Art Lies, Volume 37, Winter 2002-2003 Page: 80
92 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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GALVESTON I HOUSTON
Melissa Miller: Recent Work
The Galveston Arts Center and Moody Gallery
Reviewed by Albert Jesus ChavarriaMelissa Miller's work is about a world analogous
to but different from our own. It is a strange
amorphous land populated by animals. Alone, or
in clusters, these creatures operate on a symbolic
level, above representation.There are no shadows
in Miller's world, no foundation in reality. The
muted colors and simplistic backgrounds are
barely convincing as space. Floating as they are
on green, or gray, or gold, these creatures stand
as metaphors for human situations and dilem-
mas. The elements of fantasy in Miller's more
recent paintings are not included here. Neither
are the animals involved in the mythic struggles
of her past work. There are very few images that
feature the wild animals for which Miller's work
is known: those depictions of untamed morality
we humans are so entranced by-the danger of
predation, or of extinction.9
Melissa Miller, Small White Tree, 2001
Gouache on paper
85/8 x 71/8"
Courtesy the artist and Moody Gallery
There is very little dynamism, very little of
the savage conflict for survival in this collection.
Instead, the metaphors are sullen and leaden.
By painting domesticated farm animals that
seem to have limited concern for their own sur-
vival, Miller shifts metaphors. Cows and sheepMelissa Miller, Bird Composition 11, 2002
Oil on canvas
181/8 x 16"
Courtesy the artist and Moody Gallery
have associations with humans that
are not always favorable. If they are
to be considered as portraits of our
characteristics then they are of sim-
ple, dumb folk.
Small White Tree, is a charming
gouache. The ewe, which is the focus of
the work, has sweetness in her vanity.
There is preciousness to her conceit
that is absent in the haughty llama of
the large painting, Farm. The emus,
goats, and llamas of Farm, and other
paintings such as Red Pony, stub-
bornly resist larger association. We
still relate to these animals as foreign,
outside of our common experience.
They maintain some distance by their cultural
specificity. They have not yet wandered into our
mythic consciousness. We do not, on the whole,
dream of llamas and emus. They are new ani-
mals to Texas, therefore, only indicative of a
more recent Texas experience. They speak of
imigration and integration, a mixing, the likes of
which is the history of this state.
If the bird is symbolic of the release of the
human spirit from bondage to the earth,
Miller's birds are tragically grounded. For all
their behaviors, for all the postures that she suc-
cessfully captures in her expressionistic manner,
they seem unnatural and uncomfortable. The
scale and the tightness of the groupings in Bird
Composition, is claustrophobic: like an elevator,
or a bus-somewhere where people are forced
to have proximity without contact. This is true
of many of the paintings hanging here but espe-
cially so of the bird paintings. However crowded
each may be, Miller's animals fail to interact,
one looks just past the next, over the other's
shoulder-but never eye to eye.
Bird Composition II shifts the focus off the
canvas, as most of the birds seem to look at a
single point just outside of the picture plane.Moving the viewer's eye away from themselves
as the subjects is not a sleight of hand.The birds
are not conspiring to distract; they seem equally
disinterested in the viewer as they are in each
other. This collective disinterest plays on our
human ability to congregate while looking, not
at one another, but at a thing apart from our-
selves. It is like having a television turned on in
a bar. A shared external focus makes our expe-
rience less challenging. That viewers have con-
gregated in such a small gallery reinforces the
metaphor: it does not matter if we are gathered
to look at even a blank spot on the wall, any dis-
traction will suffice!
Melissa Miller's new work attacks without
ferocity. Its pace is slow and perhaps a little
brutish. Supplanting speed and drama is a new
subtlety to each encounter. Feral swiftness is
replaced by lazy calm. By painting static, immo-
bile creatures Miller points out that we need not
recognize our bestial nature only through action
and strife. Disinterest and discontent are just as
animal as our baser qualities. Idle stares, long
cud-chewing gazes belong to us as well. And
they are equally effective mirrors in which to
see our foibles reflected.80 ARTL!ES WINTER 2002-2003
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Bryant, John. Art Lies, Volume 37, Winter 2002-2003, periodical, 2002; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth228066/m1/82/: accessed May 3, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .