Of the Earth II

A Trick of Light or Distance,
Brandeis Kniznick Gallery, 2024


2023-24



Moon Dip
Geology Study I
Cyanotype, Lithograph, Pen, 12x12”

Storm
Collage with lithograph and monotype prints, 12x12”
Geology study II
Cyanotype, Lithograph, Pen, 12x12”
Crescent
Cyanotype, Lithograph, Pen, 9x12”
Moon Dip II
Collage with Cyanotype, Lithograph, Pen, 12x12”

Of the Earth, 2023

In these site specific wall drawings, the gaps in the image and the varied vantage points play with perception and depth—giving the sense of both looking at and through. The amalgamated imagery allows viewers to insert their own associations with landscape into the image. Having it exist as a piece with a finite lifespan that has now been wiped clean from the wall addresses the nature of landscape itself—in constant flux.

Arctic Sun, 2022

Cyanotypes, graphite rubbings and drawings from the Arctic Circle Residency, dimensions variable ( 4x6” - 9x12”)

Double Support, 2021

While walking, only one foot at a time loses contact with the ground. Double support is the moment between steps, when both feet are on the ground. This mural stems from a series of works based on the idea of empathy, the experience of standing in someone else’s shoes, gaining a different perspective, and offering support. Inspired by carbon paper and blueprints, these marks act as both a record and a pathway to compassion. Individual steps overlap and accumulate, creating a murkiness in the distinctions of each print. Collectively, these steps record where we have been, and ask us where we are headed. 

We Need Less Than We Think 

For the series “We Need Less Than We think,” the artist is making fifty prints about earth to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. While visiting a beach near her home, she collected trash that was discarded there. Using the beach debris as stencils and reliefs, Miller makes monoprints in her home studio. She also fashions the rubber soles of her shoes into relief blocks and uses plastic letter forms in her monotypes, all of which are printed on old lithographs by the artist that she has cut down to 9 x 12 inches. The end result is meditative abstract prints compromised of evocative forms in a subdued, elegiac palette. 

-Francine Weiss, curator, Newport Art Museum


Reverberation

Newport Art Museum, 2020

“For this exhibition, artists were invited to plumb the Museum’s collection for creative inspiration with the goal of creating  an original work of art in response to a museum object.” 

–Francine Weiss, Curator, Newport Art Museum

I approached Call and Response thinking of it as a conversation between present and past, and it was important to me to have that conversation be with an underrepresented voice from the Museum’s collection. The title of Claudia Widdiss’s Sculpture, Hearing Impaired, caught my attention immediately.

Widdiss’ sculpture is of two nude female figures, one crouched and one standing, with their hands covering their ears. I began my response to Hearing Impaired by making graphite rubbings of its surface. This inherently haptic process signifies a specific time—I am here—that galvanizes presence in our surroundings and a moment of reflection on the past. I used those preliminary rubbings—overlapping, flipping and arranging the imagery physically in my studio and digitally on my computer to plan a composition. I found that by mirroring and overlapping the crouched figure just slightly, the hands that had once been covering her ears looked like they were reaching out to embrace the now-mirrored figure before her, and built my composition around the embracing women. 

In the midst of all this, I had the opportunity to speak with Widdiss by phone, and hear the story behind Hearing Impaired directly. The resulting installation is a visual reverberation of our conversation. For her, Hearing Impaired was in response to being a black woman living through lies of constantly being told what wasn’t possible, what she couldn’t achieve. I wanted to elevate, support and amplify the power and possibility of her women, and arrived at these four ceiling-to-floor columns as a symbol of strength and stability.