2021

Food Art Bank (FAB) was a socially engaged art project situated at Platform Artspace on UC Berkeley's campus. FAB combined community-centered art experiences with basic needs distribution, in an effort to address and relieve some of the negative stigma attached to food insecurity and income disparity.

FAB hosted arts events each week at a modest food bank in the Platform Artspace, intermingling food distribution with joy and play. Together, Platform Artspace and FAB curated culturally relevant pop-up events with local artists, musicians, chefs, activists, and other cultural workers, creating many collaborations across the intersections of art and food.

Community partners: Berkeley Food Network and Annie’s Annuals.

This project was part of the 2021 Arts Prospect Festival: Forms of Unity in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Details: www.foodartbank.org

FALL 2019
A workshop series made possible by the California Arts Council’s Artists in Communities Grant

Objects Made Safe is a workshop series created by Jill Miller and hosted at the Palo Alto Art Center and Mitchell Park Library. In this workshop series, participants bring in objects they’ve confiscated from their children’s possession in order to protect them. As a group, we will remake them in “safe” materials (felt, cotton, etc). Together the group will explore complicated notions of safety in today’s current political climate. We will articulate and unpack the stress, loneliness, and anxiety that primary caregivers experience yet seldom discuss in an open environment.

All participants receive a generous stipend to allow them to pay for childcare while participating in the workshop. Art experience is not required, in fact, preferred.

This artwork is made possible by the California Arts Council’s Artists in Communities Grant, Palo Alto Art Center, and Mitchell Park Library.

Collective Rage Release is a current project where artist Jill Miller leads participants through a collaborative sculpture-making experience. Participants share their concerns (personal, local, or global) in a supportive group session, articulating their sources of fear, anxiety, frustration, and anger. They write one word describing their issues on terry cloth wristbands using black sharpie. Then they pummel 100 pounds of clay while channeling their anger into sculptures.

The project came out of the Being Human social practices work that was commissioned by the Palo Alto Art Center, September-December 2018. From the Being Human website:

“During Week 7, we shared current issues that create conflict, anxiety or
anger within us. We articulated them to each other in a circle of sharing, and we referenced them in black sharpie on our 1980’s terrycloth wristbands and headbands. Then we released our intensity by pummeling 100 pounds of clay for almost an hour. Guided by a personal trainer, we pushed, pulled, punched, stomped, dug, revealed, and wrestled the clay. Our fear and anger moved from our hearts to our hands as we created sculptures that were not informed by aesthetic concerns. Rather the sculptures were artifacts of our actions. We call them conflict sculptures.”

To participate in or host a Release, contact the artist: jill@jillmiller.net

2011-12

The Milk Truck was a socially engaged art work made for the Andy Warhol Museum and deployed in Pittsburgh, PA. This mobile breastfeeding unit was designed in response to the discriminating culture toward nursing mothers. The truck was dispatched when a person contacted the crew (via call, text or tweet) after being hassled for nursing in public. The truck rallied its followers while enroute to the woman’s location and once there, held a nursing party in front of the offending establishment. In addition to its physical presence, The Milk Truck was a community that connected through social media (photos, posts, tweets, blogging, and a real-time map of the truck’s location).

Kickstarter Page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jillmiller/the-milk-truck

Pittsburgh Biennial, Andy Warhol Museum

2011-12

2018

Being Human was a social practices work created in collaboration with the Palo Alto Art Center. For 8 weeks, I worked with a group of artists who are also primary caregivers. We all had experienced the feeling of being torn between domestic duty and the call — the need — for working in our studios. Every week, we made a collaborative work that engaged one stage of Erik Erickson’s theory on psychosocial development. By the end of the project, we had lived out the entire lifecycle of a human being.

Residents considered their parenting struggles as a catalyst for making art rather than an obstacle to overcome.

Project website: https://www.beinghumanart.com

Palo Alto Art Center
September - December 2018

2015-16

Research shows that approximately 10% of contributors on Wikipedia are women. WOW! Editing Group was a project that focused on closing the gender gap by teaching college and high school women (and non-binary people) how to edit Wikipedia articles in a safe feminist space. During this 6 month experimental collaboration, over 120 articles were improved or created and 38 individuals participated. 

Sponsored by Wikimedia Individual Engagement Grant and Berkeley Center for New Media

2013-16

A series of family portraits based on shouting events in the home. These sculptures are based not on our corporal visages but on the qualities that really define a family: conflicts, laughter, noise (joyful and otherwise) and other auditory outbursts. Participants used a log to document audio events in their homes for 24 hours. The artist interpreted those and created a unique portrait where individuals are represented by their shouting contribution. Any likeness to real individuals is purely coincidence. 

This work was made onsite at the New Maternalisms: Redux exhibition and colloquium at the FAB Gallery, University of Alberta.

2013-15

The Family in Residence Program was an experimental residency project made for an entire family. It was a pilot program used to explore families in collaboration with each other and with their communities. 

The first participants were a local Berkeley family who attended a weekly potluck at a public garden near their home. After extensive interviewing and brainstorming, we collaborated on a project for them to share with their neighbors. The Message in a Bottle project connected their love of exploration and travel with their desire to transcribe and share stories without digital technology.

We attended a Friday night potluck and made stations for their community to create bottles and messages. We provided vintage typewriters, quill and ink, and taught simple calligraphy strategies to interested participants. We used our truck as a mobile studio for the event and later delivered finished bottles to local addresses. For our FIR we agreed to send their bottles anywhere in the world.