Bio + Artist Statement

Katie Miller was born and raised in the wilderness of Northeastern Minnesota, but is now deeply rooted in the Pacific Northwest. Miller’s childhood experiences of natural phenomena and exposure to scientists, engineers, builders, and iron mining have served as a foundation for her curiosity of the world and creative practice. Miller received a BFA in sculpture from the University of Washington and an MFA in glass from the Tyler School of Art & Architecture. Her work has been exhibited nationally in museums, galleries, artist run spaces, and public places. Miller has been selected for numerous competitive artist residency programs, fellowships, and grants. Her practice has been supported by 4Culture, Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, Artist Trust, Puffin Foundation, PLAYA: Center for Art & Science, Joshua Tree Highlands, MadArt, Seattle Art Museum, McMillen Foundation, Montello Foundation, Pilchuck Glass School, and Bullseye Glass among others. Her work is held in the 4Culture Public Art Collection at Harborview Medical Center, Washington State Art Collection, King County Portable Works Collection, and Seattle City Light Fresh Perspectives Collection, and other corporate and private collections.

Miller’s interdisciplinary practice is situated at the intersection of art, architecture, and science, and embodies research, observation, and experimentation to explore our how our perception of place is influenced by our ever-changing surroundings. Her work reflects on the temporality of our built and natural environments and investigates the interplay of wilderness and human infrastructure, challenging viewers to consider how we shape, and are shaped, by the places we inhabit.

Miller distills transforming environments into immersive installations and artworks to examine how human activity reshapes landscapes and systems. She finds inspiration in overlooked details and hidden elements that reveal beauty and complexity. Her materials and methods bring together opposing elements—light and shadow, the material and immaterial, micro and macro, ephemeral and everlasting— to directly link material, process, and concept. She works across mediums incorporating paper, glass, wood, steel, resin, salt, and light and utilizes a visual language of repetition, layering, segments, voids, luminosity, and abstraction to explore the tension between natural processes and human intervention to reflects issues around resource extraction, regional ecologies, and histories.

Miller aims to encourage viewers to reflect on the natural and manmade systems in our daily lives, sparking conversation and contemplation through work that is welcoming and inclusive, serves as a catalyst for exploration, and invites viewers to deepen their relationship and connection to their surroundings.