Art reveals that the known is not what it seems to be. Behind the facade of the known is a universe of startling possibilities, beyond measure or definition. Art returns the known to the unknowable. It reminds us that we and everything we have or know are only byproducts of a far grander infinite unknown. Art reminds us to be humble, to be amazed, to remember that there is always more happening than we think.
The artist’s job is to create or point to the possibility of revelation by exposing the unknown in the known.
Art is a priceless gift and an enduring legacy. The amount – high or low - an artist is paid, the honors received or not, are incidental.
Originally, I painted on rectangles. It struck me that rectangles were unnatural objects, created to standardize, homogonize and ultimately, control nature. I began shaping my paintings, which necessitated working on paper or wood. That led to sculpure. The sculpture, it turned out, required color. So, instead of shaping paintings, I found myself painting sculpture.
Home Depot sold pre-cut wooden circles. They reminded me of Italian tondos I had seen and I tried my hand at those.
Most recently, I have come full-circle and have begun to paint on rectangles again.
Exhibitions & Galleries
02/2007
San Diego Unitarian Church Gallery/2 person show, San Diego, CA
2005
Paulina Miller Studio Gallery. Art Detour Group Exhibit, Phoenix, AZ
2000
Imagine Art. Solo exhibit. Sedona, AZ
1999
Paulina Miller Studio Gallery. Two-person show. Phoenix, AZ
1999
Nat’l Conference on Peacemaking & Conflict Resolution Art Exhibit. Phoenix Civic Center. Curator: April Richey
1999-2002
Arizona Biennial ’99. Tucson Museum of Art. Juror: Louis Grachos, Director of SITE Santa Fe. (Touring show sponsored by the AZ Commission on the Arts)
1999-2002
Rings of Time: Wooden Visions of the Millennium. W. Valley Art Museum. Juried show. Sun City, AZ. (Touring show sponsored by the AZ Commission on the Arts)
1997
Gang Gallery. Group exhibit. NYC, NY 1997 Gang Gallery. Solo exhibit. NYC, NY
1997
Planet Earth Gallery. Two-person show. Phoenix, AZ
1996
GASP Gallery. Two-person show. Juried selection. Tucson, AZ
German Expressionists: Kathe Kollwitz, Max Beckman, Otto Dix
Lucien Freud
Gustav Klimt
SPECIAL THANKS
Sarkis Sarkisian, Artist, Art Instructor & Former Director of the Art School of the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts, which later evolved into the Center for Creative Studies.
ARTIST'S BIO: SELF-PORTRAIT IN MYTH
(Dedicated to -- the memory of -- Janus Miller M.Ed.)
An angel fell, perhaps Lucifer, the fire carrier. Or maybe Icarus, who brushed the sun.
A dog barked and whirling in mid-air, splashed a window into diamonds, then disappeared.
The Poet keened. The Artist wept. Another child crept from dust to paradox. The doors of mystery spread uncompromising arms. The envelope sealed itself.
There is no hunger like birth and all the relatives came to the feast. The table buckled beneath the silver and the salads. While memory limped off in search of empty plates long since locked away, the honored guests helped themselves to fruit and cake, eating with their fingers.
Innocence was still born, that is, born anyway, despite the immolation of the hallowed hosts in swamps so deep with sorrow that only bootless hunger had walked away alive. Hunger had married a mirror. Innocence, a confluence of famine and privation, grew thin and polished, like army boots, whose black skins, baptized by sputum, bleed reflected light.
Shattered by visions it could not reflect upon in safety, the mirror leapt from the roof. Twice, the story goes. But Humpty-dumpty, who brooks no competition, insisted that the mirror reassemble itself. This it did, though scars accuse it still. Hunger is a super glue.
Thus Innocence grew up an orphan, though its parents had only almost died. Wandering from book to book, Innocence banished the reality of paradox for the clarity of make-believe. Belittled and belabored, benighted and bedeviled, our Orphan - blind with visions - somnambulated through the house of flames to the cottages of the misbegotten, on the urban edge of the city of contempt.
As flames leapt from that city and the palisades were drawn tight, the misbegotten befriended our Orphan. Black skins and black souls, all have light in common. There is no safety in numbness.
Light and hunger. Hunger and light. The dance of the Orphan on the shifting soils of a mobius world brought it to the land of crosses and , eventually, the land of kraut. Hungry, starving, famished beyond speech, the Wanderer fed on the sanguine fruit of a maculate face. Screaming like a cannibal harvesting itself, it plunged relentless knives deep into the moist meat of inherited flesh for the pleasure of expiation.
How the light burned this razor shriven roast. Maddened by light, hungry, hungry, the Wanderer fled to mirrors for forgiveness, which mirrors cannot give but only share.
High upon a precipice, where lepers go to cast dice with Neptune, our whittled Wanderer sought the succor of a smarmy salesman. Pierced and helpless with secondhand tears, the Wanderer discovered the Holy Grail, the chalice chased with gold and stars, bright as a mirror, clear as light: the song that seekers sing while smiling at sobriety.
The quest. The quest. Between light and hunger, hunger and light. Through doors too narrow for monsters and gates too great for the weak, dealing death to miasma myths in the labyrinthine courts of misanthropism and fear -- hunger’s ancient hold.
Full of incantations, quivering with song, the Magician hung himself to dry beneath a gibbous moon.
