Description
Tree Steam is an original 22 X 15 inch image on 30 x 22 a limestone block, chemically treating it, inking it, & laying paper on the wet limestone, & pulling the whole assemblage through a lithographic press. It represents a plywood mill off of Highway 299 in Humboldt County, California. Robert (Bob) Filbey (1946 - ) grew up in Pomona California, won 2nd place for his clay model of the One Eyed One Horned Flying Purple People Eater contest from a LA radio station at the age of 12, losing to a commercial artist. He illustrated his grammar school & Junior High School newspaper mastheads, & designed his high school mascot while writing & illustrating a book detailing the origin of the moon from the Pacific Ocean. He attended Pomona College, practiced painting & sculpture under Salvatore Grippi & John Mason with fellow classmates Chris Burden, Michael Brewster, James Turrell, Robin Rector Krupp, Charles Plotkin, Mary Bennett, & Mark Wilson. He undertook more painting studies at UCSB graduate school while illustrating college text books there & at NYU graduate school before moving off the grid to a remote forest in Northern California (near Old Harris). He produced an X-rated comic book, & when a friend colored their copy, he got the idea for a coloring contest using his Summer Solstice invitations which has been going on for 52 years. He also did a series of greeting cards, continued illustrating college textbooks, mostly medical, & took on commercial illustration work of logos, T-shirts, ads, political cartoons, & magazine articles written for the Whole Earth Catalogue & other art periodicals along with occasional fine art. When Apple Corp offered grants for artists, he wrote & received a reply from Neil Aspinall just as Apple suspended the grants. He also dabbled in animation, doing some ads for Estes Rockets & Concept Films & his own experimental animated films. He practiced life drawing & painting with Peter Holbrook, Frank Cieciorka, Karen Horn, Jim McVicker, & George Van Hook during the early 1980's. He produced & illustrated the BIGFOOT Country Touring Map of Northern California before moving to Blue Lake, CA. There he did more logos, posters, political cartoons, T-shirts, murals, & commercial illustration for magazine & newspaper ads, Sun Frost, Tomas Jewelry, & record & CD covers while doing fine art on the side. He attended HSU graduate art school & learned photography from Ellen Land-Weber & printmaking under Bill Anderson & Michael Bravo. He has worked in various media (pencil & conte crayon, ink, oil, acrylic, gouche, & watercolor painting, lithography, serigraphy, etching, monoprinting, collage, assemblages, & sculpture) & still produces an occasional piece today. He has only had 3 shows during his career, the first in Eureka with champagne sold out in the 1980's, the next in Arcata in the 1990's was well attended but only sold 2 works. Sadly, most of his work from the 1990's, as well as some of his earlier work was destroyed when his
