questions / answers, July 2020

Posted on July 9, 2020September 7, 2020 Posted in artist statementsTagged Amy Bornman, art practice, art-making, arts workers for Black lives, book, books, Caitlin Metz, Carol Lee Flinders, communion, community, creativity, drawing, embodiment, friends, garden, generative, learning to see, morning pages, museum workers, painting, paying attention, presence, process, reading, readmorewomen, rejecting white supremacy, sketchbook, sketchbook practice, Spirit, trust the process, urban garden, Veronica Aranda, writingLeave a comment

Last week, I answered these questions for an instagram feature curated by artist and teacher Veronica Aranda.

links: 1 // 2 // 3

What is your artistic practice?

I am a visual artist who makes paintings and drawings, and enjoys playing around in other mediums when given the opportunity. I have been keeping journals and sketchbooks since I was a child, and consider daily writing or sketching to be a crucial part of my practice. My work uses observation of patterns as a framework for considering attention, embodiment, and communion.

What is art for you?

Art is learning to see more clearly, and responding in a generative way. I think about “learning to see” in the senses of honing my skills of observation, growing in the ability to remain connected to the present moment, and of paying attention to reality in the world and in myself, even (particularly!) when it’s difficult. For me, this is a spiritual practice.

What/Who/Where inspires or motivates you for your artistic practice?

This week, I’ve found inspiration in: cherry tomatoes ripening in our container garden, the book “Enduring Lives: Portraits of Women and Faith in Action” by Carol Lee Flinders, colleagues across the museum field who continue to call leaders to account for institutional racism and unfair labor practices, writings on pregnancy by Amy Bornman and Caitlin Metz, and conversations with a dear friend about the false divide between art and craft.

Fine Lines

Posted on April 25, 2016June 11, 2019 Posted in artist statements, exhibitionsTagged art, art practice, BFA thesis semester, books, collaboration, college, drawing, friends, grace, gray, Indianapolis, learning, learning to see, line, line drawing, painting, paying attention, practice, presence, process, sketchbook, sketchbook practice, text drawing, thesisLeave a comment

This spring, I worked with Etta and Aaron (both seniors in the printmaking department) to create our joint thesis show, entitled Fine Lines. Completing a painting thesis at Herron includes several elements: an exhibition, oral review, and paper; the pieces displayed at Fine Lines represent several years of (conceptual and visual) idea development. Creating this show helped bring together components of my art practice which I’d previously seen as separate and difficult to reconcile. It provided space to consider the works in relationship to each other, the typically unseen elements of my art-making process, and real people who interacted with them. In the end, this portion of the thesis work was simply an extension of the rest of my years of Herron – art as process, as teacher, as connector.

The photos / statements below recap the visual part of my thesis work as seen at our show, which took place on April 15, 2016 at The Oilwick.

Show Statement: Marietta Miller, Aaron Green and Lynnette Sauer’s thesis exhibition is a celebration of line in drawing, printmaking, and painting. The work is thematically varied but unified by their love of mark making. Fine Lines references the idiom “There is a fine line between x and y.” It is in the fragile in-between, the gray areas, that Marietta, Aaron, and Lynnette find inspiration for their work.

Continue reading “Fine Lines” →