Bay College announces two exhibitions, featuring artist Ruby Andromeda Miller and artist Kimberly Turner. These exhibitions will be on view through March in celebration of Women’s History Month. A panel discussion with Miller and Turner will take place in the Besse Theater on Thursday, March 20 at 2pm ET with a reception in the Besse Gallery to follow. This event is free and open to the public.
Wave/Length is a collaborative installation between Miller and Turner that can be viewed in the Besse Gallery. Detritus Mine is a solo installation by Miller that can be viewed in the Hartwig Gallery.
Wave/Length Statement
A collaborative body of work with Ruby Andromeda Miller and Kimberly Turner,
Wave/Length is an exploration of how we come to know the things we know, and about how relationships can be a method of knowing. It is a curious exploration of the Great Lakes that have held both Miller and Turner. It is also a story of how these two artist friends are still connected, even across a vast distance, by the geography of the Great Lakes.
Ruby and Kim collected data from predetermined points along the shores of Lake Erie (where Turner grew up) and Lake Superior (where Miller currently resides), using thread as a marker that corresponded with the physical distance between the artists. Along these points, the artists collected measurements of the distance between the highest peaks and lowest valleys of the waves as they rushed onto the shore. The varying lengths of the waves dictated the width of the curves of the indigo dyed muslin that undulate along each side of the gallery walls. One side was generated from the measurements Turner gathered along Lake Erie, and the other was created from Miller’s measurements from Lake Superior.
This data collection and display is a gentle satire of empirical information; the joke being that the truth of accurate measurements was a futile pursuit in the dynamic environment of the waves. The yards of fabric are useless as a data set. However, this direct transfer of measurements into fabric embodies an experience of both physical spaces and the human desire to connect by gathering and communicating information about our environments.
Similarly, the cyanotypes and the displayed objects are gathered artifacts and records of those same shorelines. The large cyanotypes were taken while Miller and Turner were together at Lake Erie, and veer into the narratives of relationship that- although loosely held- give the figures a ghostly agency above the data-driven cloth bordering the gallery. The smaller cyanotypes document the improvisational tools used to take the wave measurements and other interesting artifacts of that process. The text comes from conversations and ideas shared during the development of this project. Some of it fun, some of it serious, all of it a record of connection.
These elements combine in a way that folds ideas, empirical data, and relationships into a multi-faceted way of knowing and creating meaning in relationship with each other, distances, and places that seem to love us back. The result is a sentimental and embodied experience of the lakes, the horizons upon which these artists have steadied themselves, and how steadfast relationships can simultaneously collapse and expand the geographic space between people.
Bio
Ruby Andromeda Miller is based in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, along the coast of the majestic Lake Superior. Originally from Mid-Michigan, she grew up in the Lansing area and earned her BFA in Sculpture at Grand Valley State University and an Associates in Welding Technology at Grand Rapids Community College. Her professional experience as a welder and seamstress are fundamental to her art practices, always with a foundation of observing, writing, and drawing. She has exhibited and taught in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York.
Statement
The spaces we inhabit and objects we collect create the territory in which we conduct relationships, creating networks between people, stories, and stages of life– including between generations and across time. At the edges of these lives and generations, things get interesting, and complications emerge. Detritus Mine is an exploration of these relationships and the edges they create as they intersect, attach, and pull on each other in unexpected ways.
I became curious about these edges while cleaning up multiple properties in a little town on the northern edge of the Allegheny Mountains in rural Pennsylvania after a significant death. A death that shifted a six-generation family's relationship with land, community, and each other. As I tried to understand and navigate these dynamics, I began to recognize similar shifts within myself and my relationships over time, the cycles of generation and degradation of identity within my own life. I spent years walking along those strange edges where notions of control deteriorated in the face of larger forces, which also made space for deep connection and understanding.
I have alchemized these learnings in Detritus Mine. A body of sculpture that incorporates materials gathered in the Pennsylvania clean up with older elements of projects I had left incomplete over a decade ago. I used multiple materials and methods in this project, leaning heavily on my background in textiles, welding, foundry casting, and drawing. The materials gathered in Pennsylvania were not the valuable pieces that got passed onto family and friends, sold in auctions, restored, and treasured. I utilized that which was otherwise destined for the cavernous dumpsters or towering bonfires. The detritus of a long family line and the edges created where the current generations and my own life intersected with those already gone. They are mine by acquisition and possession; and they are a mine because of how I have dug into them– mining them for answers.
Fittingly, this body of work has been created in stages over several years, in multiple locations and transitional spaces. It has required careful listening to what the materials are inclined to do and how to draw out the imprints of story within them. Through this process I explored the nonlinear nature of memory, the world changing process of grief, the intrusion of regret, the depths of obligation, the doggedness of hope, and the unceasing pulse of love. Translated through object, story, and time, these begin to function like ghosts in our lives. Like an off-set print, we can see the present overlaid on what was precious or grueling. An ongoing relationship that lives on at the edges of what was, could have, or should have been.