Minga Opazo & Brad Miller
Two favorite Carnegie artists, Minga Opazo & Brad Miller, were included this summer in Organic, an exciting exhibition at Sullivan Goss Gallery in Santa Barbara. Organic showcased works of art made from clay, wood, fiber (textile), paper, and metal by 22 artists, ranging widely from the Yarn Bomber to Jessie Arms Botke. While these media are typically associated with craft, the artists in this exhibition were more interested in abstract imagery and/or conceptual practice. Details on their pieces in the exhibit and their recent pursuits are discussed here.
Plenty (2021), a large textile work by recent CalArts MFA grad Minga Opazo.
Minga Opazo
The Berkeley grad pursued further studies, completing her Masters at Cal Arts in 2020. Since her one artist show, Primal Matter, at our CAM Studio Gallery in 2018, Minga Opazo has continued to produce innovative art. She has had solo shows at the Museum of Ventura County, the Mint Gallery & Gallery D301 at CalArts, the Dabart Gallery in L.A., and the Architecture Foundation of Santa Barbara. She also had selected pieces in 7 group shows.
All three of her pieces on display in Organic reflected her philosophy. Opazo’s work with surplus fabric speaks to her environmental concerns, the impact of globalization, and the wastefulness of our textile and fashion industries. The bright yellow weaving, Plenty, pops from the wall, and closer examination reveals all sorts of recycled clothing: shirt cuffs with buttons, collars, sweatshirts, trims and loose embellishments scattered throughout the tapestry. She mourns the loss of her country’s indigenous practices of artful weaving and dying through geopolitics.
All three of her pieces on display in Organic reflected her philosophy. Opazo’s work with surplus fabric speaks to her environmental concerns, the impact of globalization, and the wastefulness of our textile and fashion industries. The bright yellow weaving, Plenty, pops from the wall, and closer examination reveals all sorts of recycled clothing: shirt cuffs with buttons, collars, sweatshirts, trims and loose embellishments scattered throughout the tapestry. She mourns the loss of her country’s indigenous practices of artful weaving and dying through geopolitics.
Siempre Mas by Minga Opazo (2019)
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Mejor que Falte que Sobra by Minga Opazo (2020)
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In 2022 Opazo will head to Massachusetts for a MASS MoCA residency.
Brad Miller
Brad Miller was the guest speaker at our first Home is Where the heART Is home tour in 2015, and continues to create in his Venice Beach, CA studio. He has devoted most of his more than four decades career to nature-based abstraction in ceramics, wood, and even paper, and continues to experiment with a variety of image making techniques. Since our event he has been part of several group shows at Ed Cella Art & Architecture in L.A. and Bellas Artes Gallery in Santa Fe, N.M., and had a solo show, Stones & Objects Relations Theory, at Ed Cella, who also represented him at Intersect Aspen 2021.
He is represented in the Organic exhibition by two works on paper and three ceramics.
He is represented in the Organic exhibition by two works on paper and three ceramics.
Bifold BC9 & BC4 by Brad Miller (2015)
Miller’s abstract sculptures, ceramics, and lithographs express the physical properties of organic systems. Constantly reconfiguring nature’s most persistent ordering systems is central to his work. Regularly improvising during the process of creating work, he plays on the tension between order and disorder in the natural world. His biomorphic shapes both engage and inform.
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P20-6 by Brad Miller
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Ditto by Brad Miller
P21-1 by Brad Miller
To view more of Brad Miller’s work: https://www.instagram.com/bradmillerstudio/?hl=en
To view more of Minga Opazo’s work: http://mingaopazo.com/
The Organic exhibition can be viewed in the Sullivan Goss archives: https://www.sullivangoss.com/exhibitions/organic?view=slider#9
To view more of Minga Opazo’s work: http://mingaopazo.com/
The Organic exhibition can be viewed in the Sullivan Goss archives: https://www.sullivangoss.com/exhibitions/organic?view=slider#9
