PROLIFERATIVE CALAMITY

 

Miller is best known for her intricate installations made of fabric, rope, paint and mixed media elements. Dichotomies are played out in abstract fictions that incorporate fragments of reality. Ornate silhouettes of firearms, killer bees, and deadly plant species are spliced with invented forms, and layered hybrid patterns are a blend of contradictions: organic and synthetic shapes commingle, beautiful forms reference violence, and benign shapes spread to become malignant. Miller utilizes the entirety of Hawthorn to create a new a site-specific work. At times resembling a non-objective landscape, the installation builds upon itself, and viewers must navigate the work’s various facets, becoming actors in what Miller describes as, “a beautiful impossibility.”

 

The artifice of Miller’s sculptural environments reminds us that the illusion is fleeting. She writes: “The sculptural aspects of the work, created through simple manipulation of mundane materials, play with the precariousness of our perceptions and the fallibility of infrastructure. While at the outset the works seem elaborate, closer inspection reveals the precarious nature of their construction and the mundane materiality that comprises the elaborate façade.”

 

New works on paper are exhibited alongside the installation.

 

Liz Miller received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA from the University of Minnesota. Miller’s installations and works on paper have been featured in solo and group exhibitions regionally, nationally and internationally. Miller’s awards include a 2013 McKnight Professional Development Grant from Forecast Public Art; a 2011-12 McKnight Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists; a 2011 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant; a 2007-08 MCAD/Jerome Foundation Fellowship; and Artist Initiative Grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board in 2007, 2009, 2012, 2014, and 2016. Miller lives and works in Good Thunder, MN. She is Professor of Installation and Drawing at Minnesota State University- Mankato.