Looking for the Line

WENDY FRANKLUND MILLERSeptember 7 - November 3, 2001

JUNDT ART MUSEUMG 0 n zag a U n i v e r sit Y • S P0 k a n e, Was h i n 9 ton

Looking for the Line:A Way of Ordering

AN EXISTENTIAL PROCESSIn Kazuo Ishiguro's novel The Unconso/ed, a musiciannamed Ryder comes to a nameless town in order toconduct a concert. It is a slightly fantastic, whollyphilosophical novel. Over 500 pages are devoted tohow every possible thing in life steps in and intrudesupon what Ryder believes is his goal of conductingthe above-mentioned concert. At the time Ishigurowrote it, reviewers rightfully compared it to Kafka'sexistential work, The Castle. It is a story worthrepeating because it so aptly describes the humancondition. In this small exhibition of work, Lookingfor the Line, Wendy Franklund Miller tells a similarstory. She makes paintings that wend and weavetheir way through images and iconography. Shelayers colors within sheets of wax, and we look,anxiously at first, trying to arrive at one, single solitarypoint-only to discover that the richness of her workis not nearly so linear, so goal oriented. The pleasure of viewing these paintings lies precisely in howmyriad scraps of visual data rest together, irrationally arranged. Their crowded presence, their veryproximity to one another, creates a dialogue that in and of itself talks of something much more subtle thanany single idea.

LAYERS of WAX, LAYERS of THOUGHTThe paintings here are all encaustic, an ancient and remarkably durable medium (there are existing encausticsthat are as old as the 2nd century B.C.). It is also a demanding medium that requires great skill and delicacy.Contemporary encaustics are generally made by covering drawn marks with sheets of wax, which are thenheated or burned by a propane torch to create a series of smooth layers as translucent as amber. Thearcheology of the painting is laid bare for the viewer. In these works one sees lines of every quality-thinand tentative, crystalline clear and bold, hand drawn, and stenciled-all suspended throughout layers andlayers of waxy rich color. Some parts are obscured in the process; they leave odd ghosts of original imageryand make new, unlikely associations between what can still be seen. Franklund Miller uses beeswax, and itlends all her work a faintly musky smell, redolent of outdoors and mild decay. In contrast to all this visualand olfactory sensuality however, she fills most of her paintings with an astonishing amount of specificvisual information. In Man on the Moon, an outline of a man in a bowler hat floats horizontally above anothermirror image of himself, which is nestled on top of a large orange orb. The orb looks a bit like an over ripeand oversized rose hip. Throughout the entire Beliefseries, one sees flowers, bits of human anatomy, teeth,remnants of lace, and scientific models crowded up or layered on one another. In Belief #6, the numeralsone through nine (with the noticeable exception of five) are carefully stenciled in a neat sequence, but theyappear out of nowhere. It is a free fall.

With such a disparate collection of symbols, Franklund Miller creates a visual vocabulary that mirrors humanthought. Her Beliefseries, like Ishiguro's novel, is rewarding to anyone with the least penchant for introspectionor human psychology. There is a gentle humor in viewing such a plethora of icons and associations. Itschaos is resolutely human; it is something we all know.

Franklund Miller's work as a papermaker and painter has garnered her numerous awards, including aWashington State Artists Trust grant. The list of public and private collections that house her work is extensive,and she has exhibited in cities throughout the United States and in Nishinomiya, Japan. She is currentlyrepresented by the Lorinda Knight Gallery in Spokane, and the Augen Gallery in Portland plans an exhibition

of her work in 2002. Her list of heroes: Agnes Martin, Sol Lewitt, Sean Scully, Squeak Carnwath-exceptingthe latter-are noted for-the extreme minimalism of their imagery, their sparsely ordered surfaces and objects.Opposites attract. Rather than giving the viewer a discrete, quiet surface, Franklund Miller sets up a visualchallenge that forces the viewer to make his or her own sense of the multiple references.

MATERIALS, TECHNIQUE, and PROCESSIn addition to her formal education, she has studied at Banff and recently was an artist-in-residence at theWomen's Studio Workshop in New York. But among her peers, Franklund Miller is noted for her ability toteach herself new media. Adept at absorbing traditional techniques, she uses them in unlikely ways. In1984 she began working with handmade paper. By 1988 she had turned simple papermaking into largerthan life-sized sculptures. Within five years her reputation had grown to the point that she was givingpapermaking workshops to others throughout the area and as far away as Alaska. When Franklund Millerwas invited to demonstrate her technique to Bellevue Art Fair-goers in 1988, Karen Mathieson of the SeattleTimes remarked on her strong and unusual approach to the craft of papermakinq.' In the early 1990's,through contact with multi-media artist Carl Chew from Seattle, she took on an entirely new medium. Shetaught herself computer aided design programs. Within a year she was designing her own rugs, which werethen woven in Nepal. Most of these works are now housed in private collections.

