SELECTED PROJECTS
Collective Rage Release is a current project where artist Jill Miller leads participants through a collaborative sculpture-making experience. Participants share their concerns (personal, local, or global) in a supportive group session, articulating their sources of fear, anxiety, frustration, and anger. They write one word describing their issues on terry cloth wristbands using black sharpie. Then they pummel 100 pounds of clay while channeling their anger into sculptures.
The project came out of the Being Human social practices work that was commissioned by the Palo Alto Art Center, September-December 2018. From the Being Human website:
“During Week 7, we shared current issues that create conflict, anxiety or
anger within us. We articulated them to each other in a circle of sharing, and we referenced them in black sharpie on our 1980’s terrycloth wristbands and headbands. Then we released our intensity by pummeling 100 pounds of clay for almost an hour. Guided by a personal trainer, we pushed, pulled, punched, stomped, dug, revealed, and wrestled the clay. Our fear and anger moved from our hearts to our hands as we created sculptures that were not informed by aesthetic concerns. Rather the sculptures were artifacts of our actions. We call them conflict sculptures.”
To participate in or host a Release, contact the artist: jill@jillmiller.net
2018
Being Human is a social practices work created in collaboration with the Palo Alto Art Center. From September - December 2018, ten parent artists spend eight weeks in residence at PAAC where I direct their residency. Every week we make a collaborative work that engages the 8 stages of Erik Erickson’s psychosocial development. By the end we’ve lived out the entire lifecycle of a human being.
Residents will consider their parenting struggles as a catalyst for making art rather than an obstacle to overcome.
Project website: https://www.beinghumanart.com
Palo Alto Art Center
September - December 2018
In Week 1: Birth, participants wrote “rebirth” announcements for themselves and crawled through a giant birth canal while being anointed with primary colored paint. Think: Tony Robbins meets Monty Python meets minimalist sculpture.
Confiscated Objects: Things we’ve taken away from our children to keep them safe. Participants are asked to bring in an image of a confiscated item; we will remake the object out of safe materials: felt, cardboard, batting.
Participants wrestled with 100 pounds of clay to release anger, anxiety and frustration.
2011-12
The Milk Truck was a socially engaged art work made for the Andy Warhol Museum and deployed in Pittsburgh, PA. This mobile breastfeeding unit was designed in response to the discriminating culture toward nursing mothers. The truck was dispatched when a person contacted the crew (via call, text or tweet) after being hassled for nursing in public. The truck rallied its followers while enroute to the woman’s location and once there, held a nursing party in front of the offending establishment. In addition to its physical presence, The Milk Truck was a community that connected through social media (photos, posts, tweets, blogging, and a real-time map of the truck’s location).
Kickstarter Page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jillmiller/the-milk-truck
Pittsburgh Biennial, Andy Warhol Museum
2011-12
2014-15
Unsung Hero is a video that uses GoPro cameras and the company's own marketing videos to challenge gender stereotypes and heroism. GoPro's slogan is Be a Hero, yet the videos on their YouTube channel feature men engaging in extreme sports (motocross, surfing, snowboarding, etc) and women wearing mermaid tails in the ocean. Unsung Hero humorously splices mothers performing domestic duties and childrearing into the company's videos.
Go Pro videos are shot and edited to give us multiple perspectives, reinforcing a scopophilic effect. You get to be the watcher and the one who is watched. You are the primary actor who delights in the feeling of being adored while simultaneously adoring the actor. Further pulling us into identification with the masculine gaze is the fast paced editing sequences, all set to an ejaculatory, frenetic pace.
This video is one in a series of 3.
The FAB Gallery, University of Alberta, Edmonton
2016
2018
When people put on an AR/VR headset, they expect to be entertained. This project is a refusal. The Liar environment dynamically surrounds the AR participant with a circle of disembodied female hands pointing at them. The hovering, uncanny hands intermix with the real visitors within the gallery space, creating an unstable landscape. No matter where the participant turns or moves, the disembodied pointing fingers emerge and follow. Do they adore or accuse? Over time, the playful attention begins to suggest something more sinister, provoking discomfort. Inspired by the #MeToo movement and the countless women who weren’t able to come forward and tell their stories.
