I have been making art from reclaimed materials for 25 years, www.joanrobey.com. Selected specifically for surface and form, the elements are combined to become metaphors for psychological situations. As such, the transformational use of discarded materials suggests that transcendence, regeneration, and rebirth are indeed possible. More than narrative, my interest is in dialog. Instead of making statements, I seek to ask questions. I demonstrate my discomfort with the discord in the world with work that expresses balance and motion.
I have had a studio in Inglewood, CA for 15 years. While primarily a self-taught artist, I have taken classes at both Otis College of Art and UCLA. I have had one-person exhibitions of my work at galleries in Santa Monica, San Francisco, Denver, Reno, New York City, Albany and throughout the Los Angeles area. In 2012 I was commissioned to create a 17′ high outdoor sculpture piece, entitled “WasteHouse”–a sculptural representation of household trash–for the Science World Museum in Vancouver, Canada.
In 2016 after struggling for many years to come to terms with my mother’s Alzheimer’s disease, I began creating this series, AWOL, in an attempt to sort through my feelings about what was happening to her. In early 2018, at the age of 102, my mother passed away peacefully.