A Tree Grows In Holland, 12" x 16" 2007
BIOGRAPHY
Pittsburgh collage artist Bill Miller has worked with vintage linoleum flooring as his medium for +30 years. Linoleum was a ubiquitous interior material, evoking memories and recognizable from Grandma’s kitchen, childhood schoolroom, corner drug store or other aspects of everyday life. His unexpected use of familiar patterns taps into the medium's nostalgic qualities and viewers’ personal histories. Adding no paint, Miller’s assemblages rely on the flooring’s found surface, often bearing marks from decades of use.
Born 1962 in Cleveland, OH, Miller relocated to Pittsburgh as the steel industry collapsed, creating a rust belt of crumbling towns. He was a founding member of Pittsburgh’s Industrial Arts Co-op, which responded by constructing immense sculptures inside abandoned industrial buildings from materials on-site. While scavenging, Miller was drawn to scraps of vintage linoleum and compulsively began collecting what was to become his principle medium.
Miller’s experience has long been shaped by the tragic impact of industrialization. Both parents were from West Virginia coal-mining families. His grandfather was tragically killed in the mines when Miller was a child. His parents moved to the industrial center of Cleveland, where his father too lost his life in a factory accident when Miller was a teen.
Miller graduated from Art Institute of Pittsburgh and worked as art director at the indie newsweekly InPittsburgh. He moved to the NYC area in 1998, working at The Village Voice and exhibiting in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. In 2000, he relocated to the Washington DC area to focus full-time on his art, dividing his time with the Hudson Valley near Woodstock, NY. He returned to Pittsburgh in 2013 and purchased a vintage firehouse as studio and storage for literally tons of accumulated flooring. His inventory provides an expansive palette of factory-printed surfaces reflecting American design from the waning Victorian era through mid-century, after which true linoleum, a mixture of natural materials, was supplanted by “modern” vinyl alternatives.
Miller was honored with a retrospective at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts in 2007. In 2010, he created the cover image for Frank Zappa’s anti-censorship CD Congress Shall Make No Law, and in 2012 the cover for Zappa’s posthumous Finer Moments. In 2012 Miller created poster art for the Woodstock Film Festival and provided the signature artwork for Drap-Art, International Festival of Recycled Art of Barcelona and has since exhibited in +10 editions, including in Uruguay.
Miller’s most recent solo show in 2022 was at dieFirma, NYC, following solo shows in NYC, LA, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, New Orleans, Austin, San Diego, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Woodstock. His work has been presented at NADA Miami, Outsider Art Fair NYC, SOFA Chicago, The Philadelphia Show (Philadelphia Museum of Art), Mr. Rain's Funhouse (American Visionary Art Museum), Erie Art Museum, and the Thoreau Center for Sustainability (Presidio, San Francisco.) He has been profiled by National Geographic Channel and featured in NYT, ArtNews, Artnet, Hyperallergic, Brooklyn Vegan, Brooklyn Rail, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Pittsburgh Magazine, PostIndustrial, HOME Magazine and books Found Object Art and ReTrash.
Born 1962 in Cleveland, OH, Miller relocated to Pittsburgh as the steel industry collapsed, creating a rust belt of crumbling towns. He was a founding member of Pittsburgh’s Industrial Arts Co-op, which responded by constructing immense sculptures inside abandoned industrial buildings from materials on-site. While scavenging, Miller was drawn to scraps of vintage linoleum and compulsively began collecting what was to become his principle medium.
Miller’s experience has long been shaped by the tragic impact of industrialization. Both parents were from West Virginia coal-mining families. His grandfather was tragically killed in the mines when Miller was a child. His parents moved to the industrial center of Cleveland, where his father too lost his life in a factory accident when Miller was a teen.
Miller graduated from Art Institute of Pittsburgh and worked as art director at the indie newsweekly InPittsburgh. He moved to the NYC area in 1998, working at The Village Voice and exhibiting in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. In 2000, he relocated to the Washington DC area to focus full-time on his art, dividing his time with the Hudson Valley near Woodstock, NY. He returned to Pittsburgh in 2013 and purchased a vintage firehouse as studio and storage for literally tons of accumulated flooring. His inventory provides an expansive palette of factory-printed surfaces reflecting American design from the waning Victorian era through mid-century, after which true linoleum, a mixture of natural materials, was supplanted by “modern” vinyl alternatives.
Miller was honored with a retrospective at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts in 2007. In 2010, he created the cover image for Frank Zappa’s anti-censorship CD Congress Shall Make No Law, and in 2012 the cover for Zappa’s posthumous Finer Moments. In 2012 Miller created poster art for the Woodstock Film Festival and provided the signature artwork for Drap-Art, International Festival of Recycled Art of Barcelona and has since exhibited in +10 editions, including in Uruguay.
Miller’s most recent solo show in 2022 was at dieFirma, NYC, following solo shows in NYC, LA, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, New Orleans, Austin, San Diego, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Woodstock. His work has been presented at NADA Miami, Outsider Art Fair NYC, SOFA Chicago, The Philadelphia Show (Philadelphia Museum of Art), Mr. Rain's Funhouse (American Visionary Art Museum), Erie Art Museum, and the Thoreau Center for Sustainability (Presidio, San Francisco.) He has been profiled by National Geographic Channel and featured in NYT, ArtNews, Artnet, Hyperallergic, Brooklyn Vegan, Brooklyn Rail, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Pittsburgh Magazine, PostIndustrial, HOME Magazine and books Found Object Art and ReTrash.
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