Her learning curve with encaustic painting was similarly steep and quick. After a 1994 artist residency, shebegan to include language and text in her works and to use wax. By the mid-1990's, with the Mute series (areference to Alzheimer's Disease), she was layering paper with natural materials, such as stones, submergedunder sheets of wax. She credits her fascination with media and technique to her personality, claiming that"encaustic and papermaking take a lot of time. You have to have an ability to focus on small things and letthat be."

One is tempted to highlight the materials involved in Franklund Miller's work, because of her virtuoso technique.But this would do an injustice to the work itself. What makes her work so seductive is that the techniqueappears effortless; it advances itself easily to the many social and intellectual ideas behind each piece.Robert Kochs of Augen Gallery feels that Franklund Miller's work suggests views that are at once both"macrocosmic and microcosmic." He says, "with some of her paintings, I feel I could be either lookingthrough a microscope or a telescope."

MYRIAD SCRAPS to MAKE a WHOLEThis ability to render minute details and ideas as well aslarge abstract concepts is due partly to Franklund Miller'sworking style. Intellectually she has, at various times,been inspired by issues as broad as war, religion,traditional roles of women, and aging. Yet her glossaryof images is culled from the smallest, most mundanesources. In addition to drawing by hand, she traces theoutlines of bric-a-brac-flowers, a piece of furniture, evena car ornament are forms that she repeats over and overagain. They become a cultural shorthand. The rose (inparticular plastic roses molded in relief) is found in herwork with a fair amount of frequency. Many of the moreabstract images that run across the surface of her workcome from equally unexpected sources. The concentriccircles that appear throughout these series were madeby tracing the lines of a small cooking grill onto the waxlayers. In Belief #7 there is an image of waves on theviewer's left; the pattern came from a text on DNA. Thenext work, Belief #8, has another wave that echoes thisscientific illustration, but was actually made by pressinga potato masher into the soft surface of the painting.Graters and meat tenderizers are also used to createtextures and patterns. There is a slightly feminist,

decidedly deadpan humor in the way Franklund Miller wields kitchenware as tools for her abstract ideas.Using such household objects or cheap decorative kitsch amuses her. She claims, "Often people don't seeit, but I think it's funny. "It amuses me to make 'high' art from so-called 'low' art."

Not only does Franklund Miller use standard domestic objects as drawing tools, she appropriates equallystandardized icons from medical, nautical, and botanical textbooks to make up her satisfyingly associativenarratives. One can identify teeth, drawings of knots, bowls, and funnels in nearly all her work. In Bride, thedominant image is a tracing of an ornate table leg that floats over an earlier layer of both a knot and a rose.Netting from a veil is also incised into the surface, and the result lets the viewers into all the anxiety associatedwith weddings and commitment. Cuspids, those odd pointed teeth that mirror the human frame, appear andreappear in different alignments. In Belief #8 they face one another like two autonomous beings, and inOpen they are arranged horizontally with their very points intersecting.

In Fall 2000 she received a commission from Temple Beth Shalom to create an encaustic for their ArkDoors. Attracted to the symbolism of religions, she saw this commission as an opportunity to make time tostudy traditional Judaic imagery. "I am attracted to the visual iconography of religions. Ideally, I'd like to takea couple of months every year to delve into another religion." She added that now the encaustic is installed,she loves going into the synagogue to polish the piece. "It's wonderful to pop into a spiritual place that is thecore of beliefs." That the Beliefseries was completed during this same time is an appropriate addendum tothe specificity of the Synagogue's commission. The series is a secular work that jumps from DNA patternsto the muscular structure of the eyeball. It is a poetic interpretation of the underlying human psychology thatfosters belief and faith.

In the series Line/Incline, Franklund Miller seems to be playing with the process of drawing itself. Eachof these 12 by 12 inch boxes is constructed as a frame that opens to reveal a smaller interior square. InLine/Incline, each small interior square hosts a central image of either concentric circles or an ellipse ordots. Perhaps because the imagery in this series is sparser and the layering of paint is more opaque, thetension between the viscous quality of the wax and Franklund Miller's confident use of line is heightened. Ifthe Belief series mirrors our thinking processes, these little boxes suggest something much more personal.They are an anatomy of Franklund Miller's own working process-a distillation of her colors, ideas, and line.

