Contributed by Sharon Butler / In an exhibition on view at the Housatonic Museum in Bridgeport, wildlife trafficking, environmental�conservation, sexuality, religion, gender, and the illusion of domestic bliss are among the issues�addressed through a diverse range of printmaking practices. UConn MFA�student Kelsey Miller (and one of the winners of the 2016 SPRING/BREAK�Quiz) sent me a note about the beautiful work she has created for the show.
“After a long afternoon of installation, the experience of seeing my work in the context of a gallery is quite humbling.” Miller told me. “From that first day in the UConn MFA Program,�when I walked into the huge studios at the�Visual Arts Resource Center, I never imagined that a year and a half later I would be drawing on walls and making�animations for�a show about printmaking.”
In her note, she�sums up the graduate school experience–students�end up in�places they�never expected to go. Miller�grew up�on�Antigua, surrounded by water, and worked for several years on a boat that sailed between the Caribbean, the United States, and Europe. The journal she kept during her seafaring days forms�the foundation of her art practice, which has transformed�from an�observational activity�into a more poetic�record of memory. “The real and the imagined are often indistinguishable from one another, and time is not represented chronologically,” she�writes.�”Through abstraction and fragmentation,�my own recollected imagery takes on a universal or archetypal quality that, I hope, transports viewers into their own mythic experience�dreamed, remembered or imagined.”
“Prints that work:�Roxanne Faber-Savage, Kelsey Miller, John O�Donnell and Neil Daigle-Orians,” curated by Leslie Giuliani. Housatonic Museum, Bridgeport, Connecticut.�Through March 25, 2017.�A panel discussion featuring the artists will take place on Thursday, March 23 at 6 pm.
Related posts:
Laurie Sloan: The truth is out there
Impressionable: Print exhibition @ Real Art Ways
IMAGES: John O�Donnell considers mimesis
