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Extented Artist's Statement / Jason Miller / Spring 2010

A Note On the Energy Fortress of Solitary Meditation and Process of Jason Miller
The Energy Fortress deals conceptually with the basis of energy changing
form in an arbitrary and surreal visual manner. Just as our bodies are animated
and brought to life by our souls that dwell within, so too must we all one day
move on from the dust-laden sails of our bodies that our spirits now fill. We
Humans are spiritual and materialized at the same time, and being both
biological and spiritual is a sacred mystery that words seldom describe.

Similar to the childhood game Memory, I lay the straight photographs I
have made before me, and then in my own type of Chess play, I draw from and
take away until all that is left is what is needed from my ever-growing image pool.
Each arrangement of photographs completes a complex image phrase or poem.
Each single photograph becomes a word that is derived from my mental dialect
and when placed together the separate photographic words form visual
sentences. Whereas some think only phonetically, I think not merely words, but
more often in images, dreams, and visions.

There is a slight similarity between my Energy Fortress and the Buddhist
Mandala. The Mandala is built with spiritualism in mind and often works as a form
of spiritual map of the human soul. Because spiritualism is an important guiding
force in my own work, this must be the reason for a strange unplanned parallel
between the two different ways of making images. Also, both my images and
Mandalas are made to be aids to deepen thought and increase mental activity.
Concerning this connection, both image styles are, in a way, soulfully utilitarian.
My work is derived from images photographed from many diverse aspects
of my everyday life and is not necessarily made to be viewed in one set
sequence. But rather my work is to be understood, as one would devour a secret
poem, that one happened to stumble upon, in a brief tripping upon an obscure
discovery from amidst the blinding noise. There is not always an inclination to
read left to right when viewing an Energy String, nor is there a formulaic pattern
one must follow in order to understand, but instead Energy Strings and
Fortresses are made to be ever changing in a way similar to how our lives are
constantly in flux.

Energy Strings, Energy Fortresses, and Image Poems are not designed to
stimulate one beyond his or her own mental baggage. The viewer is key to the
interpretation of the art I make. My work is not built with the expectation of some
great happening, but rather is carved from the idea of solitary meditation and the
art of listening very carefully for the gentle voice within the deafening gale. The
imagination of a child is key to enjoying my imagery. It is the viewer's vision that
completes my work within his mind as new thoughts begin to spring forth as she
ponders the significance or unusual complimentary pallet of the combination of
the everyday simple parts of life merged with strikingly rare moments.

An important strand of influences is directly connected to my personal
childhood experience and memories. One memory in particular that is important
to my current process of making artwork is that of my grandmother making
“paper cutout dolls” because she would always cut out representation of genitalia
when she made male paper dolls and called them “tally wackers.” My fond
memory of how tickled my grandmother was with the idea of cutting out “tally
wackers” on all male paper dolls compels me to always include subtle and
sometimes not so subtle images of penises in my work. In all political and ethical
correctness I equally include female genitalia as well to ensure a proper balance
of both sexes of the human species in my art.

An additional aspect from childhood that is unrelated to the
aforementioned memory is my recollection of the first work of art that I ever
made, when at the age of six, I placed a plastic laundry basket upside down in a
kitchen chair, followed by a clear glass basketball-sized lamp globe, with a
1970’s retro orange and yellow coaster at the tip-top for hair. I called this a robot
and placed a plate with a small portion of green peas in front of it. I said, “when
he eats the peas they go into his tummy and then over the fence to Taco Bell.”
To this day I still hold the memory of this childhood display of imagination as dear
to my development as a dedicated conceptual artist.

The second stage of my artistic career began with a calling to write poetry
when I was fifteen years of age. It was at this time that I became aware of my
sensitive ability in the sense that I found myself to be more sensitive than most
people who were of the same age group.

Since my youth I have often found myself unselfconsciously singing and
this natural drive to place words in a melodic form is one of the direct
connections between the way I make phonetically derived poems and
photographic poems. I think in images in a way similar to how I think in words
and enjoy switching back and forth between writing and photography. I see little
difference between making a word or an image sentence. In my recent years I
still write, but it stays more behind the scenes. My imagery is that what I am
currently most known for, and yet that could change at anytime because I am
never timid to experiment, nor am I afraid to revisit a seemingly exhausted
possibility.

