Let me tell you why I'm not an axe murderer.

 I have traveled to every corner of this dark earth and it really is a terrible place:  death, disease, irritable bowel syndrome.

 Then there's the rent, the bills, the unhappy spirits floating everywhere around us.
  I chose to just run away from my problems and paint naked ladies all day. 

My art isn't about trying to heal the violence in my soul, instead it's about the cultivation and nourishment of it--because that is how I genuinely feel, or maybe this is how the universe genuinely feels, through me.  

 Either way, I am putting all of that violence out for your viewing pleasure:
 destruction and chaos, colors and shapes, form and imagination.

Plus philosophy, science, mysticism, our ordinary experience of daily life.

 It's all on the table, and because I have no allegiances to any of those things, I can fuck around all I want.

 Healing is for hippies.  Self-cultivation is for deluded artists.  
 Stop by my studio and share in my delusions.

 Namaste,

 Locust
 SF 2013

SMAart Gallery & Studio was founded in September 2012 and opened its doors at 1045 Sutter Street in San Francisco.

SMAart offers gallery exhibits, studio rentals and ceramic classes.  While the center primarily caters to ceramic artists, artists of every media are welcome.  Founder Steven M Allen opened SMAart to fulfill a longtime dream of having a gallery, a place to teach art to the community, and a place to create art in a creative open environment surrounded by other inspiring artists.  

Conveniently located in the Lower Nob Hill neighborhood with access to several major bus lines.  SMAart is also positioned in the heart of the Lower Polk Art Walk offering participating artists access to a burgeoning art scene.

People often ask me if I like to do puzzles, or tell me I’d make a great dentist (based on the intricate poking, prodding, scraping and filling that I do in my work).  I used to feel that working on mosaics was a way to bring order to chaos, by rearranging a multitude of tiny pieces together to form cohesion.  Realistically, for me, it’s none of these things.  Rather, it’s the possibilities that can come from a variety of pieces and materials.  It both astonishes and entices my mind.  Something about discovering an unknown combination or design that doesn’t exist in the world, is intoxicating.  This is how I feel when I am creating mosaic art.

Mosaics are not a fluid art form; they don’t blend into one another like oil paints, or mold into figures with soft lines that gently curve.  They are rigid and abrupt and can be unforgiving.  However, it’s the adventure to create these illusions, with proper coaxing of the medium, which I find intriguing.  I work with ceramics, glass & stone, like a linguist when they are interpreting.  I feel like I’m giving a voice to materials in a new and expressive way so people can visually understand what the gathering of pieces have to say.

I am native of the Bay Area and have lived a bountiful and colorful life. I became a dedicated artist while raising my family in Santa Cruz during the 1960’s. I painted prolifically in acrylics until later developing what became my signature medium of watercolor.  I draw inspiration from my various extended stays in Paris. The French features in my work highlight the fabrics of Provence, my vintage collection of kitchenware, and regular visits to our abundant, local farmer’s markets.   Fruits, flowers and vegetables all serve as my muse and I delight in creating their still life arrangements.  My detailed vision also translates to and from my lush patio garden where I maintain an “atelier” working studio in the Hayes Valley neighborhood of San Francisco.

Whereas I am always engaged with more complex bodies of work that often take months, if not years, to come to formal fruition, these pictures, these squares, they are always constant, and they are right here and right now.

The origin of this group of pictures can be traced back a number of years ago to an image I made of myself in my underwear with a large coffee filter on my head, holes cut out for eyes. This image was the start of many playful performative portrait sessions for me. Over time, what was once a practice of using exclusively my image in these pictures has now expanded in scope to include various friends and people I meet in the course of my journeys.

This work has become a collaborative practice of “making” pictures with others, versus the less collaborative “taking” pictures of others. I think of the pictures as part of a collection that I can always add pieces to, and get excited in the moment when I’m working on a completely different and unrelated project and I realize I’ve made one of these squares, something to add to the constantly evolving collection of performative portraits.

The portraits themselves happen quickly, and are often unrehearsed, a result of inviting friends over for breakfast or dinner, or from meeting someone who seems to be equally interested in my beard as they are my unusual camera and photographic techniques. An explanation of my practice usually includes me asking, “Will you make a picture with me?” Most people usually agree.

