Robert B. Calkins

Robert B. Calkins is a retired aerospace research and development systems engineer. His forty year career in aerospace was spent working for the U.S. Air Force, McDonnell Douglas and the Boeing Company. His education included a B.S. degree in Aerospace Engineering, a B.A. in Applied Mathematics, a M.S. in Computer Science and M.A. in the arts. During his carrier, he published a number of technical papers, reports, journal articles and authored a national technical standard. He was also active in several technical societies and holds a couple of patents. He is a recognized expert in ejection seats and parachute recovery systems.

Robert lives with his wife in the woods in the Pacific North West. He has been doing research for several years on the systems approach to understanding our world, society and current conditions, leading to his book “It Was Up To Date When I Wrote It’. His hobbies are hiking, photography and art. Past hobbies included skydiving and general aviation.

My award winning art begins with sun light, the source of energy that powers all life on earth. It represents the vitality and exuberance of life itself. My work/play attempts to capture that exuberance and its variety. My palette is an array of glass prisms which creates the rich colors of the rainbow. Adjusting the individual prisms makes additional color combinations beyond the normal rainbow of a single prism. Using lens, filters, reflections, foam board, glue, paint, overhead transparencies and other objects I create various light affects and take digital photographs of the results. The final process involves using computer graphics to manipulate the images (such as crop, cut, paste, etc.). I classify my art as mostly non-representational abstract mixed media. My process and tools were developed over a number of years of experimentation. One irony of my art is it starts with sun light and I not only live in the Pacific Northwest, but in heavily forested five-acres. The only time of the year I get the sun I need in my studio is on sunny mornings between 9 am and 11 am May through August. My response to this obstacle has been to make my studio mobile. When the sun is shining but not in my studio, I take my show on the road to find a sunny spot to set up the portable studio. My favorite spot is the top floor of park-and-ride garages). In addition to my art, I am interested in integral spirituality, mysticism and have written a book.