Brianna Miller: Going “retro” with last year’s artist-in-residence

Some peo­ple are said to be born too soon for this world; artist Bri­an­na Miller may have been born about 30 years too late.

The 24-year-old Miller could be a child of the 1960s spir­i­tu­al­ly — she shares a pas­sion for Cat Stevens music, and movies like Harold and Maude and the 60s-inspired films of Wes Ander­son. She claims the works of 60s avant-garde artists like Andy Warhol and Yay­oi Kusama, among oth­ers, as her main artis­tic inspi­ra­tions. The Port­land-based artist and grad­u­ate of McNary High School in Keiz­er also recent­ly dis­cov­ered the Moog syn­the­siz­er tones of Mort Garson’s 1976 album “Plan­ta­sia,” she said.

Speak­ing from her cur­rent home in Uti­ca, New York, where today she is the artist-in-res­i­dence at the Mun­son Williams Proc­tor Art Insti­tute, Miller rem­i­nisced on her time with TEDx Salem last year.

Her biggest hope, she said, was “to cre­ate a piece that moved peo­ple.”

“I had a lot in mind,” she said. “I want­ed some­thing visu­al­ly stim­u­lat­ing.”

Those who came out to TEDx Salem’s FEARLESS event last Octo­ber 2015 will remem­ber the unique­ly col­or­ful back­drop, evok­ing the pol­ka-dot motif of a Kusama piece, that hov­ered over the stage in a con­stel­la­tion of col­ors to give the stage an icon­ic feel.

Through the piece, Miller hoped to encour­age each view­er to face his or her fears, and con­tin­ue to day­dream, she said.

“Every­one took some­thing dif­fer­ent away from it,” she said. “That was one of my goals.”

TEDx Salem’s first-ever artist-in-res­i­dence, Miller had applied for the job on a lark, based on a friend’s rec­om­men­da­tion, she said.

“I didn’t even know that Salem was a part of [TEDx],” she said.

Her expe­ri­ence helped her recon­nect with the Salem com­mu­ni­ty, she said, and also served as inspi­ra­tion for her art career.

“It’s encour­ag­ing me to go even big­ger,” she said. “[Being a TEDx Salem speak­er] makes it eas­i­er to talk about my art.”

Since then, Bri­an­na Miller has fol­lowed a sim­i­lar path from Ore­gon all the way to upstate New York, where she serves as a Com­mu­ni­ty Arts Edu­ca­tion instruc­tor and also works on her inde­pen­dent art project – a com­bi­na­tion of print­ed media “zine” and instal­la­tion of papier-mache that is “still evolv­ing,” she said – that should be com­plete before sum­mer of 2017.

She remem­bers her time with FEARLESS fond­ly. A qui­et, soft-spo­ken per­son, Miller had to face her own fear of pub­lic speak­ing to share her art with the com­mu­ni­ty.

“Talk­ing in front of peo­ple is always kind of scary,” she said.

“My biggest wor­ry was mak­ing sure I cre­at­ed a piece that was fit­ting to the theme,” she said, but “not too dis­tract­ing.”

Before leav­ing, Miller was able to meet this year’s artist-in-res­i­dence, Kathryn Cel­leri­ni Moore. With the ben­e­fit of hind­sight, she imparts the fol­low­ing advice:

“This is a chance to exper­i­ment and not play it safe,” she said. “I wish I would have done a lit­tle bit more. I think I was wor­ry­ing too much, and got too much into my head.”

“Take risks.”

 

Learn more about Bri­an­na at her Web site here, and learn about her cur­rent work here.

 

 

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