Sophie Mill's private Art Collection and Tiny Museum Exhibition is an attempt to convey something of the power, beauty, and variety of the Oceania art and culture. It is expressionistic and shows creative genius from the smallest and most isolated people.

The process of translating an idea and opening your doors as a museum can be challenging and foreboding. Sophie Mill gained insight into the process from Arthur Beau Palmer AD Fineart (QCA) who consulted and recommended the steps and frameworks to ensure the Oceanic artefacts are certified and approved.

Art is difficult to define. This is particularly true for the society in which we live and it is even more difficult to define the character and function of the art of another people, a society whose thoughts and ideas we know so little about as in the case of the Asmat people of New Guinea and the Sepik River Region where many of the artefacts were created.

By the mid-1800s, state-funded institutions such as the Louvre, the British Museum and Madrid's Prado had begun to acquire private collections, many of which had been inherited by family members who lacked either the finances or the enthusiasm to maintain them. Yet despite large museums' financial advantage, small, esoteric museums have held on tenaciously. Europe is still full of them, and they induce a devotion that their grander counterparts often do not.

Many of these small collections are still housed in their owners' original homes and reflect their personalities. A number of them boast collections that would have pride of place in larger museums, but the domestic settings allow a sense of intimacy hard to find in vast galleries.

Sophie Mill's studio and garden offer an intimacy that is often rare to locate yet it can be found in Newcastle, just a bloke away from the precinct, walking distance from the shoreline and beaches.

Sophie Mill has always had a passion to include the next generation in the engagement of painting and creative ideas. Engagement in cultural paths is also a fascinating adventure that gives meaning to everyone's lives past present and emerging.

The creative process is mostly about retaining information and turning it into something new. It is about being sensitive to problems and detecting something that is lacking. Expanding into Artefacts and Open Gardens is a broad part of the Artistic process that requires divergent thinking and Sophie wanted to be more innovative with her ideas as well as offer expansive creative ideas for the students who attend the Sophie Mill School of Art.

In the spirit of reconciliation, the Sophie Mill School of Art acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea, and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.

FOR GARDEN EVENTS PLEASE CONTACT SOPHIE

Sophie Mill Open Garden, Studio, and Tiny Museum

Certified and Advised by

Arthur Beau Palmer

Appointed as an Expert Examiner under the Protection of Moveable Cultural Act 1986

Cultural Property Ministry for the Arts

Federal Department of Communications and the Arts

Part 1. Objects of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage.

Part 5. Objects of Fine or Decorative Art.

President Emeritus Royal Queensland Art Society (Hon)2004 - 2006

Lord Mayor's Arts and Cultural Advisory Committee (Hon)

Past President BBC Old Collegians Assoc(Hon)

Uni of QLD Animal Experimentation Ethics Committee (Hon)

Anthropology Museum University of Queensland Field Collector 1975-77

Queensland Museum - Ass to Curator Anthropology and Archaeology - Field Collector Cape York 1976-77

Re-photograph MacGregor Collection (PNG) 8,000 specimens Head of Land Claims NLC N.T. (1977-82)

Director North Australian Canine Aboriginal Health Programme (DAA 1984-90)

Commissioner for Oaths (N.T. 1977-99)

Senior Consultant/Chief Pilot. Year of the Outback 2002 Pty Ltd

ARU/QRU Rugby Level II Coach

ID 573202ARTHUR BEAU PALMER

AD Fine Art (QLD) MRQA

ETHNOGRAPHIC CONSULTANT

A.B.N. 78 088 240 576