BURLINGAME, CA.- A broken family heirloom might seem like the end of a story. For artist Rob Strati, it was the beginning of one.

The first piece in Strati’s acclaimed Fragmented series began with something deeply ordinary: a piece of porcelain dinnerware that broke.

The plate belonged to Barbara, Rob’s wife’s late mother. One day, it was accidentally dropped and shattered. But Strati couldn't simply throw the fragment away. He kept it, and at some point afterward, he picked up a pen and began working with what was left.



That simple act became the foundation for Fragmented, an ongoing body of work in which Strati works with pieces of vintage porcelain, preserving their original decorative patterns while extending and transforming them through incredibly intricate ink drawings.



Ships, figures, animals, landscapes and surreal scenes emerge from the edges and patterns of the original plates, transforming fragments of something that was once broken into entirely new worlds.

But the story behind the work is ultimately less about porcelain than it is about what we choose to keep—and what happens when something we value is broken.



The porcelain already contains a story: its pattern, age, craftsmanship and associations with the people and moments surrounding it. Strati doesn't erase that history. He builds onto it, creating elaborate new worlds that exist alongside the original object.



There is also something universal in the story. Most of us have objects we can't bring ourselves to throw away—a grandmother's dishes, a childhood keepsake, a piece of furniture that has survived several generations. Their monetary value may be insignificant, but their emotional value can be enormous. When something like that breaks, we're suddenly forced to confront what exactly we were trying to preserve in the first place.



For Strati, that question became a new artistic language.

His upcoming exhibition, Fragmented Horizons, runs September 18–October 10 at Studio Shop in Burlingame, with an artist reception on September 25. He also has an exhibition opening with Miart Gallery in London in October, and is currently developing a book around the Fragmented series with an essay by Glenn Adamson. For those headed to Art Miami this year, you can catch his work with Fremin Gallery.

But at the heart of it all is still that first broken plate. Strati didn't try to put it back together. Instead, he found a way to let the pieces tell a new story.