ADIA MILLETT’s interview with Carlisle Berkley for Made in Bed, Sotheby’s Institute

Carlisle Berkley in Conversation with Artist, Adia Millett

April 27

After graduating from CalArts in 2000, Adia Millett moved to New York to join the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program in 2001. It was in the same year that her work was first featured in a group exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem, where she would go on to complete a residency. Her work is multidisciplinary and skillfully varied. In fact, her exhibition at California African American Museum ranged from sculpture to photography, collage, mural painting and textiles.

Adia Millett in her Oakland Studio

Millett’s recent exhibition at Morton Fine Art in Washington D.C., The Moon is Always Full included a series of pieces exploring how the moon acts as a metaphor for human subjectivity – paying particular interest to shadows. By focusing on the way that shadows give a disproportionate illusion of size and shape, Adia Millett explores the other ways that we think of shadows through perspective and light.

 Her quilt and textile pieces cannot be located within just one cultural context. When deconstructing and layering found, gifted fabrics with Dutch Wax African textiles – a process of connectivity, taking things apart and connecting them to something else is central to her practice. Her textiles transform destruction into unity, new life and connection. Renewal and rebuilding create the possibility of transformative change. Her exploration of basic configuration reconstructs patterns and memories to achieve a sense of fullness for the viewer. This concept closely converses with how a shadow can create fullness within a figure – or the full cycle of a moon.

Sotheby’s Institute of Art student, Carlisle Berkley, interviewed Adia Millett to discuss her quilting, the moon and other inspirations behind her work. 

Carlisle Berkley: Could you please give MADE IN BED readers some insight into your background and tell us how you became interested in the arts, particularly the medium of textiles and quilting? 

Do you look to any other artists for inspiration such as the women working in Gee’s Bend, Alabama? If so, what about their work, in particular, inspires you?  

Adia Millett: I am a big fan of the Gee’s Bend quilts. The colors, materials and form addressed issues of modernism before modernism even existed. Other textile artists who inspire me are Rosie Lee Tompkins and my mentor who taught me how to quilt, Roberta Andresen. With most textile and painting, it’s the artist’s use of color.

Adia Millett, Gold Moon (2020), 30.5 x 30.5 in., cotton, upholstery fabric and silk

CB: The works included in your exhibition The Moon is Always Full at Morton Fine Art frequently exhibit the moon. What interests you about the moon?  

AM: The moon acts as the perfect metaphor for so many aspects of life: seasons, cycles, change. The moon impacts the earth and its tides, which in turn impacts our marine life, et cetera. In this exhibition, I use the moon as a symbol for who you/we are. Here, even when the earth’s shadow stands between us and the light, we don’t become smaller. We remain full. 

Installation view of Adia Millett’s The Moon is Always Full at Morton Fine Art from March 25- April 22, 2021. Photo Courtesy of Jarrett Hendrix.

CB: In many cultures, the moon deity is female-identifying and represents creativity and fertility, among other things. Do these associations resonate in your art? 

AM: Humans love to put a gender on everything. I love and have been inspired by so many people and things that are identified as female. But at this point, I’m more interested in expanding rather than unpacking. 

Adia Millett, Gold Roof (2019), 40 x 30 in., acrylic, gold leaf and plastic wood on panel

CB: I’m particularly interested in your use of materials in Gold Roof. Upon first look, the piece is a façade that almost confronts the viewer. But upon closer analysis, we see the realist windows that pierce through the façade and disrupt the confrontation. Can you talk a bit about the intention behind this piece?

AM: For me, Gold Roof is about our connection to our ancestors. My eye wants to focus on the ghost-like shapes amongst the bricks rather than the layers of gold leaf. The cut-out windows and door help to also convey the painting of a house as a façade.

Installation view of Adia Millett’s OWF in The Moon is Always Full at Morton Fine Art. Photo Courtesy of Jarett Hendrix.

CB: In terms of color and shape, your piece OWF stands apart from other works in The Moon is Always Full – it’s also the only piece that doesn’t explicitly feature the moon, though its yellowish color reminds me of moonlight. Could you explain the title of the work to us and your inspiration behind the piece?  

AM: OWF stands for Off White Fragility. This is a piece I did in 2019 for an exhibition entitled The Privilege to Breathe. I was thinking about the myriad of shades of white. It was my way of exploring the layers and complexity of our emotional fragility. As well as the ways in which “whiteness” is infused in so many things.

