MAIN GALLERY

Acrimonious Efflorescence

Liz Miller

August 31 – October 7, 2017

ARTIST STATEMENT

My mixed media installations are elaborate, abstract fictions that incorporate fragments of reality. The elegant, lacy silhouettes of imagery from sources such as firearms, killer bees, and deadly plants are spliced with imagined forms to create sculptural interludes that are absurd, menacing, and poetic. Pattern and tactility confuse and complicate identification, camouflaging recognizable forms and evoking recognition when applied to non-objective forms. The tensions between fact/fiction and dimensionality/flatness are endlessly fascinating to me, playing out in my work as a dialogue between reality and illusion, while conflating fantasy and fiction.

Acrimonious Efflorescence creates a complex, multilayered topography within Firehouse Art Center. Utilizing a diverse range of materials– including sensuous gold corduroy, stiffened felt, and brightly colored rope–the installation creates a dreamscape both seductive and sinister. Abstract forms weave through the space, suggesting an alternate reality, refuted in turn by the forms’ insistent materiality. Silhouettes, magical and mysterious from a distance, reveal themselves as banal on closer inspection, creating a tension between our longing for fantasy and our ultimate recognition of fact.

CURATOR NOTES

I am thrilled to introduce Longmont to Minnesota based artist Liz Miller. For years we have dreamed of bringing in a national artist who’s work would take up the entire gallery and create a completely immersive experience. Luckily for us Liz was intrigued by our space and able to ship most of her materials with ease. Her incredible shapes, textures and colors have transformed our space into a forest of allure and wonder. Bursts of light and energy fill the sky, steady platforms tumble into organized chaos, pinnacles of nobility stretch beyond view while shapes and shadows fall at your feet. Meander through, around and under her work, look from all angles and soak up the innovative utopia. It is the closest I’ve come to walking through an artists imagination.

Curator: Jessica Kooiman Parker, gallery@firehouseart.org