Terratopias for a Fantastic Future: Michelle A. M. Miller
On view: October 29th- November 21st
On View: January 20 - February 23, 2019
IS Projects presents Michelle A.M. Miller’s solo exhibition of sculptural paintings and works on paper anchored by a large-scale drawing hung on the gallery wall. “Terratopias for a Fantastic Future” reimagines Florida’s wild and designed green spaces as fantastical, fluorescent topographies through color, material and process. Throughout her career, Kelcie McQuaid has used painting to process her own perspectives and experiences, but for Walking in Circles, she has chosen to use painting to ruminate on other stories of struggle, and how they intersect. McQuaid delivers stark, emotive figures on candy-colored grounds. The paintings are strategically palatable, charming viewers into approaching her work, and holding them with her direct and deliberate illustrations, in order to render her subjects relatable, relevant, and human.
For this exhibition, vibrant, wall-mounted sculptural paintings of evocative landscape scenes layered into shallow wood boxes hang alongside embellished collages of ambiguous places and plant forms. Oscillating between two- and three-dimensions, these works feature lavish quantities of acrylic paint and other traditional art materials alloyed with industrial by-products and recycled waste such as coal slag and shredded tire rubber. The artist’s techniques of abundance include painterly brushstrokes layered with dense material clots, inky bleeds and multi-hued paint extrusions piped from zip-loc bags.
Miller’s autobiographical practice investigates the landscape through experience and memory— one that considers future possibilities while acknowledging the unintended consequences of living in the Anthropocene. In these haptic landscapes, observation and invention intermingle with low-tech facture in seductive and ominous ways. The resulting tactile tableaux become opulent constructions that are both portals to other worlds and objects firmly rooted in space.
Michelle A. M. Miller is a multidisciplinary artist who reimagines the observed landscape into fantastical painted works, prints, collages, drawings and installation. She has participated in notable group exhibitions including "More Women Painting" at Design Sublime, Miami, "Nature Preserved" at the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County, Lake Worth, and ''The Triumph of Detritus'' at 1310 Gallery, Ft. Lauderdale. Miller’s work has been featured in Oxford American and On View magazines as well as on the cover of Coastlines magazine. Miller earned her BFA in painting from Florida Atlantic University and her BA in art history from Georgetown University. Miller lives and works in West Palm Beach, FL.