ROBERT MILNES
www.robertmilnes.com
Taupe Gallery proudly presents the work of Robert Milnes. He resides in Asheville, NC where he re-established the Arbitrary Forms Studio after retiring as Dean of the College of Visual Arts and Design at the University of North Texas on August 31, 2014.
His artworks have been included in over 175 exhibitions nationally including 28 one/two person shows and are represented in the collections of the Renwick Gallery (Smithsonian Institute), the Arizona State University Ceramics Resource Center, San Jose and Erie Museums of Art, the Seattle Arts Commission, and private collections throughout the U.S.A.
He served as professor of ceramics and director of the art and design programs at San Jose State University, Louisiana State University, chair of the art department at Edinboro University and has taught ceramics as well at the Cornish School of Art in Seattle and the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina. Milnes currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Center for Craft Creativity and Design and the Steering Committee for the Blue Ridge Public Radio Community Forum. He is a member of the Southern Highland Craft Guild.
He creates unique functional objects and sculptures that explore shapes he has made and the ideas that formed them over the past 40 years. At this point, his practice focuses on vessels that are based on combinations of positive and negative, volumetric shapes with surfaces that include binary symbols based on Morse code and other systems of representation. The morse code pieces are now most frequently palindromes that read the same forward and backward. Dot dash dot, or dash dot dash, etc.
He likes to question symmetry, order, and meaning. Brain wave patterns are also used as a formally derived calligraphic or abstract expressionist brush mark.
