Aimee Miller

“My identity as a painter has to do with exploring another side of myself [and] connecting it back to who I am. I have a voice through tearing up material, reconfiguring it to something new,” reflects painter Aimee Miller, whose VSC residency was sponsored by the Pavlis/VSC Residency Fellowship Program for graduates of Spelman, Fisk and Morehouse colleges. Aimee was the only abstract painter in her MFA program at the University of Delaware. To take things a step further, she experimented with ripping the “finished” paintings into strips, grouping them into clusters that she then affixed to plexi-glass. The texture held the memory of the original paintings, which Aimee understands as a metaphor for her own growth as a painter.

During her VSC residency she worked with new techniques, dying and shaping the fabric as well as painting images behind the clusters of deconstructed paintings. Aimee had heard about VSC from other artists and applied last year and was offered a residency she was without the financial means to accept. As a graduate of Spelman College, when she heard about the Pavlis Fellowship Program she readily applied again. “It’s so unreal that it has worked out,” says Aimee.

photo courtesy of Howard Romero