Willie Little, Bill Miller & Susan Mikula opens this Friday!

The Rice Polak Gallery is excited to announce our forth feature exhibition of the 2023 season. We will be exhibiting the work of Willie Little, Bill Miller & Susan Mikula.

The show previews on Thursday August 17th and runs through Wednesday August 30th. The Opening Reception is on Friday August 18th. And as a special treat storyteller and artist Willie Little will be reading from his memoir “In the Sticks” (see below) Please join us at 6pm for the reading and stay for the opening which begins at 7pm. I am pleased to say that all 3 artists will be present.

WILLIE LITTLE
“IN THE RAW”

My In the Raw series is a renewal, an exploration of the past and present. It is an exploration of my processes, techniques, while exploring new spaces, places, and a way of living. It is also about pushing my emotions, boundaries and releasing uncertainties of exploring the new. Raw, is also a state of mind, place, proximity, or place in life. This past summer my partner and I moved to the southern California desert, the Palm Springs area. While this resort town contains a similar openness to queer groups and communities such as Provincetown and the San Francisco Bay Area, I sense a spiritual quality, quite like P-town, but with a slight difference. The vast open land, landscapes, dramatic surrounding mountains, and vistas can be breathtaking, but most fascinating is the ability to see the stars so clearly at night. The enormity of it all, clarifies how small we are in the immeasurable world.

Additionally, I have had the opportunity, at long last, to tell my story, In the Sticks, a coming-of-age memoir, touching on themes of love, pain, shame and reconciliation. In the Sticks, is a story about growing up poor, black and gay in the rural south. It is a story about how art became my destiny, and how art helped me overcome the marginalization of being a poor, Black gay man, in the rural south. It is a story, filled with as much humor as there is pain. Ever since I was a little boy, growing up off Sticks Road, near Little Washington, North Carolina, I knew I had a story to tell about the richness of growing up poor.

BILL MILLER
“VINTAGE LINOLEUM COLLAGE”

Bill Miller is a collage artist who has been using vintage linoleum flooring as his medium for almost 20 years. Linoleum was the ultimate interior medium, present in all aspects of 20th century life from Grandma’s kitchen to the corner drug store and neighborhood school. Miller’s innovative work is recognized for pictorial assemblages that rely only on the flooring’s found surface, with no added paint, to render his subjects. Miller’s images range from bucolic landscapes to surrealistic, fiercely political pieces that draw on iconic news and pop culture images that have informed society’s common memory. His unexpected use of familiar patterns taps into the medium’s nostalgic qualities, imparting a sense of personal history and rediscovery within each piece.

Miller’s work has long been shaped by the tragic impact of industrialization. Both his parents were from West Virginia coal mining families. His grandfather was killed in the mines when Miller was a child. His parents raised Bill and his sister in the industrial center of Cleveland OH, where his father too lost his life in an auto factory when Miller was a teen. Miller moved to Pittsburgh as a young adult just as the steel industry collapsed, decimating long time communities and creating a rust belt of crumbling towns and massive structures.

SUSAN MIKULA
“MOONS OF NEPTUNE”

Mikula shoots exclusively with instant films in a variety of cameras, many of them vintage Polaroids using past-expiration Polaroid films. Working only with available light, and without cropping or image manipulation, her technique strips away detail and softens edges to better reveal the underlying and essential form and feeling of her subject.

“My work is narrative, though not with a linear beginning, middle and end structure. Just as my style is figurative, though not literal, which gets me closer to the essence of things. Conveying beauty as I see and understand it is also an important part of my work, though not everyone agrees with what I find beautiful. My ideas sometimes form around an object or a scene and work their way out from there, but more often it starts with a concept that I want to explore, an exploration that I want to share, a feeling that I want to express. From conception through visualization to final selection, it’s a form of distillation, a slow process, to find that which is necessary”.

If you missed the amazing opening at the Mary Heaton Vorse House (or if you had the good luck to be there) please have a look at this exceptional video that Warren created. This exhibition is on view until September 10th by appointment.