Bio:

Charlie Milgrim is a multimedia artist from New York City who moved to the Bay Area to attend the California College of the Arts and later received her MFA from the University of California, Berkeley. Since then, she has had solo shows in New York City at OK Harris Gallery, San Francisco at Haines Gallery and Gallery 16, the Richmond Art Center, and the Oakland Museum. Milgrim is active in the Bay Area arts community and exhibits her work at Mercury 20 Gallery in Oakland.

In depth interview with Kathleen King on my work: https://mercurytwenty.com/interview-with-mercury-twenty-artist-charlie-milgrim/

Statement:

My sculpture practice is restless by nature, evolving every few years and incorporating new materials and concepts. I utilize a diverse range of industrial, found, and disturbingly incongruous objects in my sculpture and installations. The objects I work with have always been my directors, compelling me to combine them with other random things, and most often include bowling balls. 

For years, I’ve been inspired to use bowling balls as a consistent thread throughout my work; as an active force that challenges gravity, and as a metaphor for many things relating to politics, the body, and our environment. I keep 600 of them in my studio, categorizing them by color.  My recent calling has been to build “nests”. As birds and wild animals struggle to find organic materials to construct their shelters among our built environments, I ironically suggest through this body of work that they can repurpose our abandoned items such as bicycle tires, steel casting molds, and rusted lawn edgers. 

Additionally, I experiment with photography. Prompted by my New York City roots, my work reflects a strong attraction to the abstract forms I find in the architecture of industrial environments, and street markings of random origin.

“Milgrim is one of those artists who lives in a kind of Platonic, parallel universe of pure ideas and immaculate, artistic execution. I don’t need to write about her work: the feelings, the implications, the messages, it is all there and it is great.”

- Obi Kaufmann, Art Writer