It's taken Robyn Smith a lifetime to realise who she is. Now that her talents for craft are opening up new possibilities, can she finally make something of herself? Graham Young reports.

The pink hair is unmissable – quite shocking, in fact, for being on the head of someone who has spent most of her 48 years hiding from the person she might yet become.

For glass artist Robyn Smith, her locks are now a statement of intent.

And a reminder of where she ended up during a Prozac-fuelled ‘total psychotic breakdown’.

Hidden beneath the pink hair, there are places inside her head she doesn’t want to revisit. But she hopes that by not forgetting them, they will drive her on in the future.

“My illness has given me a broader view of the world,” says Robyn.

“And the journey that I’ve been on has made me the artist that I am. It was terrifying, and I don’t understand it.

“But, like quantum physics, I am sure it will one day be explained.”

Today, if her part in a Moor Street railway station exhibition called Making Moves is anything to go by, Robyn has finally reached life’s departure lounge.

Called To Leave is to Enter, her pair of open, heavyweight mirror gates is a huge, stunning work of art.

“They can be interpreted in different ways,” says Robyn.

“They could be gates to heaven, Narnia or the pearly gates.

“But, because they are open, they remind me of ‘asylum’. They are so big, it cost £350 to get them moved here. And that was with a lot of help.”

The gates were cut by a water jet at Swansea Metropolitan University.

“They have a large industrial machine and were willing to take the chance to make them,” says Robyn.

“Most of the industrial processors did not believe it would work and refused to take it on.

“Although it took a few months in its final stages, it did actually take six years for the process, planning and designs to be completed.

“Glass is 98 per cent thinking and preparation and two per cent making.”

So why choose to work with something so difficult?

“I use glass as an expression or self portrait,” says Robyn, whose first floor Brierley Hill flat is packed with materials and odds and ends “that might come in handy” one day.

“When I was ill I felt totally exposed, as if everyone could see deep inside me and knew everything I was thinking and feeling.

“I felt like a completely shattered person that no longer knew who she was, what she liked or what she wanted to be.

“I saw myself as frozen out in the cold with nothing but piercing shards and bleeding hands to reconstruct my life, my personality and my mental health.

“Now, though, I enjoy glass for its paradoxes.

“It is extremely strong yet people think it is fragile.”

It’s taken a lot of soul-searching, travelling and pain for Robyn’s life to reach this point in her life.

Her father died when she was 15 and at 21 she split from her first serious boyfriend.

Father Gerald Smith had been a pupil at Moseley Art School in Birmingham and her uncle, Tony Smith, became a painter in Tenbury Wells, Worcestershire.

Working for four years as a set dresser on Les Miserables left her surrounded by big personalities and with “no time to grieve”.

“I was a creative dresser in a way, but I didn’t know how to leave it to move on. I didn’t feel skilled,” she explains.

Robyn went travelling and spent four years in New York and Australia. Running out of visa time, she returned to England. Finding how much home life had changed on top of having failed to find herself, she became depressed.

“I had a life on the other side of the world and didn’t want to come back,” she explains. “Everything I left behind went ‘boom’.”

Taking Prozac under a GP’s instruction, though, was a terrible mistake.

“I think that’s what kicked in my psychosis and led me to having a total psychotic breakdown.

“For three-and-a-half years in the early 90s, I just had to shut the door.

“Once I took medication, I was a zombie. I had to make a list to get through day to day, to buy food, to eat food. To have a coffee. To go for a walk.

“I still take buckets of medication every day to cope with it.”

Robyn spent a year living at Park Attwood centre in Bewdley, then she became an outpatient under the specialised Blackthorn Trust in Kent.

Having the old Oakwood Hospital asylum next door was a grim reminder of what might happen next.

“You become frightened of leaving something behind, but it’s where you are going that is even more frightening. That’s what the gates are about.”

Robyn was once accepted to study at Dublin School of Art and Design but although funding problems meant she could not afford to attend, it began a 12-year journey through glass.

Even after becoming a mature student on a degree course in Art & Design – Glass at the University of Wolverhampton, it seemed as if things might conspire against her.

“Mysteriously, my desk at university caught fire and all of my work for a module was destroyed,” says Robyn. “I never had it explained to me what happened and I lost all that work. Six years of notes is not a way to end a degree, but I still got a 2:1. Taking part in Making Moves was like starting afresh.

Does she dare to think where she might be in five years’ time? A successful, lauded artist, perhaps?

“I do wish for that,” she admits.

A case containing an acrylic version of Robyn’s gates is on display on the concourse of Moor Street station as part of Making Moves.

Their design led to an Arts Council grant to make the glass version.

Now that artistic fulfilment is finally coming her way, how does she feel within herself?

“I can stay up all night, get up late and feel like I’m living in the dark,” she says.

“When I get up I’ll be very tired. I take ‘happy pills’, despite those original ones sending me bonkers.”

* Making Moves will move from Moor Street Station today to the Centre for the Aston Family, 359-361 Witton Road, Birmingham, from January 7-31.

They will then go to the School of Jewellery, 82-86 Vittoria St from February 4-26 before touring other non-gallery venues in regions partnered in the project with Craftspace and Staffordshire Council.

Details: www.makingmoves.org or www.makingmoves.posterous.com

Craftspace is based at 208 Custard Factory, Gibb Street, Birmingham B9 4AA. Tel 0121 608 6668. Website: www.craftspace.co.uk