Artist perseveres to complete work

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This article was published 02/10/2015 (3858 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For a local artist, a hectic, stressful year ultimately led to the production of an inspired body of work.

“It’s interesting, when you’re having a hard time, to let your mind go free and see where it takes you,” said Jordan Miller, who divides her time between North Kildonan and the Exchange.

Over the past year, Miller dealt with family health issues, a dissolution of a business partnership, and the stress felt throughout Winnipeg’s art community following the City’s closure of the nearby Frame Arts Warehouse on Ross Avenue.

“But I wanted to persevere and get it done,” she said of the work contained in her latest solo exhibition, It All Starts With a Line. “Even though all this stuff was going on I kept saying, ‘Just go with it, just go with it.’”

When she began to feel “a darkness” pervading some of her work, she deliberately switched course.

“I tried to bring back the light, and I felt like I really just wanted to have fun and play with art,” she said. “That’s when I started doing these mono-prints, which are actually really fun and playful.”

Miller holds a bachelor of fine arts from the University of Manitoba and a diploma in arts and cultural management from the University of Winnipeg. She is not only an artist, but also the proprietor and executive director of the cre8ery Gallery (125 Adelaide St.), where It All Starts With a Line is on display from Oct. 3 through 27. All the pieces are available for sale.

“My whole everything is surrounded by art,” Miller said. “From the time I get up to the time I go home, I’m doing all these different things towards my art career. Not necessarily painting, but working.”

The exhibition contains both mono-prints, image transfers and paintings. For the most part, the pieces aren’t directly connected, and yet each piece fits together.

“It was all intuitive painting,” Miller said, explaining her painting process. “I literally took my brush and painted, drizzled paint. It dripped, it bled. I flipped it. I sprayed it with water. I flipped it again, sprayed it with water. Then I stepped back and wondered what it would be. I’d paint a few more lines, then watch them swirl together. Then, slowly, whatever it was would translate and transform.”

Miller has previously had solo exhibits at cre8ery in 2010 and 2013. Her work has also been shown in Carman, Man., and Winnipeg’s Centennial Concert Hall. She has group shows planned for the first few months of 2016, but following It All Starts With a Line, she said she’ll be taking some time to regroup.

“I need to catch my breath,” she said. “My job is all about planning and procedure. So I don’t want to plan in my art anymore. I just want to be free. Art doesn’t really have to have any rules, and I kind of like that.”

It All Starts With a Line is on exhibit at cre8ery Gallery from Sat., Oct. 3 through Tues., Oct. 27. The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday between noon and 6 p.m.

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