CB: Lastly, how do you know when you’re done with a piece?

AM: I don’t really know when something is finished. If I live with a piece long enough, I’m likely to change it, even years later. I usually just get to a point where I accept its imperfections enough to truly love it. 

Adia Millett, Reflection (2020), 48 x 60 in., acrylic on wood

Thank you, Adia! 

Discover Adia’s work on her website and Instagram. 

Images Courtesy of the Artist and Morton Fine Arts.

Carlisle Berkley,

Contributor, MADE IN BED 

Available Artwork by ADIA MILLETT

Morton Fine Art, 52 O St NW #302, Washington, DC 20001

http://www.mortonfineart.com

info@mortonfineart.com

(202) 628-2787 (call or text)

The Washington Post on KATHERINE TZU-LAN MANN at the Kreeger Museum

Museums

The Kreeger Museum has reopened, with an art exhibition that probes the vestiges of the past

An installation view of the exhibition “Traces” at the Kreeger Museum: Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann’s “Salamander Room,” background, covers part of two walls. In the foreground are two sculptural works by Roxana Alger Geffen: “Slumped Coil,” left, and “The Cloak of Unfair Advantage.” (Greg Staley/Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann and Roxana Alger Geffen)

By Mark Jenkins

April 13, 2021 at 10:00 a.m.

The title of the exhibition “Traces” at the newly reopened Kreeger Museum suggests a collection of wisps and glimmers. In fact, the group show — originally scheduled for the fall, but delayed because of the museum’s pandemic closure — features many works that are large enough to overwhelm and even immerse, and enough of them to fill three galleries and spill onto a staircase and the lawn. Yet the pieces can be said to be traces in one sense: They contain vestiges of natural, personal and cultural history.

Aside from hailing from D.C. or nearby, the eight artists seem to share little. Their media range from painting and sculpture to video and sound, all practiced in a distinctive manner. The similarities among their work are less visual than conceptual, as curator Sarah Tanguy teases out in her essay about the collection. The artists’ “use of juxtaposition and overlap creates dramatic tension,” she writes.

The overlapping can be as anarchic as in Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann’s “Salamander Room,” a mixed-media work — part drawing, part painting — that covers one wall and part of an adjacent one, and sprawls from large sheets of paper onto the wall itself. Or it can be as tidy as in Johab Silva’s “Point A to Point B and to Point A Again,” which repeats just those two letters, in contrasting colors, across four sets of sandwiched clear-plastic panels. Where Tzu-Lan Mann’s mural was inspired partly by millennia-old Buddhist cave paintings in western China, Silva’s A’s and B’s have the bright, clean look of mid-20th century American commerce — and the pop art that both mocked and celebrated it.

Rania Hassan’s “Liminality” is suspended in the Kreeger Museum’s stairwell. (Greg Staley/Rania Hassan)

The junglelike tendrils of Tzu-Lan Mann’s piece lead, symbolically if not actually, to a separate room where Brandon Morse’s computer animation sends tree branches hurtling toward the viewer. “Ambient Distress in the Thicket” is an algorithm-generated environment in which a monochromatic forest thrives and decays. It’s both an ecological alert and a visual metaphor for generative systems.

Nature motifs can take the form of the spider-like web, simultaneously delicate and imposing, that Rania Hassan has installed above the stairs that lead to the show’s basement galleries. Organic materials feature in Roxana Alger Geffen’s elaborate assemblages, although they rely more on man-made domestic objects, including clothing and furniture. Sunlight powers Billy Friebele’s “Nero Plays a Fiddle,” an outdoor sculpture made of industrial parts; its two sound-generating bits are wired to solar panels. Even Sebastian Martorana’s marble sculptures — neoclassical in technique, if not subject matter — pack an environmental message, because they’re often hewed from salvaged marble.

Martorana’s gambit is to carve soft things, with exquisite realism, from hard stone. The selection here includes gloves, draped fabric and stuffed animals, notably a seemingly well-worn bear. The Teddy is not merely a sculptor’s whimsy. Titled “Permanent Separation Anxiety,” the toy embodies the artist’s objection to the U.S. government policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the Mexican border.

