Photo Credit: Shannon Kelli Pictures
Artist Statement
My work is centered on exploring the connections I see and feel between myself and our environment. It is an intrinsic element of my practice to walk and observe. Over the last several years, as I have labored to process personal and communal experiences of loss, grief and sorrow, I have continued my practice of looking to the land and other beings for guidance and inspiration. I look up and down, out and in. I bring what transpires to the refuge of my studio and first through drawing and then collage commemorate the revelations of my encounters, orchestrating compositions that convey the beauty and complexity of humanity, our wild counterparts and the world we share. I recreate interactions both real and imagined to illustrate my own experiences of connection as well as my musings of how we might continue to evolve to more overtly display characteristics, abilities and behaviors of the beings that surround us.
My work is a culmination of years of pursuing drawing as a way to understand, connect and process intimate life experiences and represent and explore relationships. When I was in graduate school, I began drawing on the walls and floor as a way to imbed imagery in the structures of the space. In my recent work I am using drawing and collage on panels and the surrounding surfaces to extend the imagery beyond the substrate and into the space. Collage is the ideation process that allows me to play with characters, content and composition both on the surface of the artwork and out into and around the space or place where they are situated. In this way the imagery continues to grow and inhabit the space reaching along the surfaces of both wall and floor and often towards other works to create conversations between them, to infer a relationship between them and illuminate their connections.
Artist Biography
Photo Credit: Shannon Kelli Pictures
Sheila Metcalf Tobin is an artist who has spent her life in search of connection. As an only child she spent a lot of time exploring alone outside. At a very young age, she stood in her great grandmother’s garden watching a Monarch butterfly gracefully flutter among the Phlox and Lantana flowers. The moment was filled with wonder and yearning, imbued with an awareness of feeling related to, in kinship with this creature so utterly different from herself. It was a knowing, she was discouraged to trust but this moment has remained a formative experience that she draws upon heavily to navigate her life and work.
Sheila holds a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago but long before her formal education began she fell in love with the practice of drawing. The focus and attention required in observation based drawing cultivates connection between the drawer and the subject and opens the possibility of knowing akin to tenderly holding and touching, fostering both love and empathy. All of Sheila’s work begins with drawing as a process to explore and capture an encounter like the one in her great grandmother's garden. Her drawings expand into compositions on paper, wood panels and onto and around the architectural spaces it inhabits with the use of a variety of media, collage and decal installations that attempt to convey a deep love of the world and the beautiful complexity of the kinship we share with our wild counterparts.
Sheila’s artwork has been exhibited nationally, internationally and locally in the Greater San Francisco Bay Area at many venues including the DeYoung Museum, Bedford Gallery, the Whitney Modern and it has been included in magazines and exhibition catalogs. She is also very honored to have her work included in many private collections from the San Francisco Bay Area of California to Brooklyn NYC. Her studio practice is sustained by teaching others to draw and explore their unique creativity, as a full time community college drawing instructor at Merritt College in Oakland, California. She lives in Berkeley, California with her family including her husband of 22 years, two beloved sons, a large and adored pit bull, two cats and four backyard chickens.
Teaching & Exhibition Resume
Education
1995 The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, Master of Fine Arts
1991 The Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland, Bachelor of Fine Arts
Professional Experience (selected)
2014~present
Department Chair, Merritt College Arts Department, Merritt College, Oakland California
2013~present
Full Time Art Instructor Merritt College, Oakland California
Selected Exhibitions
2025
Handle with Care: A Fragile World a Bioneers Conference Exhibition, Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley California
The 6000 Circle Project: Honoring the Feminine, The Center for the Arts, Grass Valley California
Birds, Birds and More Birds, Museum of Northern California, Chico, California
2024
Joy, Arc Gallery & Studios, San Francisco, California
Cut Paste Create: The Art of Collage, The Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek, California
The 6000 Circle Project: Honoring the Feminine, Arc Gallery & Studios, San Francisco, California
Lost Wild, Curator Marie Cameron, The Whitney Modern, Los Gatos, California
ArtsThrive 2024, Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque, New Mexico
2023
The Space Between, Curator by Karen Gutfreund, ARC Gallery, San Francisco, California
Devasting Loves & Transcendent Hatreds, Abrams Claghorn Gallery, Albany, California
Kinship with Birds in Flight or Plight, WEAD Online Exhibition
The DeYoung Open 2023, DeYoung Museum, San Francisco California
Bright Side, Jen Tough Gallery, Santa Fe New Mexico
Solo Exhibition, diPietro Todd Salon, San Fransisco California
2023 Spring Collective Exhibition, Jen Tough Gallery, Santa Fe New Mexico
What Are We Grateful For, Sweetie’s Art Bar, San Francisco California
2022
Connections, Old People’s Bizarre, Berkeley California
In My Backyard, Gearbox Gallery, Oakland California
The Feminine Journey, Beseder Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic
Red, O’Hanlon Center for the Arts, Mill Valley, California
Water is Life, San Francisco Women Artists Gallery, San Francisco, California
Land, Sea, Sky, Artist Alliance Online Exhibition, Curator: Emily Wilker
Artist’s Vision 2022, Marin Society of Artists, Online Exhibition
2021
Prayer for the Western Monarch, Cedar Street Gallery, Berkeley, California
2020
The Ground Upon Which We Stand, Abrams Claghorn Gallery, Albany, California
2019
Evolutions and Reconfigurations, The Lightroom, Berkeley, California
Wander, Connect, Reflect, Studios Eleven, Oakland, California
2018
Berkeley Civic Arts Commission Grant Project, Residing Here: Public Portrait Project
National Night Out, Solano Stroll and Berkeley Farmers Market, Berkeley California
All the Art We Make, Merritt College Gallery, Oakland, California
2017
She Spoke, Ex Post, Prague, Czech Republic
Nasty Women Oakland, Omi Gallery, Oakland, California
Almost Family, Fiction Science Gallery, San Francisco, California
2016
Peralta Figurative Arts Faculty Exhibition, June Steingart Gallery, Oakland, California
Women’s HerStory Exhibition, June Steingart Gallery, Oakland, California
2015
17th Annual Show of Merritt, Merritt College Gallery, Oakland, California
Summer Show 2015, Mothership Hackermoms, Oakland, California
Summer of Love, PVCC Gallery, Charlottesville, Virginia
Awards and Honors
2025 Faculty Sabbatical Award
2022-Present The Calling 22 Collaboration with Chantelle Goldthwaite and Yasmin Lambie-Simpson
2022 Second Prize, Artists Vision 2022, Juror Jen Tough
2019 Top 5 List, SF Open Studios Exhibition, Juror Patience Yi
2018 Panel Member, Women’s History Month, Laney College, Oakland California
2017 Berkeley Civic Arts Program Grant Recipient
Selected Publications
2024 Autre, Nurturing Nature in Lost Wild: Art on the Edge of the Anthropocene by Chimera Mohammadi
2023 Women United Art Magazine, Issue V, Autumn 2023
2022 Contemporary Artist, Issue I, Autumn 2022
2018 Residing Here: Public Portrait Project, Featured in the Community Section of Berkeleyside