Alecia Miller

For as long as I can remember, I have always been a creative person; expressing myself through drawing, writing, and other artistic endeavors. I graduated from Drexel University with a degree in Fashion Design, although I knew that was not the career path I really wanted to pursue. My creative journey led me to ceramics. I took many classes at Chester Springs Studio as well as continuing my formal education with the ceramics program at Kutztown University.  From 2001 to 2005 I ran Nepenthe Pottery while we lived mid-state and had an onsite studio. My work was heavily influenced by forms found in nature, and the connection to the pieces that one receives when cradling a vessel in your hands. Over time, my work began to take on intricate and detailed patterned carving which added to this experience. When we moved back to eastern PA, the space for a ceramics studio was lost, and my focus shifted back to writing, drawing, and painting.

Creating mixed media artwork allows me to continue to play with textures in my pieces, and to build up layers of meanings and ideas as part of my creative process. My love of words is expressed through incorporating old book pages in the collage layers, expressly chosen for the stories they are from or the words they contain, giving new life to these forgotten tomes.

While I may have a specific plan in mind when I start a painting, as I build up the background layers I try to listen to the muse and shift or adjust as seems fit for the piece. There may be sections of the collaged background that are lost completely under layers of paint and sections of pattern that just evolve and speak to me to be saved. I recognize that this is reflective of life as we live it. Things that are key to shaping us get hidden away as we grow, but still make us who we are today. It is all part of the process as we emerge from the backgrounds into who we are meant to be.