In 2001, Robin Hill moved from New York City to California and began teaching in the art department at the University of California, Davis. Her multidisciplinary works combine sculpture, photography, and drawing and often defy traditional categories.

Hill’s 2010 exhibition Case Discussions featured a body of work exploring organization, classification, perception, and color using outmoded laboratory equipment, such as this chemical transport cabinet. Here, she reflects on the metaphysical transition to the afterlife by filling the cabinet shelves with laboratory glassware, replicated in wax. The illusion of depth is created through the mirrored reflections of bottles and shelves. The piece commemorates Hill’s friend, the late painter Mary Hambleton (1952–2009), who often employed dots and stripes in her own artwork.