I wish to preserve and make commentary on the two dimensional form,
which is most closely related to the tangible structure of a photograph. I playfully
create illusions of depth by creating dedicated shadows for each two dimensional
form in order to fortify the use of hierarchy of scale as well as the use of
chiaroscuro in context to the photographic medium.

An interest in the non-parallel connection between Neolithic period
monuments such as the Megalithic structure of Stonehenge and the idea of the
modern-day human audience has inspired me to arrange my images around the
projected stream of images as if each image is a family member all gathered
together around the TV. Each stone of old becomes a photograph of new. The
arrangement of the stars in connection to human beings holding both biological
and spiritual natures guides an otherwise intangible process wherein I materialize
my ideas through an intuitive process that is constantly open to unexpected
decisions made and based upon newer and newer discovers during the sacred
act of creation.

My work is also not without relation to the themes of vanitas and memento
mori, which especially comes across most literally in a work I made featuring
images I photographed in Czech Republic’s town of Kutná Hora, the Bone
Chapel. Hans Memling's Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation is among the most
important paintings in history to me, as well as Memling’s The Last Judgment or
Hieronymus Bosch’s many triptychs containing subject matter based on ideas of
life in the earthly realm, divine providence, and eternal damnation. Perhaps, it is
my Catholic upbringing that makes me hold religious themes in the utmost
reverence, and even pagan chords register with a fascination to me.
Historical manmade environments are important to me in respect to my
mindset during the making of art. Two critical examples include Paris’ La Sainte-
Chapelle as an environment that educes me into a non-complacent though
meditative state. The longing for the re-creation or new representation of such
experiences within certain exceptional spaces and the experience therein calls
me to recall the feeling of stained glass and urges me to present many of my
images in backlit formats. The Gothic Cathedral of Notre-Dame of Laon is
another space that I hold as sacred in the sense that it calls one to first feel awe,
which then leads to inspiration and motivation into assuming a potentially fruitful
form of action. The large empty and ornate chambers and naves represent the
infinite vessel of the body that houses the eternal soul to one whom chooses to
believe in such possibilities as mortal death and spiritual immortality. As
mentioned earlier, energy changing form is important to my process and the work
that it yields. Materialization of thought and spiritual matters is among my highest
motivations for making art. I find it a welcomed challenge to attempt to say the
wordless energy that can truly never be articulated in its purest form because it is
not of the material realm. I enjoy attempting nevertheless simply because
through my efforts to say the wordless, new words are formed. These new words
are not what I intended to say or searched for, but rather they are born through
experimentation. The spirit of experimentation is of the holiest prescriptions to
me. Imagination is key in conjunction with experimentation, and when these two
creatures meet a third element emerges from the mysterious mist. This third
element is creation. My personal definition of creation is as follows:

To bring pieces of energy from the formless world
into the realm of form, to leave worries behind in
order to cross an invisible bridge, to let go of false
securities and apparent limitations in order to grasp
the seemingly impossible, to take a chance in order
to find new rungs upon the top of the ladder, to help
energy change form as it passes through the filter of
the human soul, to reinvent the invented, to
reorganize the structure of a pre-establishment in
order to erect a new kingdom, to articulate ideas by
vainly attempting to articulate the indescribable in
order to give birth to new facts that in themselves
merely lead to more questions, which in turn point to
unique discoveries.

I never begin a work with the idea complete in my mind, but rather I start
out with a vague concept that I have exhaustingly worked and reworked in my
mind until I can taste its readiness to be born. I see what I want to make clearly
and with much detail, yet I am open to the fact that what I actually will make will
be much different than that which I initially set forth to make. The possibilities and
options of what I wish to create are nearly infinite, and yet some sort of intuition
operates within my mind’s chamber in a way that whittles down the variety of
choices until all that is left is the rout I feel meant to take.

I feel that many important benefits can be gained through art school, but
that the driving self-discipline that separates slackers from true artists is instilled
in an individual from the beginning of life. I agree with the general thought that
one cannot learn to be an artist, but one can learn how to use the tools and
function as an artist. Therefore, if one comes to the table of education with a
natural ability, then art school may help such an individual learn how to see new
ways to improve upon and use his or her natural artistic ability.