It is probably safe to say that we look at the arts through filters that are both cultural and personal. But thereis a flux within those filters that gives the visual arts its breadth. There is a power in the way visual symbols

l~Bell~vue fair focuses ... ", Karen Mathieson. Seattle Times, July 29,1988.

Frances DeVuono

can .skirt both the Ifteralness of words and tlie abStraction of sCi,und. When asked towrite on Franklund Miller's work, I found myself dwelling on psychology and how herrestive arrangement of information resonates with our complex world. Franklund Millerdescribes her paintings more. mOdestly: "I see these works ;:is? a way of gathering mysymbols. What I am doing is taking all the symbOls from my past and trying to use.them ina way that makes sense of contemporary life. We are exposed to so muchinformation every day. On one hand, we can't possibly absorb all of it, so we have tochoose=we have to try and make our own sense of it all." She continues, "My coreinterests deal with equality and access to information. These are the really importantissues. I took the idea of 'belief' as a way of naming that process. There is alwaysthis longing, a way to make everything make sense, but we never reach it. We'd betterJust accept it and laugh-just admit we don't know and let our sense of humor takeover."

Wendy Franklund Miller was born in 1943 in Bismarck, North Dakota, and grew up in Yakima,Washington. She received her B.S. in 1976 from Eastern Washington University and studied art atBanff Centre, Alberta, Canada; Gonzaga University; Oregon State University; Spokane FallsCommunity College, and Walla Walla Community College. She now lives and works in Spokane.

Selected Solo ExhibitionsSolus, Lorinda Knight Gallery, Spokane, 1998Encaustics, North Idaho College, 1997Mute, Lorinda Knight Gallery, Spokane, 1997Noctuary, Chase Gallery, Spokane, 1992Friendly Fire, Skagit Valley College, 1992Recent Work, Bellevue Community College, 1991Departure, Eastern Washington University, 1990Witness, Whitworth College, Spokane, 1988Influences: Paying Homage, University of

Montana, Missoula, 1988Influences: Paying Homage, Seattle Pacific

University, 1987

Selected Two-Person ExhibitionsLorinda Knight Gallery, February 2000Ventura College, Ventura, CA, 1996Seattle Pacific University, .1996Sinclair College, Dayton, Ohio, 1994

Selected Group ExhibitionsLorinda Knight Gallery, August 2000On Target, Lorinda Knight Gallery, Spokane, 1998Computer Art Exhibition, Northern Arizona University,

Flagstaff, Arizona, 1998Way Out West: Art From the Other Washington,

Washington, DC, 1998Distinct Vernacular, Washington State Convention

Center, Seattle, 1997Interior Idioms, Seafirst Gallery, Seattle, 1995National Paper Invitational, Central Washington

University, 1991100 Years of Washington Art, Tacoma Art

Museum, 1989

Selected Public CollectionsAmoco Corp., ChicagoCheney Cowles Museum, SpokaneEastern Washington University FoundationGeneral Motors, ChicagoIBM Corporation, SpokaneIllinois Bell Telephone Co., ChicagoNorth by Northwest, Boise, SpokaneSafeco Insurance Co., SpokaneSpokane City HallTemple Beth Shalom, SpokaneWashington State Arts CommissionWestinghouse Corporation, ChicagoXerox Corporation, Chicago

Selected AwardsArtist Trust 10th Anniversary President's Award, 1997Fellowship, Women's Studio Workshop,

Rosendale, NY, 1994Big Sky Biennial VI, Idaho State University, 1990

Selected BibliographyBrunsman & Askey. Modernism & Beyond: Women

Artists of the Pacific Northwest (New York:Midmarch Arts Press, 1993), pp. 162-163.

Cohn, Terri. "About Paper." Artweek, August 23, 1986.Crane, Julianne. "Wendy Franklund Miller." The Local

Planet, April 13, 2000.Drake, Tommi. Celebrate Northwest Women.

Catalog, Rogue Community College, 1994.Grove, Connie. "Art for All:' The Inlander,

January 15, 1997.Mathieson, Kathy. "Papermaking Focus."

Seattie Times, July 29, 1988.Sellars, Beth. A Distinct Vernacular. Catalog,

Convention Center, Seattle, Summer 1997.Sellars, Beth. Interior Idioms. Catalog,

Seafirst Gallery, November 1995.

ImagesCover: Raging Heart, 2000. Encaustic, 15"x 15"x 4", private collection.Center Panel: Belief #8, 2001. Encaustic, 12"x 48"x 3", collection of the artist.Folded Inside Panel: String Game, 1998. Encaustic, 15"x 15"x 4", private collection.

This publication was funded by the Jundt Art Museum's Annual Campaign 2000-2001.© Jundt Art Museum, Gonzaga University, Spokane, Washington 99258-0001.