Worth Ryder Gallery
UC Berkeley 2018
2004
A feminist mash up of John Baldessari's classic 1971 video, "I am Making Art."
In the collection of The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, The Reinking Collection, and CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo.
2015-16
Research shows that approximately 10% of contributors on Wikipedia are women. WOW! Editing Group was a project that focused on closing the gender gap by teaching college and high school women (and non-binary people) how to edit Wikipedia articles in a safe feminist space. During this 6 month experimental collaboration, over 120 articles were improved or created and 38 individuals participated.
Sponsored by Wikimedia Individual Engagement Grant and Berkeley Center for New Media
2013-16
A series of family portraits based on shouting events in the home. These sculptures are based not on our corporal visages but on the qualities that really define a family: conflicts, laughter, noise (joyful and otherwise) and other auditory outbursts. Participants used a log to document audio events in their homes for 24 hours. The artist interpreted those and created a unique portrait where individuals are represented by their shouting contribution. Any likeness to real individuals is purely coincidence.
This work was made onsite at the New Maternalisms: Redux exhibition and colloquium at the FAB Gallery, University of Alberta.
2005
Waiting for Bigfoot was a performance-installation that was located in the Sierra Nevada remote wilderness while simultaneously projected into a gallery space in Norwich, England. The campsite was situated in a geographical area with a high incidence of Bigfoot sightings. Throughout the 6 week performance, a live feed of the campsite could be viewed both in the gallery and online. Participants from around the world tracked the feed and reported possible sightings in a citizen science fashion. The artist consulted a cryptozoologist who helped create a reading list and advised the artist on ways to habituate a Bigfoot as Jane Goodall had done with the chimpanzees. The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) connected the artist with people who had experienced Bigfoot sightings.
More details and full statement HERE.
EAST International exhibition, Norwich Gallery, England
2013-15
Body Configurations is a series of photographs that respond to the confinements of domestic space. Inspired by Valie Export's photographic series by the same name, this work brings the camera into familial quarters and physically manifests the burden of primary caregiver.
Sesnon Gallery, UC Santa Cruz
2013-15
The Family in Residence Program was an experimental residency project made for an entire family. It was a pilot program used to explore families in collaboration with each other and with their communities.
The first participants were a local Berkeley family who attended a weekly potluck at a public garden near their home. After extensive interviewing and brainstorming, we collaborated on a project for them to share with their neighbors. The Message in a Bottle project connected their love of exploration and travel with their desire to transcribe and share stories without digital technology.
We attended a Friday night potluck and made stations for their community to create bottles and messages. We provided vintage typewriters, quill and ink, and taught simple calligraphy strategies to interested participants. We used our truck as a mobile studio for the event and later delivered finished bottles to local addresses. For our FIR we agreed to send their bottles anywhere in the world.
2007
After 6 months of training with a private investigator, the artist surveilled multiple Bay Area art collectors' homes and vehicular activity. The result was hundreds of photos and hours of surveillance video which formed an installation modeled after FBI profiling boards. A tabloid designed after The Enquirer was available for sale at the exhibition.
2nd Floor Projects, San Francisco, CA
2004
The artist posted a craigslist ad, "I'm making a video portrait of Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres' Les Grandes Odalisques. Please contact me if you can be my odalisque." The ad also included a photograph of the original painting.
After documenting dozens of participants, the result was a video installation of 20 video portraits. The videos were synched so that models turned and looked past the viewer and at each other. Participants included: a bartender, a retiree, a woman who survived breast cancer, an Intersex person, a stay-at-home mom, a fashion designer, a nudist, and more.
New Wight Gallery, UCLA
Wind Tunnel, Art Center College of Design