The aforementioned paragraph is vital to my artist’s statement because it can
translate into the very way I arrange each photographic word in my image
poems. For instance, I have a philosophy about an issue, I form a thought, and I
merge that thought with the eternal light that I allow to pass through the filter of
my heart. The willful consent to turn my body into the most important of all artists’
tools, the vessel of divine interpretation, embodies the graces that flow freely
from artists of many different walks of life.

I will now place intangible and philosophical matters aside in order to
delve more deeply into the factual areas of the way I make my art and more
importantly, the art itself. The art itself is the tangible residue of my efforts. The
obsessive-compulsive mind has a way of working itself constantly, even as one
performs the most mundane of tasks. One could be taking out the garbage while
the mind is constructing an imaginary symphony. This is how my mind builds my
art, conceptually before physically. One photograph may not equal one word
because a photograph can say multiple things and contain multiple meanings. A
word can contain multiple meanings, but rarely do they carry the weight of
powerful images. Images can grip the mind before it even knows why it is gripped
or, for that matter, what’s gripping it. In short, images can be more ambiguous
than most words have the power of being. There are always exceptions, but for
my needs images seem to bare a heavier punch in delivering multiple signals
simultaneously. That leads me further into discussion of the mental mechanics
behind my MFA thesis exhibition Energy Fortress of Solitary Meditation, as well
as deeper into my process as a whole in connection with every area.

I think in multiple layers, in a furry of conflicting signals that occasionally
join in unison to make a harmonious voice before crashing back into the waves
that fill a mysterious void. Energy fortress of Solitary Meditation is in actuality a
chamber of conflicting sounds, multiple layers of imagery and sound, a world of
distractions that replicate the fortress of thoughts within my head. Chaos in itself
can be a form of meditation. Disorderly communion with seemingly non-related
images can form a connection in its own right. This is my pallet, a pallet of
desolation, and an isolatory realm in which fragments create a new type of
poetry. Indeed, there is a method to my madness, which can be coined as the
poetry of confusion, the well of unorganized thought, and the polar opposite of
mental feng shui. There is an evident order in my images, yet the order is a
topical disguise that forms a thin skin around an idea that is ready to explode
from its container the very moment in which it is poured from an infinite domain
into a small square harness laden device such as a piece of paper, resin coated
plastic, video, or the like of any medium that instantly restrains that which longs
to not be contained. There is the ironic paradox, the very act of making art goes
against my most fundamental belief, which is the belief that true creation and all
the energy that it entails cannot fully be materialized or even hinted toward for
that matter. The very fact that I dare attempt to harness the wind is an act of
arrogance, and for this reason I believe an artwork to be dead on arrival. The
greatest art is so temporal that it may have well never been made, and yet if art
were not made there would be many more insane people upon the face of the
Earth. There is a harmonious blend of therapy and a feeling of meaning, one
feels called by destiny when one creates an artwork, by pulling forth new
creatures from the shapeless void. An artist may indeed shed light on ideas that
otherwise could not exist, a artist might design a house in which new species can
dwell, an artist just may even make the world a better place, but an artist seldom
enjoys in spite of a life shaped by pain. Humor is the cousin of sorrow, and in art
the two opposites dance most beautifully together. For this reason, I often mix
horror with laughter, fantasy with reality, and make photographic arrangements
that are melodramatic and bipolar in nature.

A hierarchy of symbolism is behind the order of my placement of
photographic elements throughout the visual patterns I entwine within the sacred
image space. For it is in this frame and that I unravel my mind and experiment in
the alchemy of mystical interpretation in correlation with the mysterious energy I
allow to flow through me, which has a predominant force towards the way my
artworks turn out. I do not say that I am vacant from this happening because I am
the window through which the magical light shines and the filter of my soul helps
process intangible emotions into a form that can be experienced in the
materialized realm we all share. I like to sew digitally by shrinking down and
interweaving components of single photographs to create beds on which my
more complex image designs can rest. I think of a pillow for the comfort of the
human head in relation to why I feel drawn to always consider the resting spot for
key image elements to lie, and furthermore it can be likened to the way a halo or
crown pronounces importance of certain characters through the ages in religious
a empirical painting.

