Notes for Saudades show at Overture Center for the Arts:

Saudades: New Paintings
Trent Miller and Peter Esdaile

Saudade is a Portuguese word denoting a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, or which is gone but might return in the distant future. It is a feeling of longing for something other than the present: not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming wistfulness. It often holds the knowledge that the object of longing might really never return.

Trent Miller
We picked the name Saudades for this show before any of my paintings were actually started. It turned out to be the perfect title since all of these pieces are homages to someone or something that I hold dear. Oh Philip references the painter Philip Guston. INRI mixes the Transfiguration and Crucifixion paintings that are found in the Russian Icon painting tradition. The genesis for The Burial of Andrei Tarkovsky was a scene from a documentary film showing the great Russian filmmaker’s funeral. Wardenclyffe refers to the unfinished master project of inventor Nikola Tesla. The image and title for The Gelsy Mountain came to me in a dream and pays tribute to the greatly missed Madison-based painter Gelsy Verna.
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Article in Madison, WI newspaper with a mention to healing machines show.
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Press Release for Healing Machines Exhibition
March 11, 2010
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

SUNDANCE CINEMAS MADISON ART GALLERY EXHIBITION:
Healing Machines: New Paintings by Trent Miller
Date: FRIDAY, March 12 THROUGH May 31, 2010; during business hours
Artist Reception: Thursday, March 25 from 5:30 to 7:30 pm.
Where: Sundance Cinemas Madison, 430 N. Midvale Blvd.

Contact: David Wells, Exec. Dir., Edenfred; 608.233.7702; dwells.edenfred@sbcglobal.net
The exhibition is part of the on-going collaboration between Sundance Cinemas Madison and Edenfred, the arts residency of the Terry Family Foundation.

Healing Machines: New Paintings by Trent Miller includes six paintings from two ongoing series of works – Healing Machines and Imaginariums. Miller’s colorful paintings present elements of tents, carousels, spinning blades, fans, towers and structures. Their titles reference the brain, the circus, the history of science (Tesla) and art (Tatlin). Movement, especially high-speed circular spinning, is a common theme. It is unclear whether the paintings are abstractions coalescing into a representation or a representation that is spinning itself apart.

The viewer is invited into the depths of the paintings, to imagine oneself spinning, dizzy and thus entering into a new imaginary place. Imaginariums usually refer to hands-on science explorations (think kid’s museums). In the recent film The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus a traveling theater troupe takes audiences through a magical mirror to explore their imaginations. Miller invites viewers to consider that a little spinning out of control to help us access and inhabit our imaginations could well be a healing activity.

Trent Miller has been exhibiting his work, mostly in the northeastern US, since 1999. Shortly after arriving in Madison, Miller exhibited at the Porter Butts Gallery in the UW Memorial Union. This show is the first of three opportunities to see his work in Madison this spring. Other exhibits will be at the Overture Center for the Arts (April 12 – June 24) and at Edenfred (June 1 – August 31).
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Catalog and essay for the group show at Stockton College.