhibiting sculptures made from series of identical objects. Kristin Koster remarks, "Today,
amid a vast cadre off artists who reuse; recycle; or re-purpose the cast away materials that populate their environments; Hill stands apart as a disinterested collector; and as a kind of aristocratic flaneur of the everyday....She never makes
use,
cycles, or
purpose: instead she makes visible, resurrects, and liberates."
Drawing In 1995, Hill exhibited
Blue Lines, five monumental drawings, "each one nine-feet tall, made on four-part panels of specially-waxed paper. All are done only in blue on white; recalling
Delft tiles; and all consist of four-part units generated from the same curved line; repeated and overlaid on itself in various ways." Lacking a beginning or end, Hill considers her oil-stick drawings roadmaps, capable of leading viewers on a visual journey. Accompanying these drawings were three massive mandala-like forms, which she formed by lining up 4000 identical plaster cones that were cast using
Dixie paper cups, then dipped in ballpoint-blue paint, and sprawled on the floor in patterns recalling cloverleaf interchanges. Hill's drawings are featured in
Lines of Vision: Drawings by Contemporary Women. After a 2013 summer residency at the Sanskritti Foundation in New Delhi, Hill made 300 rubbings of the same 1960s Eastman Kodak slide carousel, which she mounted on the walls, partly overlapping one another. Recalling her decision to do so, Hill adds, "My idea of drawing is that I could cultivate that sense of being really engaged and not worrying about the future, or what the work means in terms of the overarching ideas, and just be deeply involved in my work."
Cyanotypes Hill's 1995 exhibition featured a
cyanotype, evoking an X-ray of the "axial skeleton of some organism, or the molecular structure of a particular substance." In 1997, she exhibited a "16' x 13' cyanotype drawing made of hundreds of six-inch 'photographs' of ephemeral matter (strands of scotch tape). This 'curtain' serve[d] as a type of atmospheric stage for the two works on the floor of the main gallery." In 2001, she exhibited
Sweet Everyday, a 100-foot long cyanotype enwrapping Lennon, Weinberg, Inc.'s Soho gallery in a
David Reed-like wavy brushstroke, created by placing ordinary shopping bags on photo-sensitive paper exposed to light. Several white plastic bags hovered in the gallery, echoed by the banner's billowing shapes. Hill elaborates, "The immediacy of this process serves as a counterpoint to the more deliberate and labor-intensive tasks of building sculptural forms, whose invisible dimensions are revealed in the after images of their companion cyanotypes."
Sound Art In 2006, Hill collaborated with fellow UC-Davis faculty member Sam Nichols on
Kardex, an interactive sound work featuring a steel cabinet, whose 29 drawers each frame one of Hill's photographs of a friends' ears. Opening up the drawers "triggered Nichols's MIDI-to-Mac hookup mechanism." Each drawer played a recorded everyday sound, such as footsteps, running water, numbers being dialed, sanding, etc. ==Public collections==