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Michener Art Museum announces I Look, I Listen. Works on Paper by Marlene Miller

The Michener Art Museum announces I Look, I Listen. Works on Paper by Marlene Miller, an exhibition on view July 14, 2012 – October 14, 2012.

The pen is mightier than the sword. For Marlene Miller, this is not just a tired old aphorism, it’s a way of life. Except for her, the pen is only one of many arrows in her quiver. Miller is a master printmaker and master draftsperson who is equally comfortable with ink, pencil, charcoal, and most other two-dimensional techniques. She has devoted her creative life to using her formidable skills in service of seeing, understanding, and expressing things that most of us turn away from. Profoundly disturbed by images from the civil rights movement in the 1960s, she made ink drawings of the hate-filled faces of Southern housewives. While most people avoid looking at the crumpled bodies of homeless people on subways, Miller stopped, observed, and made evocative and highly skilled drawings that beautifully captured the pathos and horror of the moment. Miller has visited asylums and nursing homes, and made powerful images of street people and residents of women’s shelters. And she has honored the memory and achievements of notable women in a series of large-scale woodblock prints. Marlene Miller is a warrior, but a warrior with a conscience, a warrior who has no interest in territory or power. Her battlefields are wherever there are people who suffer, who need help, who are ignored and forgotten. Reflecting on her life as an artist, Miller says simply, “I look, I listen.” This exhibition samples Miller’s many achievements as an artist, and honors a lifetime of looking, listening, making, and giving.

James A. Michener Art Museum
138 South Pine Street
Doylestown, PA 18901
www.michenermuseum.org

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