I am intrigued by the idea of how the human imagination can breathe new
life into common objects by reusing them as components of an imaginary realm. I
am fond of the biblical text wherein Pontius Pilate asks Christ, “Well then, if you
have a kingdom, then you must be a king?” To me the realm where imagination
and dreams originate is the supreme kingdom of art, and human imagination is
the passage through which that wellspring flows. The artist is the interpreter, the
messenger, the deliverer, the prophet, the scribe, the mystic, and above all a true
artist must be willing to be shunned or crucified. The later of the aforementioned
sentence cuts true like a double-edged sword because often there is no greater
punishment known to an artist than to be shunned. Vanity, even in its noblest and
most selfless possible form, is nearly always present within a maker of
conceptual art. This fact is almost entirely unavoidable due largely because an
artist must spend the main part of his or her life in self-reflection in order to make
new discoveries within and amend inventions put forth by fellow creators.
Just as my way of making art is not without its own convictions and self-
prescribed philosophies, so too is it not without absurdity and good old-fashioned
humor. I enjoy the term, “old-fashioned” because since the beginning of
humankind we have not been without humor, humility, arrogance, jealousy,
vengeance, as well as any of the other cardinal virtues and vices. My ability to
look in the mirror and laugh carries over into the manner in which I construct my
art and construe the art of others. I find often that the more serious one attempts
to present oneself that the more absurd and funny one appears. It is hard to hold
back my grin in a serious church sermon or formal lecture because I know it is an
environment wherein I am not supposed to laugh. We humans always want to do
what we’re told we’re not supposed to do in a way similar to a child or kitten.
When I make my art I tend to sing to myself as I arrive at what I call my
holy hour. In fact, it is only when I notice myself singing that I become conscious
that I have made a new breakthrough in my process or discovery in my artistic
career. Eventually, I plan to make a series of work based on the process that is
crucial to the strides I make in art.

It is not only the mystical kingdom that gives us art, and not only our
individual selves separate from one another, but also there is a place where
external influence contributes to our creative evolution. My personal influences
come from films, writings, and artworks of all mediums in which I feel mankind
bares his or her soul for all to see. My definition of art requires that an individual
must bare one’s soul without hiding the bad, but rather showing both sides.
Moreover, it is crucial to me that an artwork reveal lessons based on ones
experiences, the regrets made through life that later come back to torment one,
and with these lessons in hand comes the highest signal of art. Art can also be
about nothing at all, and this understanding is of no less a value than the idea
that all art is infinitely valuable in rich concept and meaning. There is a place for
all in art, the giver and the receiver, the killer and the healer, the taker and the
swindler, the lover and the hater, the tortured and the hated, the despised and
the revelator, the educated and outsider, the student and the teacher, the food
and the product, the sacred and the unholy.

My art is about finding a utopia within, a palace where one is free to be
one’s utmost self, a virgin forest beyond the artificial veil. No expectations and
no letdowns, no worries and no physically taxing drawbacks such as the many
dramas found in the tangible realm. My art is my religion, it is spiritual to me in a
way similar to the effect nature in its purest form has on me, and moreover, it is
the only exercise that perpetually breaks me out of jail. Again and again,
repeatedly I am saved by an act that I perform, wherein my spirit and body are
merged in everlasting grace with the infinite wellspring from which I came.
My images are made for solitary meditation. Focus on them as if upon a
single thought or ecstasy. As they change quickly before your eyes, to images
merge together to become one constant solution to a problem, in a way similar to
the way two separate people meet, fall in love, and join in mind and body.
Animals in the jungle making love, no laws or contracts, only a simple trust
between one another, a noblest of vows upon which all superficial oaths have
stumbled over and crumbled under in vain attempts to replace the purest of
human existence. Those who would have it that they control every one are fools
pursuing a lust for power that is beyond their own intellect. They seek to become
master of a land they did not create, of a race that they had no part in making, and in
their arrogance their ignorance is exposed and laid bare for all the nations of the
earth to see.

We may get eaten, we may get stung, and we may not have every comfort
in nature, but in the natural world we have something far more valuable than
false security. We have peace to know we are not locked tight within an artificial
maze, preprogrammed, purged of all originality.