Contact: Sasha Steinberg

STARKVILLE, Miss.—Large scale, mixed media installations and works on paper by a Minnesota artist and educator will be on display Jan. 20-March 31 at Mississippi State’s Cullis Wade Depot Art Gallery.

Free to all, the second-floor exhibition at the university’s Welcome Center features Liz Miller’s works that have been featured regionally, nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions.

Miller currently serves as a professor of installation and drawing at Minnesota State University-Mankato. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting with honors from the Rhode Island School of Design, as well as a Master of Fine Arts in drawing and painting from the University of Minnesota. For more biographical information, visit www.lizmiller.com.

According to Miller, her mixed media installations and works on paper “recontextualize simplified shapes, signs and symbols from disparate historical and contemporary imagery to create abstract fictions.”

“Existing forms from a multitude of sources are co-opted, altered and spliced to adopt hybrid identities,” she explained.

Her recent projects pit Baroque and Gothic pattern and ornament against forms derived from armor and weaponry. The use of paper, felt, foam and other tactile materials further complicates questions of source, masking the identity of forms while allowing them to inhabit both sculptural and two-dimensional space.

From 12:30-1:30 p.m. Thursday [Jan. 19], Miller will give an artist talk in Giles Hall’s Robert and Freda Harrison Auditorium for MSU students and other interested members of the campus and local communities.

On Friday [Jan. 20], a 5 p.m. opening reception in Miller’s honor will be held in the Cullis Wade gallery. All are welcome to enjoy complimentary refreshments, view works on display and visit with Miller.

The exhibition and related events are made possible by MSU’s Department of Art, home to the Magnolia State’s largest undergraduate studio art program. Additional support is provided by the Windgate Charitable Foundation, Starkville Area Arts Council, and the Mississippi Arts Commission through the National Endowment for the Arts.

Regular Cullis Wade gallery hours are 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday-Friday. For more, visit bit.ly/MSUArtGalleriesFB.

Additional gallery information is available from Lori Neuenfeldt, the art department’s gallery director, at 662-325-2973 or LNeuenfeldt@caad.msstate.edu.

The Department of Art is part of MSU’s College of Architecture, Art and Design. For more, visit www.caad.msstate.edu.

MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.