Roadside: Minnesota | Liz Miller

The works in this exhibition incorporate objects found along roadsides, pulled from ditches, and purchased at yard sales or thrift shops in Minnesota. All of the objects were acquired while driving or walking through various landscapes. The completed works aim to highlight these forgotten objects with fiber-based adornment. Together, the objects form an ongoing record of love, loss, abandonment and capitalism. They reflect individual and collective hopes, dreams, desires, and tragedies.

Artist Bio:
Liz Miller’s experimental wall-based fiber works and large-scale installation environments elevate aspects of human culture that are often neglected, overlooked, or discarded. Miller weaves colorful cord through these objects as an act of care and a way of assigning splendor, wonder, and purpose to items that have been rendered functionally obsolete.

Miller’s work has been included in exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad, including recent solo exhibitions at Kolman & Reeb Gallery (Minneapolis, MN), Oresman Gallery, Smith College (Northampton, MA), and Channel to Channel (Chattanooga, TN). Recent group exhibitions include venues such as Paul Robeson Galleries, Rutgers University (Newark, NJ) and Foreman Gallery, Hartwick College (Oneonta, NY). Miller’s awards include a Kolman & Reeb Project Space Grant, a McKnight Foundation Fellowship for Fiber Artists, a McKnight Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists, a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant, and numerous grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board. Miller has participated in artist residencies at Mass MoCA (North Adams, MA), Stove Works (Chattanooga, TN), the Joan Mitchell Center (New Orleans, LA), and the McColl Center for Art + Innovation (Charlotte, NC), among others. Miller is Professor of Installation Art and Drawing at Minnesota State University, Mankato. She lives and works in Good Thunder, MN.

Photo Credit: Liz Miller, Atlas Minnesota 03. Courtesy of the artist.