Rosemary Ann Robbins Dobbins (September 14, 1927 – October 24, 2006) was an American artist and photographer. She is most well known for her work as a technical illustrator and concept artist for NASA, where she created some of the most recognizable artist-rendered images of the American "Space Age". Beyond her NASA career, she was a multi-talented studio artist, photographer, and calligrapher.
Early life and education
Rosemary A. Robbins was born on September 14, 1927, in a small but comfortable house on Maple Street in Hornell, New York. Her parents, Marta and Albert W. Robbins, already had three boys when Rosemary arrived. They viewed her as a "gift". Hers was a loving family, but one that suffered a great deal of hardship. A child of the Great Depression, she certainly understood want. Her father would often take barter - a bushel of corn or a rasher of bacon for legal work; her mother regularly gave warm meals to strangers who would come to the back door. Her artistic talent manifested itself early, possibly inherited as her mother was also an accomplished amateur artist.
When she was eight Rosemary contracted polio, most likely from exposure to the rising waters of the great flood of 1935 during which she and her family spent days assisting others through their hardships. Rosemary was completely paralyzed but still able to breathe; she struggled for several years but was able to overcome it through the use of revolutionary new therapies developed by Elizabeth Kenny. While she regained the ability to walk, her left side remained weak for the rest of her life.
In her early teens her oldest brother and protector, Albert Jr., suffered a head injury from playing college football. This was during the leather helmet era. The trauma to his brain was so severe he had to be committed to a sanitarium where, after many years of care, he eventually died.
At the beginning of WWII, Rosemary's two remaining brothers, Fred and Gary, both volunteered for military service. While still in high school, Rosemary herself worked as a volunteer in the local hospital where her duties included caring for returning soldiers, as well as victims of the 1944 polio outbreak. She was able to put her own experience in recovery to good use encouraging and aiding others. After the war both brothers came home having been deeply affected by their experiences. According to Rosemary, their personalities had completely changed and this broke her heart.
In 1946 Robbins graduated from high school and completed secretarial school that same year. Immediately upon graduation, however, Rosemary was stricken with scarlet fever. She overcame this too, managing to recover just in time to start her first semester at art school. Many of these early traumas informed her life and her later work.
From 1947 to 1950 Robbins studied at the Albright School of Art, part of the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, the buildings of which today house the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. As a member of the artistic community in Buffalo, Dobbins had many connections to the art scene in New York City, where she traveled frequently and interacted with several well known artists of the period, many of whom would later collectively be known as the New York School. She was heavily influenced by both the Modernists and Abstract Impressionists of the era, yet also possessed a deep love for the painters of the Dutch Golden Age.
Career
Pre-NASA career
Robbins began her career while still in high school working as an artist for the Glidden Pottery in Alfred, New York. At her father's suggestion, she went to secretarial school even as she applied to art school. She was ultimately accepted into the Albright School of Art at the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy. To support herself she worked summers at the local Birds Eye Frozen Foods factory while living in a tent which she shared with two refugee students from the Netherlands. After completing her studies in 1950, Rosemary traveled to Holland by tramp steamer where she took up residence in Rotterdam with fellow artists she met through connections she had made in art school. She arrived just in time to take part in Rotterdam Ahoy! together with the local community of young artists. Based in Holland, she also traveled widely across post-war Europe. Her private archives contain many historically valuable sketchbooks from this period. In 1952 Robbins returned to the U.S. and moved to West Lafayette, Indiana where an uncle had given her a lead on a position as a fashion illustrator and window decorator for a local department store. Although she could have made more money with her secretarial skills, she refused to give up on a career in art and took the job.