Cory Bilicko
-Managing Editor-
In the cellar of the Long Beach Museum of Art one recent Friday afternoon, I met Chris Miller, who was winding down his residency there. Miller had been the museum’s artist in residence since June 23, and it was about to end on Aug. 23.
Housed in a room just off from the children’s workshop area, Miller’s workspace was a constant work in progress, with finished paintings on the walls and floor, sculptures shaped of what appeared to be white clay waiting to be splayed with color of some kind, and other creations that seemed to be living, almost breathing, works.
“I guess the thing that would separate this from a normal exhibition is it’s blurring those boundaries, and it’s really a glimpse into an artist’s practice,” he said. “You’re seeing me invent things and build things and make things, have successes and failures— all sort of in real time… it just so happens that part of my practice is calling those things into question or behaving in that way, whether it’s constantly moving around the room and filling bottles with paint that are dripping onto canvases or panels or changing pens out that are moving around.”
The pens to which Miller referred were ink pens that he had affixed to metal wire that was part of a mobile being moved by the breeze produced from an electric fan. In an almost Rube Goldbergian assemblage, the fan’s wind caused the writing utensils to gently swing to and fro and make marks onto paper lying on the floor.
I asked him what he has learned during his residency, and his answer eventually led back to the repetitious mark in some of his recent work that had essentially become the signature image of his time spent at the museum.
“Well, I was describing this loopy mark, and I guess in some ways it’s a result of the residency, just because of the physicality of the space and how it’s located,” Miller said. “You can only work in a certain way down here. I can’t oil-paint, I can’t cut wood, I can’t make tons and tons of noise. So, I guess the scope of the materials I’m accustomed to using is sort of narrowed down. Coming into the residency, I started making this repetitious mark that’s kind of like a repeating U over and over and over again, and I think that the space has provided me with this sort of safe location where I can explore that mark as far as I can with different materials that aren’t toxic— they’re acrylic-based. So I think that has been one of the major changes in the work.”
Miller said one aspect of the residency that has been good for him is talking to museum visitors. “I’ve had to verbalize what I’m doing often, and that’s not something I’m accustomed to all the time,” he said. “So, in some ways, the work is being crystallized in the space, and so are my thoughts. That has been really useful and helpful. It’s also been just great to see what and where people’s attentions are, or pulled to or directed to. That allows me to see the work through sort of new eyes, through just a different kind of lens.”
I wasn’t ready to drop the topic of the U yet; there was something intriguing, unanswered, about it. So I asked him where he thinks it originated.
“This will be sort of a weird path, but I had a pretty extensive background in ceramics, specifically, functional pottery,” he said. “I made a lot of pots in my day. I come from schools that have potters that have pretty much dedicated their lives to making beautiful, functional pots. When you’re making pots, you’re always worried about the form, how it functions, but then you’re also sort of worried about its surface and the ‘skin’ of the pot. And one of the processes that you can take part in is to cover the pot in slip, and slip is just a liquid clay. It’s really sort of silky-smooth— the finest of the clay particles that are suspended in water. It’s just a really velvety material. You can dip a pot into this slip, and then, when you pull it out, the first thing you want to do is touch it and sort of swipe at it and push through it. It’s like pushing through runny cream cheese or something like that. So, it has this really beautiful, tactile, immediate experience. It’s super satisfying. And, I think, from that, when I used to make pots, I used to make this repetitious, loopy pattern. And I’ve made all kinds of patterns, but this is just one that is really satisfying.”
Miller explained that, before beginning his residency, he found himself pondering different methods of recreating that marking with various mediums.
“It is satisfying,” he said. “I think there’s something primal about it. There’s something just human about that mark. I don’t think I can explain it quite yet; it’s ahead of me. I don’t fully know.”
I told him I like his articulation of the mark’s meaning as being “ahead” of him, and he said it’s something he constantly thinks about.
“I try to keep the work beyond my understanding,” he said. “When I start to really know something, it becomes safe, in a way. It becomes more static. When the mystery starts to leech out of it through repetition, or just being around it so much, I’ll try to introduce something else to just ask more questions, and I think, if I’m doing my job as an artist, the work should always be slightly ahead of what I can understand about it.”
