PDX Contemporary Art is pleased to present Day and night, a solo exhibition of new work by artist Kristen Miller.

We all experience the continuous cycle of light and shadow within each day. Through choice of materials and technique, Kristen Miller documents this changing of light over hours, days, months, and seasons. Using transparent layers of organdy fabric, lustrous silk thread, and shiny glass beads, Miller creates meticulously sewn compositions which weave together ideas on light, repetition, and time.

Day and night features two large-scale installation works alongside smaller, intimate wall works. Her intricate processes of stitching, folding, and beading accumulate into lines, patterns, and forms. The sheerness and weave of the fabric give the feeling that the works are both becoming and dissolving. The reflective glass beads are small, but weighty, incrementally building up to depict a tangible sense of the shifting of time. With each new day and new night a consistent pattern unfolds, but there is mystery in not knowing what the future holds—opening an opportunity to choose hope.

Kristen Miller lives and works in Portland, Oregon. She received her BFA from the University of Kansas and her MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. She was included in the 1997 Portland Art Museum Oregon Biennial and was awarded an Individual Artist Project Grant in 2009 by the Regional Arts & Culture Council. Miller has been an artist-in-residence at the Kemijärvi Artist Residence (Kemijärvi, Finland), Centrum Arts and Education Artist Residency Program (Port Townsend, WA), the Djerassi Artists’ Residence Program (Woodside, CA), and at the Oregon College of Art and Craft (Portland, OR). Her work has been shown nationally, having been included in exhibitions at the Cranbrook Art Museum (Bloomfield Hills, MI), the Hoffman Gallery at the Oregon College of Art and Craft (Portland, OR), Portland Art Museum (Portland, OR), Schneider Museum of Art (Ashland, OR), The Art Gym (Portland, OR), Hallie Ford Museum of Art (Salem, OR), Albrecht Kemper Museum of Art (St. Joseph, MO), Nine Gallery (Portland, OR), and the Wayne Art Center (Wayne, PA).

Miller’s work is in numerous collections including Fidelity Investments, The Swig Company, Kemijärvi Sculpture & Culture Foundation, Soho House Portland, and the Regional Arts & Culture Council’s Portable Works Collection, as well as a number of private collections.