Katie Miller will be exhibiting her work at this year's Armory Show (March 5-7) in New York. It's quite an honor for the Parkton artist. Here's some more info...

Miller recently won the prestigious Wynn Newhouse Award, one of four $15,000 grants for artists with disabilities. This year, the jury consisted of Phong Bui, Chuck Close, Donna DeSalvo, Joseph Grigely, and Wynn Newhouse.

This is actually the first year the Armory has included a booth exclusively by artists with disabilities, and VSA arts is representing 16 artists, including established artists as well as emerging artists, many of whom whose work has been heavily influenced by their disability experience, reimagining and defying the limitations of the body and the mind. 

Miller’s large-scale paintings comment on the relationship between the mundane and the surreal, and how it relates to changing contemporary and romantic notions of childhood. She works from her own photographs shot specifically for each piece, taking care to design the sets, position the lighting, and direct the subjects who are depicted. Before painting, she manipulates her photos digitally, experimenting with composition, color, and often collaging various body parts together to make a single image. She prefers ambiguity in her compositions and does not create them with a specific story in mind. The paintings exist outside of a broader narrative, allowing everyday life to take on an element of the absurd.

Like a film still, Miller's work highlights the everyday moments of life that appear curiously strange or surreal when shown out of context. Her paintings illustrate dichotomies of childhood, such as the juxtaposition of innocence with a sense of threat. Her work explores the fine line between the disturbing and the comforting, the innocent and the provocative, the powerful and the vulnerable.

Miller is also active in the Autistic Rights Movement as an adult on the autism spectrum. Born in 1984, Miller earned a BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2007 and will soon be attending graduate school.