Charlie Milgrim sees a world in flux, a world of perpetual change and transition, a constant building-up and a tearing down. In her upcoming show, Accretion / Erosion, Milgrim focuses her lens on these accretive and subtractive processes in our world that mimic the way of nature and finds strange beauty hidden in plain sight.
In one photographic work the painter’s stainless steel sink, after daily clean ups, leaves behind colorful residue that builds up, layer after layer, forming surreal imagery. Other photographs explore the reverse: a tearing down process where surfaces get beaten down and scarred by weather and foot traffic.
Charlie Milgrim is a multimedia artist from New York City who moved to the Bay Area in her 20’s to attend California College of the Arts, and later received from MFA from U.C. Berkeley. She has since participated in the Bay Area arts community through exhibition and curation and has been a member of the Mercury 20 Gallery for the past 9 years. Milgrim’s work examines the ties and lies between history, science, and culture, whether considering environmental degradation, cultural detritus, or the relationship between money and militarism. She works with a wide range of materials, from photography to tar paper made three dimensional, to precariously arranged found objects.