Roberta B. Marks

The first monograph on artist Roberta B. Marks explores her collages and constructions, which focus on the themes of memory, time, and transcendence through a feminist and Buddhist perspective.

Marks creates constructions that have an intimacy to them and at the same time contain entire worlds of feeling and memory. Each is a vignette--a narrative of a personal nature. She transforms a range of objects and materials, often of mundane and humble origin, into eloquent and highly personal forms of self-
expression. Marks's work speaks to the human impulse to collect, preserve, and immortalize.

Her pieces are intuitive and instinctual, exuding a sense of mystery. The viewer enters into an intensely private realm, yet the themes are universal--loss, longing, old age, death, repression, and liberation--thus evoking a feeling of familiarity. A practicing Buddhist, Marks achieves her clarity through daily meditation. She has written "when constructing a work, I pare it down to the essence--the minimal. Each chosen object represents years of seeing with acute awareness." Marks's writings accompany a selection of approximately 200 of her most evocative works.Roberta B. Marks, who has an MFA from the University of South Florida, is widely collected. Her works are featured in numerous museums and galleries throughout the country and Europe and she has taught widely, including regular classes at The Studios of Key West.