That’s the show’s most up-to-date political statement but not its only one. Antonio McAfee made 3-D versions of formal photographic portraits — designed to be viewed through 1950s-style red/green glasses — that were originally compiled by W.E.B. Du Bois for a sociological exhibit of “American Negroes” at the 1900 Paris Exposition. The goal is to give the dignified historical personages “multitudes of possibilities, real and imagined,” McAfee’s statement explains. His project parallels Geffen’s, as her work “examines my family and its complicated, contradictory relationship to privilege, race and class,” according to her artist statement.

Silva’s A-to-B panels are autobiographical in their own way; they were inspired by musings on how he got to his current place in life. There’s also a history, though not a personal one, to Friebele’s contributions, which include a series of four drawings of circular patterns. These and the outdoor sculpture are very different in form, yet they have a common inspiration: a 1671 drawing of sound waves amplified from a speaking trumpet.

Friebele’s circles are etched in black ink atop mirrors, whose reflective surfaces complement the glossiness of Silva and McAfee’s nearby work. Yet the drawings themselves, and the frames of the mirrors, are funkier. Such irregularities reveal how an artist, even one whose work is machine-tooled, can leave traces of the human hand.

If you go

Traces

Kreeger Museum, 2401 Foxhall Rd. NW. kreegermuseum.org.

Dates: Through May 29.

Admission: Admission is by suggested donation of $10; $8 for students and seniors; free for members. Timed-entry passes, good for one 50-minute session limited to 15 visitors, are required. Masks are required for visitors ages 4 and older.

Click HERE to view available artwork by KATHERINE TZU-LAN MANN

ADIA MILLETT interviewed in Interlocutor

INTERLOCUTOR

Apr 8

ADIA MILLETT

Visual Artists

“The Moon is AlwaysFull” exhibition view at Morton Fine Art in Washington DC – photo courtesy of Jarrett Hendrix

Adia Millett, originally from Los Angeles, California received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. In 2001, she moved to New York City for the prestigious Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, followed by the Studio Museum in Harlem residency program. Millett has been a standout in numerous group exhibitions including the well-received “Greater New York” show at PS1 in Long Island City, New York and “Freestyle” at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at the Barbican Gallery in London; The Craft and Folk Museum in LA; The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Atlanta; The Santa Monica Museum of Art; and The Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans. Millett has taught as an artist in residence at Columbia College in Chicago, UC Santa Cruz, Cooper Union in NY, and California College of the Arts. Millett currently lives and works in Oakland.

In this interview, she discusses the recent work currently on display for her solo show “The Moon is Always Full” – up through April 22 at Morton Fine Art in Washington DC.

Interview by Isabel Hou

You currently have an exhibit at Morton Fine Art in Washington D.C. titled “The Moon is Always Full.” In particular, the titles of your textile works, Gold Moon and Black Moon, caught my eye. What is their significance relative to the exhibition?

Gold Moon and Black Moon were actually part of an older piece titled Beneath You. I cut that piece apart (something I often do). Structurally I wanted to take the square grid apart and construct something more organic. The process felt like I was channeling the moon as she gave birth to the embryo forms, Black Moon and Gold Moon.

Gold Moon, 2019 – 30.5 x 30.5 in – Cotton, upholstery fabric and silk

Black Moon, 2019 – 30.5 x 30.5 in – Cotton, upholstery fabric and silk

The pieces in your exhibition are constructed with fragments “to fashion a meaning greater than its individual elements.” (Morton Fine Art, 2021) Quilt-making may be considered an act of fragmentation and construction. Was this textile medium the source of your interest in identity and collective history? Or rather, did your interest lead you to the medium?

I think our cultural histories are imbued with a foundation of craft, of distilling who we are in handmade creative objects. Here, quilting pays homage to that process while redefining how it’s used.  Identity, psychology, spirituality, nature are all reflected in my choices to challenge our visual understanding of who we are.

Your past exhibitions have been named “Infinite Edges” (Traywick Contemporary, 2019), “Breaking Patterns” (California African American Museum, 2019), and “A Matter of Time” (Galerie du Monde, 2020-21). Where does “The Moon is Always Full” fit in with them?

I write poetry and all my titles have or will eventually become the title of something I write. What all of these titles attempt to do is be broad enough that they can refer to a collective societal expansion, while simultaneously asking the viewer to examine how the title can apply to their own personal life.

There is this bright, geometric overlap and underlap in both Portal and Reflection. How do these pieces and their layered compositions contribute to the theme of your exhibition?

