Exhibiting WATER Artist: Kelsey Miller

Kelsey Miller

"Sunset Playgrounds" - Kelsey Miller (72"x36")

Kelsey Miller is a print-maker with a BA in Studio Art from Wellesey College and is going to UCONN for her Masters in Fine Arts. She's exhibited in multiple shows around the northeast as well as exhibited in Tennessee, Missouri, California, and other states around the country. 

Here's how she describes her work:

"For me, the ocean is at once a reminder of home and a symbol of voyage and adventure. The first ten years of my life were spent living on the Caribbean Island of Antigua where I grew to recognize the sea as an orientation point, like a city’s grand monument or a familiar mountain range. Many years later, I returned to a life surrounded by water when, for four years, I worked as chef on a sailboat traveling between the Caribbean, the United States, and Europe. Although my creative focus during that time was predominantly the culinary arts, I kept a regular journal of my travels.

On a seventeen day sail from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean, I drew the sea every day, its ever-changing surface an opportunity for meditation and contemplation. These sketches have fostered my recent work in print as I leave behind a transient life at sea and return to the rhythms of life on land. The resulting works are a translation of surface, space, and movement, formed from both visual and haptic memories of my travels and background.

The medium of printmaking provides the ability to translate the vastness of space felt—either on a vessel at sea or in the experience of swimming—when surrounded by water. Using multiples of a single image to create a larger installation transforms the work from being viewed as a two-dimensional print to an immersive experience of space. At times, I veer away from the traditional approach of creating a precise edition and instead use a matrix for repetition that is not always identical. In these cases, precision and chance work together, the printmaking process becomes self-reflexive, and each layer that is printed determines what will follow. The passage of time from conception to completion of a project, the physical experience of printing, and the evolution of ideas throughout the printmaking process becomes a journey in itself."

Feel free to check out more of her work at kelseynmiller.com. 

WATER Opens April 11th at the Hera Gallery.