I have been an arts organizer and curator in the Greater Boston area for 40 years. My work has focused on building community, creating opportunities for diverse self-expression, illuminating place and history, and advocating for the environment.
Photo:
Cecily Miller with Go Fish, a temporary mural on the Fox Library consisting of 2,500 fish individually hand painted by people of all ages and walks of life to celebrate the annual migration of Mystic River herring and the rebuilding of their populations due to environmental activism.
I’ve collaborated with accomplished artists to create innovative projects in a variety of settings. I feel lucky to have engaged in this work, learning from countless artists whom I admire. Currently, I work for ArtsArlington as Curator of Public Art. In this capacity I have commissioned murals and sculpture and organized artist-in-residence programs. I have also conceived and led public art projects myself, notably Bikeway Haiku and the Go Fish! project celebrating the annual herring migration.
My artmaking has taken a back seat to my career for most of my adult life. In the last few years however, I have made time to explore printmaking, sculpture, and photography – including cyanotype printing. I have shared my work during Somerville’s Open Studios and through exhibitions at Arlington Center for the Arts, Mosesian Center for the Arts, Nave Gallery, Washington Street Art Center, Truro Center for the Arts, and Provincetown Artists Association and Museum.
Left to Right: Trojan Horse, sandcast plaster with organic material, 7” x 12”. This sculpture was made using plaster cast in a mold created in a container of beach sand. Cats, monoprint on paper, 12” x 15.” Bear Making Progress, cyanotype on paper, 10” x 10”. This image was created with a negative and objects placed on hand coated paper.
I love taking a variety of artist-led workshops. These provide time, space, and equipment as well as encouragement and critique from skilled mentors. Most recently I have been learning about concrete and plaster casting; I’m excited to work in three dimensions.
Some of my work is playful, often using animal themes. For me this is a helpful way to feel free to express myself while experimenting with color, form and technique. Other times I set myself a challenge. One such challenge was to document some of the mid-century modern houses preserved on the outer Cape. I developed a series of large-scale cyanotype photographs of Marcel Breuer’s family summer home in the Wellfleet woods for an exhibition at the Wellfleet Library. I was lucky to have access to the house while it was still filled with the clutter of the Breuer family’s 70 years of occupation. The house was designed to have minimal separation from the surrounding natural environment, so I included images of nearby coastlines and plants collected from the site. Breuer got his start at the Bauhaus School in Germany and followed its founder Walter Gropius to Harvard; he then settled in New York City founding his own firm. This project was meaningful to me because my father was an architect whose style and interests were influenced by the Bauhaus; elements of Breuer’s home were familiar to me from the furnishings of my childhood. This aspect, along with documentation of the Breuer family’s very personal domestic space, enabled the exhibition to explore themes of memory and family as well as architecture and nature.
Above: Marcel Breuer’s Wellfleet Kitchen, cyanotype on paper, 17” x 24”. One of a series of photographs documenting Marcel Breuer’s mid-century modern home in the Wellfleet woods.
Currently I’m creating a series of simple boats carrying “cargo” representing our fragile and endangered world – plants, feathers, seedpods. I plan to create an installation of these ghostly boats hanging in the air, representing a journey to transport fragments of the natural world to a safer place.
Photo:
Ghost Boats, installation detail, two sandcast plaster boats with organic material. Each 10” long and 24” high. These are two of a flotilla of boats containing natural materials, representing a journey transporting elements of our endangered ecosystem to a safer place.
Learn more about Cecily Miller on her website http://www.cecilymiller.org/, or Instagram: @ceciliachile
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