Barbara Milman

I was born in Brooklyn, New York. I have been a civil rights & public interest lawyer, and then a lawyer/artist. Now I am a full time print, book & mixed media artist.

I concentrate my art about a central theme, usually over a period of years. The themes change from as my interests change, but my approach is basically the same. I immerse myself in a subject area, reading and exploring a topic in depth. What results is not a literal depiction of what I have learned. Instead it records the process of my understanding and the development of my opinions.

Currently I am interested in climate change, and in particular about its effects on the ocean. My prints of the California Coast are a starting point for work about an area that is close to home. I have also been using these prints as the basis of artist books about specific issues of global warming.

Barbara Milman is a book artist, printmaker, and mixed media artist. She has had over 25 solo exhibitions, many in University and public venues, and has been included in hundreds of group shows throughout the United States.

Barbara Milmans handmade artist books can be found in the special collections of dozens of university libraries and museums, such as Stanford, Yale, the Getty Museum, the Chicago Art Institute, the Cleveland Art Institute, UCLA, UC Davis, the University of Southern California, the University of the Maryland Institute College of Art & Design, and the IUPU Herron School of Art. Her prints and other artwork are included in public collections, including the Zimmerli Museum at Rutgers University, the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, and the Art Museum at Yad Vashem, Israel.

Among the awards she has received are the National Association of Women Artists Medal of Honor & Elizabeth Morse Genius Award in 1994 and the Stelly Sterling Award for prints in 2004 and 1994. She was awarded a fellowship at the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley in 2000, and has been an artist-in-residence at the Skopelos Foundation for the Arts in Greece, at the Palenville Interarts Colony in New York, and the Red Cinder Creativity...