The New York City-based gallery dieFirma is pleased to announce “In this house I call home”, a unique, socially-distanced exhibition of works by artist Bill Miller to take place in a private waterfront setting on Shelter Island.
Originally slated for this spring, this is the first exhibition of a series of more than 30 new collages created Miller over the last year, says gallery founder Andrea Stern. The exhibition includes some of his most ambitious, large-scale works to date.
dieFirma is issuing free, timed tickets at two-hour intervals for the exhibition, which takes place Wednesday, August 19 to Sunday, August 23 in a large private yard at 1 Charlie’s Lane.
Only seven people will be permitted at once — all must wear masks and practice social distancing. Options are 10 AM or 12, 2, 4 or 6 PM. Reserve your tickets at eventbrite.com. Miller will be on hand to give tours of his work or answer questions.
Working with linoleum
“Miller cuts and arranges vintage linoleum to explore the work of memory and how representation conditions our personal and collective consciousnesses,” the gallery says in a news release describing the event.
“Using images taken from his own life, pop culture, and art—such as van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles— Miller transmutes found linoleum, which bears the scuffs and scrapes of its use, into a witness and teller of history.”
“Both an authentic artifact and artificial material, linoleum was often manufactured to create illusions of more valuable surfaces,” dieFirma says. “Miller doesn’t modify the surface of this now out-of-fashion material, instead choosing to transform its plainness into complex pictorial arrangements, while letting its own material legacy speak.”
“Whether recognizable from Grandma’s kitchen, a childhood school room, or the corner drug store, in Miller’s hand linoleum evokes commonplace memories, as well as broader narratives of industrialization, deindustrialization, violence, and loss that have shaped much of American culture and Miller’s own life as a working-class artist,” dieFirma says. “The collages of In this house I call home have an abiding curiosity about the past, and a conviction that its traces can be imbued with new life.”
Learn more about the process by watching this video that dieFirma has posted on Vimeo:
About Linoleum: Bill Miller from dieFirma NYC on Vimeo.
About Bill Miller
Bill Miller was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1962. He studied at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, during which time he became a founding member of the Industrial Arts Co-op.
After earning his degree, he moved to Denver, Colorado where he studied at Denver University and Colorado State University, concentrating on painting and printmaking. In 1988 Miller moved to New York City, where he worked at The Village Voice and exhibited his work in a series of exhibits in Chelsea.
In 2000, he relocated to Washington, D.C., to focus full time on his art. Miller’s work has been widely exhibited, with solo shows in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Seattle, New Orleans, and other cities across the United States.
His collages have also been shown in group exhibitions in Barcelona and London. In 2007, he had a retrospective at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and Media. Miller currently resides in Pittsburgh.
To learn more about Bill Miller, watch this video posted by dieFirma on Vimeo:
Meet Bill Miller from dieFirma NYC on Vimeo.
