Black Quilt. Pieced emery cloth. 36″. 2015.

Briefly describe the work you do.

Simple regurgitations really.

Tell us about your background and how that has had an influence on
your work and on you as an artist.

Cultish. Bullheaded. A teeny tiny world for men and for god. At Zion they found me scribbling in the scriptures. At school I was sent home for wearing pants. Taught never to speak up, I learned quick to pull threads until the long white dresses of Oneida were stripped, showing hair and carcinomas and varicose veins. I had little choice but to run away.

The concept of the artist studio has a broad range of meanings in contemporary practice. Artists may spend much of their time in the actual studio, or they may spend very little time in it. Tell us about your individual studio practice and how it differs from or is the same as traditional notions of “being in the studio.”

Work is my life and in living I work wherever I find myself. Wrap what I need tightly in a black hide. Sewing on a freight. Sanding at the Met.

I have a studio too. I arrive at it only whence the ideas I find, and the work I do, demand something more exact. This is mere convenience.

Embroidery referencing Anatomie normale du corps humain: atlas iconographique de XVI planches by Sigismond Laskowski. Black thread on muslin. 4.5″x7″. 2012.

What roles do you find yourself playing that you may not have envisioned yourself in when you first started making art?

Taxidermist.

When do you find is the best time to make art? Do you set aside a
specific time everyday or do you have to work whenever time allows?

Crepuscule is best. When the darkness glows. Shapes shrink and grow. Objects are misshapen. There’s something in the silence too.

But like I said, I work always and in all places.

Detail of St. John the Baptist. Black thread on muslin.

How has your work changed in the past five years? How is it the same?

It’s been distilled. Melted down. My subject matter is more specific. My vision is more intact. More and more as I depart from the worlds of my teachers. Away from generality for a more twisted creation.

How have people such as family, friends, writers, philosophers, other artists or even pop icons had an impact on the work you do?

I enjoy old books with torn covers and soot, books by no-names, Guidebooks, how-to books, travel memoirs. These help me maintain a little grit in a transparent world. Also Davy Crockett.

Have you ever been pulled in the direction of a pursuit other than being an artist? What are your other interests?

As an artist I am also an adventurer. I have found the open ocean to be my penultimate invigorate. Together with a small crew I will to take a schooner from the west coast of North America to the mouth of the Mekong.

I am also a collector. I have over sixty-one cricket cages.

About

Martyr, Art School Graduate, Explorer of Lost Worlds, Anthropologist, Dog Mother 

bjmiller.nyc

All images copyright of the artist and used with their permission.