About

Sonja Ljubinkovic

Working as Moon and Rust

I have been making things in the Bay Area for over twenty years, most of it out of a small studio in the Mission and a good deal of it out of what other people threw away. Paintings with moons in them, glass mosaic, reliquaries built from antler and driftwood, cut steel, burned wood, and every so often something enormous and lit up in the desert.

I paint at night and set mosaic by day. The paintings are poured, dripped, and scraped back; the assemblage starts with objects that already have a life in them. Every bone, antler and skull is found, naturally shed, or salvaged — nothing is hunted for art and nothing comes from a protected species. Glass, steel, driftwood and hardware are reclaimed wherever I can manage it.

A good part of my week is spent teaching: workshops from the studio, facilitated sessions with senior groups in care communities and day centres, and private moon painting nights at wine bars and party tables from San Francisco to wine country. The kit packs into the car; I work the whole Bay.

The studio goes by Moon and Rust, after the two things I keep coming back to: the light I paint at night, and what the weather does to steel if you let it.

If you want to know more about a particular piece before it comes home with you, email me and ask. Exhibition history and press list on request.

Materials, provenance and the practical side of buying are all in the practical bits.