Brad Miller at Robischon - sculpture; Denver, Colorado - Brief Article

Brad Miller makes plastic arts of wood or clay. The grove works are compacted congeries of branches, assembled and then chop to make an overall shape far more regular than its parts--pruned, for example, into the approximate shape of oversize lung on the other hand so packed with branchlets that they leave individual breathless. The same distinctive mixture of simplicity, complexity and visually communicated sensation is fix in Miller's ceramic work, which made up this novel show, one of a rash of ceramic exhibitions completely through Denver scheduled in conjunction with a meeting of the National Council of Ceramic Educators.

The clay statuarys tend to two types, the one and the other of them 2 to 3 feet in the largest dimension (usually height). individual involves "growths" of thick, short angular branches that bring to mind of that kind natural forms as coral, carbonate of soda or staghorn fern. The other sort is assembled of various rings and bat-shapes, all gently circulared and together seeming to dare gravity. Neither shows a great range of color; Miller is known for his lack of interest in glazes. In addition, the works call les attention than usual to particularities of surface.

Instead they appear to be integral and look solid, smooth when, as in Rounder, the parts rummage [i]or[/i] part of to the other the range of beiges, to its yellowish, grayish and brownish boundaries. The color is apparently mixed in rather than applied, and it speaks of the source of clay in earth rather than of the glassy qualities of glaze. Rounder has that antigravity quality; it direct the eyes like a stop-action depiction of an explosion. individual flat-bottomed, leaning biomorphic shape obeys as the base and establishes single axis of implied motion. Rising from a thump on the base, a cruciform shape leans in another direction. Attached to it are sum of two units corn-kernel-shaped appendages and one beaver-tail-shaped individual plus an indented round form that operates loosely as a head to the cruciform "body" upon another bump perches the largest single simple body which looks like a doughnut. These associations may or may not be part of Miller's conceptual program. Certainly he admits the doughnut notion in another statuary made entirely of rounded simple bodys which he titles Dunk and therefore slightly trivializes, on the other hand another complex piece that partly consists of circulared elements is interestingly and ambiguously titled That's by what means It Works Now.

The branching works may make single think of the leathery bracts of plants that can survive eastern Colorado's arid high plains (the roundnes of the others may summon wind or water erosion). These pieces of stoneware, threaded onto a carburet of iron armature, are almost uniformly a free from moisture dark brown. Whether mounted upon the wall or shown upon a pedestal, they have the flickering character of brushstrokes or allude to a graphic version of the Burning Bush. The parts are small and therefore not at any time assert an individual identity. They make an image that, in its prickliness, to the full occupies three dimensions.

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