It’s a recognition of literal and metaphorical perspectives. We perceive shapes and colors as an indication of 3-dimensional space. The work is examining our desire to make meaning out of abstraction.

Portal, 2018 – 24 x 24 in – Acrylic on wood

Reflection, 2020 – 48 x 60 in – Acrylic on wood

In the past, you have engaged with concepts of perception, perspective, and time, and have stated that your work “pays homage to the past,” but is “informed by the future.” (Morton Fine Art, 2021). Is this a concept that you find present in your own life? Or is it a commentary on something larger?

I think every artist’s work is a reflection of their lives, so our cultural pasts, our relationship to beauty, resilience, death, community, and so many other topics find their way into my work and hopefully into the minds of anyone interested in art.

You have attributed African American experiences as a source of inspiration. Can you expound on what aspects of your work pay homage to these experiences? And what do you hope to convey through these manifestations?

I am an African American. My work is inspired by my lived experience. What I hope to convey is the value of self-reflection.

Gold Roof, 2019 – 40 x 30 in – Acrylic, gold leaf and plastic on wood panel

What really stands out to me within your work is the dichotomy between geometry and fluidity. The bold colors and patterns in your pieces seem so free and fluid. Yet, much of your work includes neat, geometric lines and shapes. What do you hope to convey between this contrast? Or rather, do you view these elements as complementary?

It’s really great to hear that you see the patterns and colors as free and fluid. Part of my process when I am making anything is to embrace contradictions. The places where we believe things or people don’t belong together are where beauty resides.

XY Shield, 2019 – 42 x 42 in – Indigo dyed cotton, upholstery fabric, cotton and silk

On your site, you write that your work aims to remind viewers of the “importance of renewal and rebuilding […] through the possibility of transformative change.” Has the ever-evolving nature of identity and the human experience always been so important to you?

I don’t know. I do know that many creative people like myself grow up feeling like aliens, different than the people around them. I think that experience as a child has the ability to spark the drive to fight convention and redefine the identities that have been projected on us.

Who, or what inspires you?

Everything inspires me. Humans, nature, science fiction, music, grief, love, history, emotions, color, moments when we take risks.

OWF, 2019 – 37 x 74 in – Found fabric, wool, cotton and batton

As we live through a pandemic, have you thought about how the art world will change in the years to come? Do you foresee your work changing in response to this crisis?

Yes, the art world is definitely changing. Amongst other things, the pandemic has certainly woken us up. It has impacted my work, but more importantly, it has raised my desire to support other artists, to collaborate, to bring awareness to social justice issues around racism, patriarchy, prison incarceration, and the growing homeless population. I am more driven than ever to make work that is built around empathy and respect for each other and our collective consciousness. 

“The Moon is Always Full” is on display through April 22 at Morton Fine Art in Washington DC.

Click HERE to read the Interlocutor article in full.

Available Artwork by ADIA MILLETT

ADIA MILLETT reviewed in The Washington Post

By Mark Jenkins
April 2, 2021 at 7:00 a.m. EDT

“Reflection” (2020) by Adia Millett. 60″x48″, acrylic on panel. (Morton Fine Art)Artwork

Adia Millett

Adia Millet’s show at Morton Fine Art is divided into fabric pieces and paintings, but the two categories overlap in theme and appearance. Almost all of the works include one or more circles that represent the heavenly body invoked in the exhibition’s title, “The Moon Is Always Full.” And two of the paintings arrange scraps of color as if they were pieces of material.

Millett often begins by disassembling cloth items, with the idea of symbolically reconstructing African American experience and identity. (She also tweaks White outlooks in the show’s least colorful and only circle-less entry, “OWF,” which stands for “off-white fragility.”) The California artist has a strong sense of form but little apparent interest in sheer abstraction. “Gold Roof” is little more than a triangle, a circle and several rectangles, but these elements are transmuted into a house under a full-moon sky by deft composition and the insertion of two 3-D model windows.

Just as streamlined are “Reflection,” a landscape-like picture that seems to be as much stitched as painted, and “Portal,” in which a blue round resembles the moon behind striated clouds, but also a cell or an egg. Any of those possibilities are apt, since Millett’s essential concerns include renewal and regeneration.

Adia Millett: The Moon Is Always Full Through April 22 at Morton Fine Art, 52 O St. NW, No. 302.

