Bill Miller and Gloria Kisch: In the Garden

Bill Miller and Gloria Kisch

In the Garden

July 21 – August 8, 2021

dieFirma East, Shelter Island, NY

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dieFirma announces a return to its Shelter Island outpost this summer, featuring an event and exhibition series in an intimate and wild woodland garden. Highlighting returning artist Bill Miller and sculptures by the late Gloria Kisch, dieFirma will host a full calendar of art events including site tours, workshops, creative demonstrations, and a series of artist talks from July 21 - August 8th.

“Bill Miller will be working on-site to share his work and his process, offering viewers a rich and layered experience throughout his residency,” shares dieFirma’s Founding Director, Andrea Stern. “This intimate engagement with the artist is consistent with our mission to create a dynamic exchange between artist and viewer, bringing them closer together.”

Bill Miller: In the Garden opens July 21st. The show features Miller’s latest body of work, where he cuts and collages vintage linoleum, transforming the material into complex arrangements while highlighting its nostalgic legacy.

Adjacent to Miller's work will be an installation of sculptures made in her North Fork studio by the late Gloria Kisch. The Bells, a series of large scale mobile-like sculptures, evoke religious totems, modernist sculptures, and the visual language of industrial manufacturing in equal measure. With Flowers, Kisch rendered natural forms whimsically using colorfully painted steel. Most are designed to be mounted on the wall, appearing like paintings growing out towards the viewer.

A highlight of dieFirma’s summer offerings is a series of hands-on workshops with Miller. Participants will be led in the artist's signature style of collage. Each attendee will explore the artist’s archive of material and create their custom assemblage to take home.

“Linoleum holds a history of people’s lives that we can tap into,” says Miller. “Returning to dieFirma and getting the chance to not only exhibit my work but interact with the public through talks and workshops allows for a greater exploration of that history between the material and the viewer. I’m thrilled to see how the public reinterprets my work into their own during the workshops.”

Summer programming includes a series of talks between Miller and members from the creative community, in addition to on-site Q&A’s with Miller, workshops, and viewings of the exhibition where the artist will be available to guide guests through the exhibit and his process.

dieFirma’s grounds are available to the public to freely explore Bill Miller: In the Garden, as well as an exhibition of works by Gloria Kisch. Additional offerings include guided tours to a nearby sculpture garden in Flanders, where a permanent collection of works by Kisch is on display.

Reservations begin June 10. Tickets are free and open to the public.

Visit in-the-garden.eventbrite.com to RSVP.

PRESS

Shelter Island Gazette

27 East

Bill Miller

Bill Miller was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1962. He studied at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, during which time he became a founding member of the Industrial Arts Co-op. After earning his degree, he moved to Denver, Colorado where he studied at Denver University and Colorado State University, concentrating on painting and printmaking. In 1988 Miller moved to New York City, where he worked at The Village Voice and exhibited his work in a series of exhibits in Chelsea. In 2000, he relocated to Washington, D.C., to focus full time on his art. Miller currently resides in Pittsburgh.

https://www.billmillerart.com/

Gloria Kisch

Gloria Kisch was born in New York City in 1941. Following studies at Otis College of Art and Design, Kisch became part of the intimate circle of feminist and post-minimalist artists living and working in Venice Beach, California. In 1982 she returned to New York, settling in the East Village where she dedicated her process to metalworking in bronze, aluminum, and stainless steel. A decade later, she bought a 40-acre space in Flanders, Long Island, where she devoted the rest of her life to metalwork across all scales, with a particular interest in monumental, outdoor work that reflected her interest in nature and the environment. Kisch exhibited prolifically at venues including MoMA PS1, New York; Bergen Museum of Art, New Jersey; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; Parrish Art Museum, Southampton; the Denver Art Museum, Colorado; LACMA, Los Angeles, among others. In 2009, she published Gloria Kisch: Fusion of Opposites, a monograph that spanned her career. In 2019, dieFirma presented a posthumous exhibition of works, many unseen, in “...for Gloria,” accompanied by a new publication created in collaboration with bookdummypress, “Gloria Kisch: Immortal Flowers.”