Wyoming Arts Council

Abbie Miller's "Zipped" opens May 25 at the NIC in Casper

Uncategorized | May 11, 2012

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Abbie Miller’s exhibit “Zipped” will be shown at the Nicolaysen Art Museum in Casper May 25-September 9. Abbie’s work was included in the Wyoming Arts Council fellowship biennial show held last year at the Center for the Arts in Jackson.

Abbie Miller’s artwork draws equally from the world of fashion and textile manipulation as it does from sculpture. She creates sculptural forms through man-made textiles and clothing and explores the dynamic intersection between form, texture, surface, sculpture and the human body.

Artist Statement

At the site of connection there is a stitch. Action and material, verb and noun, praxis and theory, the stitch is the DNA of my art.

Using clothing construction techniques, I design sculptures, garments and interactive objects that examine the relationship between structure, form and surface. By altering ubiquitous, mass-produced materials into unfamiliar sensuous objects, I invite viewers to question the nature of materiality.

My use of repetition, synthetic material and design relate visually and methodically to tactics of commercial display marketing. I’m interested in these tactics for the non-verbal, instinctual reactions they stimulate. In this way my work is reflexive of mass-produced consumer culture and novelty.

Conversely the physicality and labor present in my work asks the viewer to look longer and question the value of craft and labor in relationship to material and the body. My sculptures play on design strategies, but the construction techniques suggest a tacit bodily connection beyond the physical surface.

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