Available Artwork by ADIA MILLETT

USA / Plasticienne / Adia Millett / QUADRATURE ORANGE ET PASSAGE NUAGEUX

Zo Mag’ complete article

Publié le 30 mars 2021 par kalmos58

Dans ses précédentes réalisations, Adia Millett ouvrait déjà de singuliers paysages. Il arrive que l’artiste prenne le parti-pris de relire les éléments constitutifs. Par exemple elle se débarrasse de ce qui est compliqué dans la forme. Une montagne se réduit à un simple triangle. Une forêt se compose de sphères qui s’imbriquent les unes dans les autres. La réalité nouvelle est forcément singulière. Mais si l’on y réfléchit de plus près, pas certain qu’un insecte voit l’herbe qu’il a devant lui de la même façon qu’une caméra à infrarouge ou un enregistreur phonique. La réalité est fluctuante. Et ce sont ces fluctuations qu’Adia Millet traduit.

« The Moon is always full » participe à ce jeu de construction et de déconstruction. Millett démonte les choses (et les idées), elle enlève, elle déplace, elle raccommode et livre ainsi des histoires en mutation. « La lune est toujours pleine » par exemple, figée dans un cosmos de couleur incertaine, qui hésite entre les saisons, les époques, les appartenances qui ont été et ne seront plus.

Artwork

Millett démonte les choses (et les idées), elle enlève, elle déplace, elle raccommode et livre ainsi des histoires en mutation.

« 𝘔𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘷𝘢𝘪𝘭 𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘩𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘢𝘶 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘦́ 𝘱𝘢𝘳 𝘭’𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘥𝘦 𝘵𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘶𝘴 𝘳𝘦́𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘦́𝘴 𝘦𝘵 𝘥’𝘪𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘰𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘩𝘪𝘦 𝘩𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘲𝘶𝘦. 𝘔𝘢𝘪𝘴 𝘥𝘢𝘯𝘴 𝘴𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘦 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘦, 𝘪𝘭 𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘦́ 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘭’𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘳 𝘦𝘵 𝘴’𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘦 », dit-elle. « 𝘊𝘦𝘭𝘢 𝘯𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘦 𝘭’𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘥𝘶 𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘰𝘶𝘷𝘦𝘢𝘶 𝘦𝘵 𝘥𝘦 𝘭𝘢 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘯𝘰𝘯 𝘴𝘦𝘶𝘭𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘱𝘢𝘳 𝘭𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘶𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘲𝘶𝘦, 𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘴𝘪 𝘱𝘢𝘳 𝘭𝘢 𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘦́ 𝘥’𝘶𝘯 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘶𝘳. »

Originaire de Los Angeles, l’artiste a suivi de multiples formations, comme le prestigieux Whitney Museum Independent Study Program (2001), et un programme de résidence au Museum in Harlem. Ses travaux ont été depuis montrés dans de nombreux lieux comme les musées d’art d’Atlanta, de Chicago, d’Harlem ou de la Nouvelle-Orléans et de Santa Monica. Dans nombre de ces lieux, elle a également enseigné, comme artiste résidente. « La Lune » marque en fait une autre étape importante de son travail. Le satellite, selon des nouvelles dispositions, resterait à une place apparemment définitive. A l’inverse, l’ombre humaine pourrait changer pas de taille et de matière.

« The moon is always full », jusqu’au 22 avril.
RC (ZO mag’)
Photos: DR et Morton Fine Art.
https://www.mortonfineart.com/artist/adia-millett

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Dans ses précédentes réalisations, Adia Millett ouvrait déjà de singuliers paysages. Il arrive que l’artiste prenne le parti-pris de relire les éléments constitutifs. Par exemple elle se débarrasse de ce qui est compliqué dans la forme. Une montagne se réduit à un simple triangle. Une forêt se compose de sphères qui s’imbriquent les unes dans les autres. La réalité nouvelle est forcément singulière. Mais si l’on y réfléchit de plus près, pas certain qu’un insecte voit l’herbe qu’il a devant lui de la même façon qu’une caméra à infrarouge ou un enregistreur phonique. La réalité est fluctuante. Et ce sont ces fluctuations qu’Adia Millet traduit.

“The Moon is always full” participe à ce jeu de construction et de déconstruction. Millett démonte les choses (et les idées), elle enlève, elle déplace, elle raccommode et livre ainsi des histoires en mutation. “La lune est toujours pleine” par exemple, figée dans un cosmos…

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