LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WHAS11) – There are a lot of roles in a functioning arts community and Adrienne Miller plays two of them. By day she is the Exhibition and Special Project Coordinator at the Speed Art Museum, helping to keep the museum humming along, and by night she is a studio artist, channeling her creativity as part of the latest class of Hadley Creatives. Miller took a break from her busy schedule to tell us how she performs this balancing act. Here’s what she had to say:
DOUBLE DUTY I definitely have two jobs. The main one that keeps me financially stable is my employment at the Speed Art Museum. I am the Exhibition and Special Project Coordinator. My title essentially means that I am working for all our five curators as their project manager for all the exhibitions we are putting together. On any given day I am creating and ordering all the labels you see throughout the galleries, deciding on paint colors, coordinating our preparations team on which artworks in the collection are moving around, or hosting meetings where we present exhibitions that might be a year out to the rest of the staff. My second job is my on-again-off-again job as an artist. As you can imagine it is an interesting balancing act to be employed at the largest art institution in the state of Kentucky and be a working studio artist as well. Thankfully my experience has been that Louisville is incredibly supportive of the arts and has an increasing number of avenues for that art support through just a really amazing community, as well as grant funding, exhibition opportunities, etc. I say on-again-off-again because studio work has ebbs and flows. I'm always "working" but it might not literally be drawing. Sometimes it is just looking or reading or writing emails.
IN THE STUDIO I usually tell people that I mostly create works on paper. I have a BFA in photography and an MFA in printmaking, so I have been focused on a two-dimensional plane for a while. My work currently is a mix of both drawings and print work. I was fortunate enough to get connected with Calliope Arts early on when moving to Louisville and they have served as my printmaking home base for the last three years. I also have a small studio space at my home. My work currently investigates “What is the contemporary American landscape to the average American?” Traditionally, American landscape paintings have shown us these amazing, wide-open vistas or been described as these sweeping purple mountains majesty, but to the everyday person it might be something as simple as their interstate commute or their own backyard. We encounter nature in such a different way in 2019. There is so much psychological power tied to both land ownership and our urban areas eating up the landscape. That is the direction my work is currently headed, I think. I am a former recipient of the Hadley Prize from the Community Foundation of Louisville and was able to go travel in the southwestern United States for two weeks and research Puebla ruins. I'm sure that time will start to surface in my work going forward.
Right now, I am amazingly part of the second class of Hadley Creatives, a six-month-long professional development program created by the Community Foundation of Louisville. It has been a really eye-opening experience to work with my fellow Creatives, who aren't all visual artists. I can foresee my drawings coming off the page and moving into three dimensions now. It has really spurred me to evaluate where I want my studio practice to go next.
TIME AWAY FROM ART In my downtime or days off, I usually wake up medium early and make breakfast with my husband. We are vegetarian/vegan so it’s usually a tofu scramble on the weekends. I have fallen in love with Barre3 so I try to catch a morning class, usually, so I get the motivation to be a little productive even though it’s a day off. If we really want to get out for a day trip we go to Lexington or Cincinnati. We like to take a lot of day trips to hike when the weather is nice, but if we stay in town we find a pocket of the city we aren't familiar with to explore or we go poke around at an antique store. Since we live in Clifton, we have the best food near us, so in the summer we usually grab a beer with friends on the porch at the Silver Dollar. I'm always reading and watching things, but I really try to use the computer as little as possible on the weekends if I can get away with it. Carmichael's is one of my favorite day off treats to find a new read or go to Forage and buy a new plant.
My husband and I are always trying new restaurants or breweries, which Louisville has a plethora of. Some weeks I don't have many weeknights free between squeezing in studio work, gym time, or extra-curriculars. I am just so grateful for how easy Louisville has been to live in. My Saturdays are social and usually for running errands where Sundays are pretty sacred. This winter I haven't been leaving the house on Sundays much since we have had so much rain this year, but it’s been nice to just make tea and wear pajamas all day to prepare for another busy week. My husband and I run a monthly creative meet-up called CULT (Creative Union of Louisville Trades) that has been really fun—we have gotten people dates, jobs, roommates and helped people make new friends and connections.
You can learn more about Miller and follow her work at adrienne-miller.com. You can also see the fruits of her labor at two upcoming exhibits at the Speed—Yinka Shonibare MBE’s The American Library exhibition, opening in March, and the Ebony G. Patterson exhibition, opening in June.
