Minnesotan To Meet: Foster Art Company's Susan Robinson

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Walking through the small Minneapolis art gallery with Foster Art Company founder Susan Robinson, you would never know the art is crafted by such young minds.

"This is one of our bestsellers. This is 'Stuffie's Party,' by a 3-year-old girl. Her mother said she calls her stuffed animals 'stuffies.' To me it's a beautiful abstract painting," Susan Robinson said.

The art is simplistic, colorful, captivating, the innocence of the brush strokes, designed by children for the most part age 3- to 14-years-old, almost washed away by their beauty.

Since her daughter was in grade school, Robinson always found herself drawn to the creativity students showed in art class.

"That's the beauty of the children's art: whatever they're feeling they let it out," Robinson said.

Her dreams of putting these paintings into focus ran wild in her head years ago, but motherhood took priority.
After losing not one, but two husbands to cancer, her sole focus became raising her daughter.

"I actually started working on it and started buying equipment to frame the art, and then her father (my husband) was diagnosed with leukemia," Robinson said.

Once she sent her daughter off to college, in 2012 Robinson moved back to Minnesota and decided her art project couldn't wait any longer.

"When I first started the company I thought I could just call a school; but it doesn't work that way," Robinson said.

Since then she now leads regular workshops and has over 150 prints available for purchase. Robinson said a portion of the art sales is then donated to foster care organizations.

"I think it's one thing in their life these days that doesn't have a measure to it. The sky can be green," Robinson said, discussing some of the pieces in the gallery.

Each student names their piece, and then Robinson scans the art and then returns it to the creator.

"They're not trying to make a piece of art. They're just having fun with paint and what I see is art," Robinson said.

Just like the artists she calls upon, the sky is the limit for Robinson and the business she's fostering.

All of the art is printed locally and is currently on display in the Brunsfield Apartment Building in the North Loop, and has been in the building for a year.

Her next workshop is "Watercolor 101: Workshop for a Cause." That will be at 9:30 a.m. on
Saturday, Aug. 20 at the Calhoun Beach Athletic Club. It's open to children ages 5 through 12. The cost is $10 for one child or $15 for two.