The Resilience of Hope

The state of the world today feels overwhelming and discouraging for many, and looking around, it is easy to feel stuck in despair. Yet there is something that pushes against this: hope. Stephanie Lewis Robertson's The Resilience of Hope is grounded in her belief that hope is always present. As she puts it, "spring always comes after winter, babies are born, daffodils will bloom."

But even optimists like Robertson acknowledge that "this past year has been hard to live in." While hope always exists, it often requires intention to feel it. For this exhibition, she chose to create images and ideas from what gives her hope—leaves on the ground, a stony Wisconsin beach, colors, and the emotions stirred up by music and conversations. "These are things that help me remember to keep being hopeful," she explains.

Robertson's watercolor studies and large, silk-painted, quilted panels have processes with tiny moments of instant gratification, like seeing the colors move, blend, and react to each other as she dyes and watercolors. But it becomes a time of meditation and prayer as she moves on to stitching. As she sews the fabric, she thinks of people and their challenges and opportunities, along with the world we live in, her former students, colleagues, family, and friends. She uses this time to send out hope and love to the universe for those people and situations.

The Resilience of Hope did not come without Robertson's own personal challenges. In early November, her husband, with whom she shares caregiving responsibilities for her 93-year-old mother, fractured his pelvis during a snowstorm. With him unable to be home, she became the primary caregiver and was prevented from working on her show for nearly a month.

When she could return to her show, she created a monochromatic piece about his injury. In an unintentional symbolic mirroring of their past month, she decided to use the back of the piece as the front, abandoning her plan and moving forward with another path. Because of and despite this hardship, she discovered “there is beauty in the landscape that appeared."

Through The Resilience of Hope, Robertson wishes to remind viewers how hope endures. Even amid the chaos, uncertainty, and fragility of everyday life, hope is here, offering room for growth and renewal.