Project Title: EMoViTO—Enormous Mobile Vintage Trailer Observatory – Bee Hive
Recipient Organization: Nimbus Arts
Lead Artist: Rob Keller
Genre and Data Awarded: Visual Arts, June 2007
To Be Completed: Spring – Summer 2008, when the mobile Honeybee van travels to schools and cities in Napa County

Rob Keller is an artist, a communitarian, and an apiculturist (or beekeeper). He will draw on all of these talents in creating the Enormous Mobile Vintage Trailer Observatory (EMoViTO) – a mobile observation beehive that will teach about the plight of the honeybee population. Keller and his collaborators are retrofitting a classic 1955 aluminum travel trailer with interior Plexiglas hive bodies that will allow students to safely observe the workings of a live honeybee colony. They are also equipping it with multi-media educational equipment, including digital scanners that students can operate to select beautiful illustrations of honeybee ecology to take home.

Keller is collaborating with Nimbus Arts, a nonprofit in the Napa Valley that serves children and the community through its experiential, intensive, arts curriculum with an emphasis on science, nature, agriculture, and the environment. Nimbus will work with Keller to create classes around the beehive, develop hands-on activities, and ultimately help him bring the EMoViTO to students and the community. When not traveling to schools, museums, county fairs, parks, and other venues, the EMoViTO will be stationed in the Nimbus Arts’ demonstration orchard.

Together, Keller and Nimbus hope the EMoViTO can teach lessons about the importance of honeybees and highlight agricultural practices that can save honeybees. They will also provide opportunities for students to create art inspired by the experience, which will, in turn, become of part the traveling exhibit.

This blending of messages and mediums comes naturally for Keller. A veterinary technician by training, his prior works have included animals embalmed using ancient Egyptian techniques. The EMoViTO is ithe culmination of a series of smaller, unique, honeybee observation hives that Keller has created over the last six years and exhibited at Thomas Korzelious Gallery (New York) and Catherine Clark Gallery (San Francisco). Keller also cares for 25 colonies of honeybees in the Napa Valley and the Napa and Sonoma County Fairs have awarded his bees’ produce a Best of Show and seven Blue Ribbons.

For Keller, the links among these diverse pursuits are clear. He writes, “Beekeeping connects me to the subtle movements of our world as nothing else can and, like art, is process-driven towards transcendental ends. As a concerned father and artist, I believe we have no time to lose in boldly communicating the utmost urgency of addressing the threats to our allies the honeybee—these are threats to our own civilization.”

Nimbus Arts’ work reflects a similar sensibility about the relationship between art, community, and the environment. The organization was founded to support community artistic expression and to nurture the community’s artistic needs by providing programs specific to Napa Valley’s rich, cultural diversity and unique geographical and environmental qualities. Prior classes they have created have combined fine arts and science to explore topics like clouds and crystals.

Lead Artist Resume Highlights:

Selected Exhibitions:

• “The Question is Known: (W)here is Latin American/Latino Art?” Mission Cultural Center, San Francisco, California (2008)
• “BeeBonaBroom” Napa College Gallery, Napa, California (2008)
• “Bee*ing” Sonoma Valley Museum, Santa Rosa, California (2008)
• “3x3 Napa, Solano, Sonoma” di Rosa Preserve Napa, CA (2007)
• “Lost and Found,” Napa Valley Museum, Napa, California (2006)
• “Majestic Tapestries,” Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek, California (2006)
• “All in the Family,” di Rosa Preserve, Napa, California (2005)
• “Process Exposed,” O’Hanlon Center for the Arts, Mill Valley, California (2004)
• Curator, “Danger,” Signal 66, Washington, D.C. (2004)
• “Politics,” Diablo Valley College Art Gallery, Pleasant Hill, California (2004)
• Curator, “Danger,” di Rosa Preserve, Napa, California (2004)
• Curator, “Danger,” University Art Gallery, California State Uni. Chico, Chic, California (2004)
• “Terra Infirma,” Napa Valley Museum, Napa, California (2004)
• Curator, “Danger,” L.H. Horton Gallery, Stockton, California (2003)
• Solo Show, Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, California (2003)
• “Preservation of Species,” Thomas Korzelius Fine Art, New York City, New York (2001)
• “Preservation of Species,” Diannepruess Gallery, Los Angeles, California (2001)
• Group Show, Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, California (2001)

Selected Teaching Experience:

• Lecturer, Sculpture, Napa Valley College (2008)
• Lecturer, Photography, San Francisco State University (2005-2008)
• Lecturer, Photography, Diablo Valley College (2005-2008)
• Beekeeping Instructor, Napa Adult School (2005-2008)
• Egyptian Workshop for 6th Graders, Arts in Education Program, Napa Valley Arts Council (1999-2006)