The Santa Monica College Pete & Susan Barrett Art Gallery is pleased to present “Sanctum: John M. Miller." The exhibition will be open to the public from Tuesday, Aug. 30, to Saturday, Oct. 8, with a gallery reception on Saturday, Sept. 10, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Miller, who abandoned figurative painting in the early 1970s, has focused for more than four decades on creating works that feature what critic Richard Armstrong has described as a “codified mélange of grave and acute accents.” The artist’s continued use over the years of angled, colored bars repeated across the canvas “represents a sustained effort at devising a truly modern painting, and one that, before it is anything else, can be seen to be marks on a flat surface.”
Renowned Los Angeles Times art critic David Pagel will discuss the exhibit and its artist at an art talk on Saturday, Sept. 17, at 3 p.m. in The Edye (adjacent to the gallery). Pagel is a Professor of Art Theory and History at Claremont Graduate University. The art talk is sponsored by the SMC Associates (www.smc.edu/associates). Seating is strictly on a first-arrival basis.
Miller lives and works in Los Angeles. He has taught at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He has also been the recipient of grants from the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, and has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The artist has had numerous solo exhibitions over the years at galleries that include Diane Rosenstein, Margo Leavin Gallery, Patricia Faure Gallery, Fred Hoffman Gallery, Rico Mizuno Gallery, Watts Tower Art Center, and Broxton Gallery.
Miller’s work has also been featured in group exhibitions at Peter Blake Gallery (Laguna Beach), Nan Rae Gallery at Woodbury University, SMC’s Pete and Susan Barrett Art Gallery, The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Margo Leavin Gallery, Riverside Art Museum, The Getty Center, Blue Start Art Space (San Antonio, TX), Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art (LAICA), and Otis Gallery at the Otis School of Art and Design, among many others.
Miller’s work is included in many permanent collections across the nation, including the Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh, PA), Creative Artists Agency, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Lannan Foundation, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), McNay Art Museum (San Antonio, TX), Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), San Diego Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and San Jose Museum of Art.
SMC's Pete & Susan Barrett Art Gallery is located at the SMC Performing Arts Center on Santa Monica Boulevard at 11th Street, Santa Monica. Due to construction in progress, please enter from 11th Street.
Gallery exhibits, receptions, and art lectures and talks are free.
- Submitted by Grace Smith, SMC Public Information Officer
