Jane Miller  Time Not Wasted

Jane Miller’s Time Not Wasted, is an intensely personal narrative concerned with the beauty and simple elegance of everyday objects.

Using everyday materials such as sticks, stones, yarn and wood, Miller creates an environment that explores what is lost due to mechanization. A large bed crocheted from muslin serves as the focal point of Time Not Wasted. It is juxtaposed with arrangements of small objects, prints and drawings. “I think of my work as a record of thoughts and moments,” Miller says. She is a collector of stuff, storing and categorizing, listing and piling. Interested in the interrelationship of things, her objects reflect how one thought leads to the next, and in this way, Time Not Wasted is an intimate record of the artist’s life.

“I love my Aunt Martha,” Miller recounts. “She is a highly skilled craftswoman. She can knit as if on ‘Beat the Clock,’ but with exceptional care and detail. She is also very humble about her talents and has spent her life giving her art away.” This idea of sharing her artwork with other people is paramount to Miller’s way of working. Much in the same vein as her Aunt Martha, Miller has created small give-aways for gallery visitors to take home. She wants her artwork to “go somewhere else” and enrich its new owner’s life.

“We are delighted to show the work of Jane Miller at Rice Art Gallery,” says gallery director Kimberly Davenport. “In the long time I have known Jane, I have been fascinated with the way she works. She seems to bring her studio along wherever she goes - she is always working on something. While waiting for a bus she will pick up some discarded object and make it into a sculpture. Her hand-made works are domestic in feel, but otherworldly in appearance.”

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Miller’s work has evolved from book and printmaking traditions. As a high school student, she had an early apprenticeship at PennyRoyal Press which led her to pursue her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the University of Iowa Print Workshop. Her work became more personal and psychologically unsettled after an extended trip to the Middle East in 1979. After receiving her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Illinois in 1980, Miller began teaching at several universities in the Midwest and East Coast.

Miller was born in Redding, Connecticut in 1955. She has been the recipient of several residencies at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, and the Vermont Studio Center. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. This is the first presentation of Miller’s work in the Southwest United States.