Robin Perlah
Chair of the Creative Studio; Program Director for Graphic Design & Interaction Design
Biography
Robin Perlah currently serves as Chair of the Creative Studio (home to Champlain’s creative art and design majors), Program Director for the graphic design (BFA) and interaction design (BS) majors, and is an Associate Professor in the Division of Communications and Creative Media at Champlain College.
In her time at Champlain, Perlah also served as the Academic Director for the Emergent Media Center, where she helped shape the creative vision for the campus-based interactive media studio. Additionally, Robin served as Assistant Dean for the CCM division, interim Program Director for creative media (BFA), and Program Director for the master’s programs in emergent media (MS and MFA). She has taught a wide range of courses in the areas of interaction design, photography, graphic design, and media theory, serving both undergraduate and graduate students. Currently, Robin teaches undergraduate courses in design history as well as photography, image-making, and visual design.
Perlah’s current art practice is based on a persistent interest in the photographic image, both still and moving, as it is transformed by digitality. Her work deals with the ambiguity of memory, the intersection between image capture (both analog and digital) and the methods of processing and presenting images, and how generative art and data mutations can reveal layers of complexity.
Before working at Champlain College, Robin was the co-chair of the Design & Creative Media program at the Center for Technology, Essex, and ran several community art programs to support young people through art-mentoring relationships and other activities. Prior to that, she had a long career as an art teacher and, professional photographer and photo editor, specializing in commercial, portrait, and event photography as well as fine-art printing.
Robin is a site evaluator for the National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD), is part of the volunteer board for PechaKucha Night (PKN) Burlington, and recently rejoined the board of trustees for the Vermont Arts Council as board secretary after finishing her last term as Vice-Chair in 2019. Additionally, she serves as the co-director for the Technology & Design Institute at Governor’s Institutes of Vermont. Robin earned a master of fine arts in emergent media from Champlain College, a bachelor of science in art education from the University of Vermont, and studied commercial and fine art photography at the New England School of Photography.
