Home / / /

The Schuylkill Center’s Artist-in-Residence, Spring 2009
Gary Miller

 

A Rake’s Progess
An Agrarian Morality Tale

An Installation of Eight Sculptures
June – December 2009
At The Schuylkill Center’s Second Site at Brolo Hill Farm
Corner of Port Royal Ave and Hagy’s Mill Rd.

Artist-in-Residence Gary Miller presents an installation of eight large sculptures at The Schuylkill Center’s mid-nineteenth century farm site, Brolo Hill Farm, along with ten graphic and didactic panels in the farmhouse window frames.  The sculptures, constructed primarily from tree limbs and branches collected from The Schuylkill Center’s 365 acres, will visually reference and celebrate wooden farming tools commonly in use during the 1800’s.

Simple, efficient and beautiful, these tools were most often handmade by local tradesmen or the farm families themselves, and those few implements that remain today carry the patina and wear from years of service and care.  In keeping with the location and theme, the artist relied mainly on woodworking tools similar to those used by the plowrights, wainwrights and blacksmiths from that period in Brolo Hill Farm’s history and will construct the eight pieces on site.

These rural contrivances no longer perform a task or carry their weight (mandatory of all things on a farm, living or inanimate).  Their function, like their location and value to their community has shifted.  They have become teachers and storytellers and, to some, undecipherable codes.  They have become allegorical.

The project also alludes, perhaps with a touch of ironic misdirection, to William Hogarth’s (1697-1764)  print series, “A Rake’s Progress” – referring to a different type of rake from a different country and a different time.  This will be one element in the installation of visual and historical references presented as “windows” in the Brolo Hill farmhouse. 

 

About Gary Miller

Gary Miller has been creating sculpture in wood and other materials for more than thirty-five years, His work has been exhibited in colleges and universities, commercial galleries, museums, and other cultural venues. He is represented in corporate and private collections in North America, South America, and Europe.

Gary began working in wood while studying the tradition tools, musical instruments, and utensils made by the farmers, artisans, and trades-people of the Piedmont area of North Georgia and Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. Although his pieces vary from small personal statements to large temporary installations, Gary’s life-long study of the traditional arts and functional objects of southern America as well as Africa, Asia, and the island cultures of Oceania continue to remain a constant reference in much of his work.

 

Gary Miller’s Project with the Green Woods Charter School

A Meadow by the Green Woods is a student-created meadow populated by strange and beautiful flowers constructed from painted aluminum. The student’s work perches atop stems and poles varying in height, up to10 feet. The students’ designs are informed by the research they have done on a particular plant or animal. Their research was then used as the launching point for the creation of their own imaginative and colorful species. Each flower is also equipped with a solar-powered lantern, creating a glowing landscape after sunset!