ABOUT ALYSON MILLER ARTIST
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Through her art, Alyson Miller conveys an engaging view of the world around her. She paints color-infused landscapes and buildings in acrylic paint. She creates unique, mixed-media, bas-relief wall sculptures and quirky, beaded, knit baskets that engage the senses and the imagination.
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In her Acrylic Paintings, she communicates a sense of place through color, light, texture, and perspective. Miller is drawn to unusual vantage points, details, and composiion in landscapes and architecture, using blocks of saturated color, light/dark contrast, and clearly defined edges to delineate shapes.
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In her eclectic mixed-media wall sculptures (Organic Abstracts, Landscapes, and Botanicals) and Beaded Knit Baskets, she uses unexpected materials and textures that invite you to touch, participate, and imagine.
Miller arrived at her approach through an extensive Fine Arts education, followed by a career of design work in high-tech. She has now returned to her roots as an artist, creating work that reflects her personal interests, to explore and share her own sensibility.
"I hope my art makes you smile or wonder and that it sparks your visual imagination. If it awakens your own connection with the world around you, I’m happy."
MOVING FROM THREE DIMENSIONS TO TWO
Currently, Miller is focused on Acrylic Painting on flat surfaces. This work draws on her art school training in representational and Impressionist styles and on her own three-dimensional Organic Abstract constructions. She is challenging herself to work in two dimentions again, after years of sculpting low-relief abstract "canvases" in fiber clay to paint and embellish with beads, yarn, and wire.
Miller was first drawn toward representational work several years ago. Using the same processes and materials as in her Organic Abstracts (described below), she began to sculpt mixed-media Landscapes and Botanicals in low-relief fiber-clay, then painted and beaded them to explore shape, color, and texture through familiar images rendered in unexpected materials.
Now using Acrylic paint and dry pigments suspended in glaze for layering, she is painting landscapes and architecture on canvas and wood panels. Her sculpted abstracts continue to influence her approach to color saturation, light, perspective, edge-defined shapes, and texture—without relying on the surface variety provided by a fiber-clay base. The challenge is invigorating.
BAS-RELIEF PROCESS AND MATERIALS
Each of Miller's bas-relief Wall Sculptures starts with a custom eco-friendly clay, infused with recycled fiber and paper, that she sculpts into a bas-relief “canvas.” She air-dries each piece, seals it against moisture, then paints it with layers of acrylic paint and dry colored pigment suspended in translucent acrylic glaze that she wipes off, layer by layer, to reveal the underlying textures.
She first fell in love with glass, semi-precious stones, clay beads, and natural yarns while making Beaded Knit Baskets that are shaped by a framework of malleable wire. These materials made their way into her wall sculptures. Her Organic Abstracts, inspired by natural form, often feature a section of beaded crochet or knitting that lets background color show through, along with additional beads and wire to catch the light.
Her Shield series is inspired by native Southwestern artwork. Although this series incorporates geometric forms, patterns, and beads strung on leather that evoke the Southwest, she takes care not to directly appropriate native imagery.
PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS AND EXHIBITIONS
Miller is a Juried Member of the Sonoran Arts League, with work showing regularly at the Sonoran Arts League Gallery in Carefree, AZ and the Desert Foothills Library's Art Gallery in neighboring Cave Creek, AZ.
She is Chairperson of the Sonoran Arts League's Jury Committee, which arranges for art by League members to be judged once a year by a panel of independent art professionals, based on criteria established by her committee. Artists whose work achieves this standard of excellence become Juried Members of the League, its highest honor.
Miller's work has been juried into annual Art & Wine Festivals organized by Thunderbird Artists and Vermillion Promotions in the Carefree/Cave Creek, AZ area. She's been asked to participate in an Invitational Fiber Arts Exhibition at the Holland Gallery of Fine Art in Scottsdale, AZ.
ART BACKGROUND AND EDUCATION
Born and raised in New York City, Miller grew up in an arts-friendly family, with the opportunity to explore New York City's many art museums and galleries. "As a child." she says, "my favorite presents were colored pencils, pastels, paints, and origami paper." Weekend life drawing classes that she took at the Art Student's League in Manhattan cemented her desire to pursue art.
Miller completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Queens College of the City University of New York and a year of graduate work in Fine Art at the University of California at San Diego, on full scholarship.
Life interrupted her plans to be a full-time working artist, but Miller kept her creative energy alive by pursuing a career as a designer and writer of user manuals, software, newsletters, and websites for the high tech industry, first in the San Francisco Bay area and then in Portland, OR where she raised her family. Outside of work, she made beaded jewelry, taught herself to knit and crochet, and gardened. She oversaw home renovations and did interior design projects in Portland and since moving to Carefree, AZ.
She is happy to have found her way back to original calling as an artist and to support other artists through volunteer work with the Sonoran Arts League.