Bio

 Robert Michael Jones makes sculpture, video, and drawings centered around our relationship with technology. He focuses through an evolutionary lens at the disconnect between the factory made, designed, and increasingly virtual modern environment with that of our tribal past. He interacts with the history of tools directly by working with high industrial processes like stamping, die casting, machining, and computer-controlled robotics as well as fundamental processes like hand formed clay, stone or wood carving. Each process provides Robert a different proximity to material, a different aesthetic result, and acts as a signifier of the social history of work. The work questions our current technological environment by looking at the past as well as possible futures. While there is variety in Robert’s projects, they all in some way address a fractured human identity that exists in a middle space between animal and machine.

Robert was born and raised in the rural town of Salisbury VT. He studied art at the University of New Hampshire where he graduated with his BFA in 2009. From there he moved to San Diego where he operated a studio and exhibited regionally for six years. During that time, he completed a public commission In Washington DC, taught local high school students how to apply practical building skills to reshape a community, and helped curate and hang exhibitions at the non-profit Space 4 Art. He began graduate school at the University of Buffalo in 2017 and in 2021 graduated from Eastern Michigan University with his MFA.