Although possibly lacking a period at the end of the sentence they create, these images should be viewed as no less intentional than anything else I create. They are quite possibly more intentional and hold more promise because they don’t have a permanent home in a more formal body of work. They are nomadic and wandering, but always contain the same motivations and goals. 

I was inspired to photograph Crustaceans after finding containers of crabs, shells and bugs in my parents garage where they had been hidden and placed in jars for the last 53 years. I photographed the Crustaceans and made beautiful prints but I needed to take things a step further. Working with my hands has always been a love of mine - particularly working with beautiful woods, since I was sixteen years old and I apprenticed a master cabinetmaker. Recently, I've combined this love of creating beautiful objects with my career as a professional commercial photographer, in creating Photographic Cubes. Each cube is hand made and these measure 2ft x 2ft and house four archival photographic prints covering four of the six surfaces of each cube. The two remainder side show the ornate wood of the cube. Hence, the cubes can be viewed from any angle with varying effect. The cubes are self contained units and can be displayed in any number of ways including stacking them upon one another. They can be made in any size and configuration. I wanted the cubes to become their own entities and combining the sculptural with the photographic without taking away from the photography but adding to it and making it something new and alive.

I am an artist, a traveler, a writer and a teacher.

I engage in the process of visually exploring and describing my experiences as a woman living in an urban culture in the 21st century.  I am a mother and grandmother and all of my experience instructs my practice.

The human figure and nature are central to my work.   I question what is familiar and find nuances buried in the layers of the everyday.

Text is an important component, and most every piece has a story or text beneath and through the work.  Building layers, sometimes placing familiar imagery in context of a new environment, the voice of my work is evident in the line and space that becomes a new language within the work.

Painting, drawing and taking photographs is a form of discovery for me.  

Bio

Robbin Milne is a California painter and studio artist.

She is associated ArtsBenicia, Oakland ProArts, San Francisco and Berkeley communities.

She has exhibited her work in the Bay Area 
during the past 15 years in solo as well as 
group shows such as the Oakland ProArts 
Annual Open Studios, Arts Benicia Auction, 
Arts Benicia Open Studios.

Robbin has also been seen in other venues 
including the Benicia Library Art Gallery, 
Orinda Art Gallery, Bedford Art Gallery, 
Sebastopol Arts Center and other venues in 
the area.  

Her work is in Bay Area private collections:  In 
Napa and the South Bay areas, including 
Filoso/Obrien of Oakland and the Heydlers of 
Danville, now in Germany.  Collectors abroad 
include Canada, France and Italy and Turkey.  

Ms. Milne received the Ralph DuCasse Award 
for Academic Excellence in Studio Arts, and 
completed her BA in Studio Art at Mills College,
Oakland California.

She was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana in 
1957.

She continues to offer art instruction and 
appreciation, and has worked in the National 
Institute of Arts and Disabilities with adults.

The son of a seamstress and mechanic, my art-making process continues a family history of labor through the meticulous hand-made acrylic paintings on wooden panel and ink drawings. As a first-generation middle-class American growing up in the 80's & 90's under the influence of MTV, Nickelodeon, plastic toys, candy and bold fashion – my work construct and unravel my landscape, architecture and interior spaces with flat color, line and intricate patterns.

Pushing the cannon of Chicano art beyond graffiti or large-scale murals, these works also investigate identity through the lens of such a richly traditional infrastructure. My work, create a new kind of iconography, symbolically operating on the micro level of the personal, able to be inserted into a larger historical and cultural dialogue.

Like clocking in and out of my very own studio sweatshop, my process extends from super-controlled acrylic painting into laborious experimental ink drawings on paper, continuing an abstract investigation into line, color and pattern- an homage to my mother and reminiscent of a childhood play area in her sewing room piled with fabric swatches. The vulnerable process of creating “swatch-drawings” celebrate accidental moments and mishap when man imitates machine; one of life's lessons which forces us to make lemonade out of lemons. Through both painting and drawing my cultural and personal history is explored, questioned and celebrated.

**Fyi, Please call Rocky at (240) 257-6259 upon arrival, so that I can let you into the Warrington Building.