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Artist Pages: Art Miller – “Transformed”

“In recent years, I’ve noticed an odd marriage (both metaphysical and substantive) between America’s Christian churches and American commerce. Structures originally designed and built as commercial buildings—retail, office, and industrial—are increasingly re-purposed and transformed into church sanctuaries. Additionally, existing church steeples may now be transformed into functioning cell towers, or sometimes, cell towers, fabricated in the form of a cross, are installed upon church grounds, often towering over an existing cross atop a building’s steeple.”

–Art Miller

For 30 years, Art Miller has made arresting, meticulously crafted photographs, in which architecture and gay culture are frequent touchstones.  Bruce Hartman, executive director of the Nerman Museum, calls Miller’s images “challenging, enigmatic and revelatory.”   In 2005, gallery owner Bill Brady chose Miller’s evocative “Habana Series,” of gay men looking for love at an Oklahoma City resort, to be the opening show at his ATM Gallery in New York.  A review in Genre magazine praised the work’s “pure, complex power.”  The exhibit was also shortlisted in The Village Voice.

Miller is currently at work on “Transformed,” a series of stark and startling images provoking reflection on a ubiquitous cultural phenomenon.

CategoriesVisual
Alice Thorson

Alice Thorson is the editor of KC Studio. She has written about the visual arts for numerous publications locally and nationally.

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