In this house I call home
Bill Miller
August 19 – 23, 2020
dieFirma East, Shelter Island, NY
dieFirma is pleased to announce In this house I call home at dieFirma East, located on Shelter Island, NY. Originally slated for this spring prior to the COVID-19 lockdown, this is the first exhibition of a series of more than 30 new collages created by Bill Miller over the last year, including some of his most ambitious, large-scale works to date.
Miller cuts and arranges vintage linoleum to explore the work of memory and how representation conditions our personal and collective consciousnesses. Using images taken from his own life, pop culture, and art—such as van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles—Miller transmutes found linoleum, which bears the scuffs and scrapes of its use, into a witness and teller of history.
Both an authentic artifact and artificial product, linoleum was often manufactured to create illusions of more valuable surfaces. Miller doesn’t modify the surface of this now out-of-fashion material, instead choosing to transform its plainness into complex pictorial arrangements, while letting its own material legacy speak.
Whether recognizable from Grandma’s kitchen, a childhood school room, or the corner drug store, in Miller’s hand linoleum evokes commonplace memories, as well as broader narratives of industrialization, deindustrialization, violence, and loss that have shaped much of American culture and Miller’s own life as a working-class artist. The collages of In this house I call home have an abiding curiosity about the past, and a conviction that its traces can be imbued with new life.
dieFirma East will offer the opportunity to take in the full significance and scale of Miller’s collages in a wooded location as part of a unique socially distanced art experience. For five days, dieFirma East will offer limited sign-ups to permit the safe experience of In this house I call home.
About Bill Miller
Bill Miller was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1962. He studied at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, during which time he became a founding member of the Industrial Arts Co-op. After earning his degree, he moved to Denver, Colorado where he studied at Denver University and Colorado State University, concentrating on painting and printmaking. In 1988 Miller moved to New York City, where he worked at The Village Voice and exhibited his work in a series of exhibits in Chelsea. In 2000, he relocated to Washington, D.C., to focus full time on his art. Miller currently resides in Pittsburgh.
About Linoleum
Read the exhibition catalogue
Willis and Ginny, 2019
James' Chair, 2019
The Tree, 1995
Early Spring, 2019
Starry Night, 2019
Steal Mill, 2019
The Immigrants, 2019
Afternoon Tea, 2020
Big Yellow House, 2020
Bowl of Fruit, 2020
Charles Street, 2020
City Garden, 2020
Country Cottage, 2020
East River, 2020
East River Study, 2020
Home, 2020
In this house, 2020
Island Arrival, 2020
May Flowers, 2020
Paris Match, 2020
Seaside Flowers, 2020
Sirikoi Terrace, 2020
The Cliff, 2020
The Farmhouse, 2020
The Parlor, 2020
Uncle Jim's House, 2020
Walk on Moon Township, 2020
Wicker Basket, 2020
The Stoep, 2020
Stone Ridge, 2020
Bill Miller: Artist Box
This artist box was created in conjunction with the exhibition In this house I call home: Bill Miller, on view at dieFirma East from August 19–23, 2020
Each box contains an original, one-of-a-kind linoleum collage created by Bill Miller, as well as a zine featuring an essay by Glenn Adamson and images of Miller’s work and process.
Published by dieFirma
Created, printed, and assembled at dieFirma East in Shelter Island, NY
