Spring 2022: Robotics Art Residency: Sam Hensley, GRASP at PERCH and Weitzman School of Design, “Creature Hour: A Comic Reading and Animatronic Artist Talk”

Sam Hensley is an animatronic sculptor and storyteller from Kentucky. Using reclaimed fabrics and electronics, she builds empathetic creatures from what some regard as trash. Each has a little world to its own, and a whole personality like any person. Their strange movements grant them an uncanny life. Their traits are at once familiar and strange, not quite matching to any single human or animal. Hensley first began producing animated sculptures while getting her BFA at the University of Kentucky. The creatures have since joined her for an apprenticeship at Bread and Puppet theater, residencies at the Worm Farm Institute and Farwell House, as well as several galleries throughout the United States. The creatures have a small but robust online following through Patreon and social media as well, where the audience finds their lovable otherness comforting.

Robotics Art Residency Program

The GRASP Lab at The School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Weitzman School of Design collaborates on the Robotics Art Residency program that brings together faculty and students to explore the use of robotic technologies in addressing contemporary social, cultural, and environmental challenges. Three artists, designers, engineers or creatives from any discipline will spend four weeks at the GRASP Lab at PERCH, during which each will develop a creative project with resources offered by PERCH and the Department of Fine Arts and Design.

The Robotics Art Residency was awarded a 2020 Collaborative Provosts Interdisciplinary Grant from the Sachs Program for Arts Innovation and is sponsored by the GRASP Lab, Kod*lab and The Weitzman School of Design