Jenn Ryann Miller
PARACHUTE GALLERY CORE ARTIST
Jenn Ryann Miller · Tampa, FL
Jenn Ryann Miller explores materiality and aesthetics through abstract sculpture and painting. With a background in functional ceramics, her work subverts tradition and process through the experimentation with oblique materials and forms. Miller has been part of numerous solo and group exhibitions in Florida and the United States. Originally from Connecticut, she received a BFA from the University of Connecticut and MFA from the University of South Florida. Miller currently teaches ceramics at the University of South Florida.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My work describes consumerist desire through the creation of carefully hand-crafted objects with ambiguous functionality and imagery. While depicting specific tools of domesticity or utility, the objects remain pluralistic. Utility, function and material become concept as craft is harnessed as a vehicle for the exploration of the conditions of manufacture. The objects created are simultaneously pejorative and celebratory; charming, with an irreverent sense of perfectionism.
Detailed elements are often obtuse, made with an air of insouciance to counteract the machined perfectionism of mass production. They reward a closer look; every detail has been carefully considered. The objects are ambiguous, yet familiar. They reference objects of domestic banality, ritual, devotion, and sensuality with the formal qualities of art objects. Too see them often feels unfulfilling, you must interact with them to activate their potential – but this potential is denied by the conditions of the fine art white walled environment.
Through the rejection of commodity and mass manufacture, the objects are in turn made into valuable commodities. As an expanded exploration of material and the formal elements of sculpture and painting my practice focuses on the formal elements of scale, space, and the relationships between surface, form, material, and craft. Through these formal elements the objects are able to encourage discourse about the function of material and objects in contemporary culture.
[Updated September 2023]
