Farther Along: Q & A with Mills Brown
One of the most exciting parts of creating work for this show was expanding the range of objects I collect. This was certainly inspired by my preschoolers. There is no hierarchy for the objects they find at school and want to take home. As I wrote in my artist statement: plastic litter, delicate petals, and tiny living creatures are all treasures in their eyes. Not to mention sequins, beads, cicada shells, lost name tags, acorns, abandoned hair clips. Watching them find beauty and fascination in every piece of the world that crosses their paths has made a huge impact on me.
In effect, I’ve seen my own collecting grow past the expectations I previously held for what goes into an artwork. When I started searching for more and more found objects to use in my work, I naturally began to notice organic materials, too. What if I put sticks, bark, or even moss in a piece? When I realized it’s not that difficult to keep moss alive in a dark little box, I wanted more nature! Pressed flowers, lichen, and fungi made an appearance. Then a friend gave me a beautiful Monarch butterfly she had found (with the thought that I might like to study it under my microscope), and it dawned on me that this, too, could hide in a collage. I decided to build and ornament a shrine-like home for the butterfly, which became the first piece in the series. When I began looking for more dead bugs, I not only found (or was given) WAY more than enough, but I also began to notice other details in nature that hinted at stories of unknowable animal lives. A fallen nest, a broken robin’s egg, many seeds and shells, and the bones of a deer all made their way into my collection. I think that seeing these things as valuable and wanting to collect and protect them has a lot to do with embracing the child-like curiosity and wonder inspired by my students.
How do fairy tales and Southern gothic influence your work?
I’ve always been a reader and have found that my favorite books are very connected to my artistic interests. Lately, I’ve become interested in the uses of enchantment, and wondered what makes the fairy tales I love so absorbing. I think that the appeal of the fairy tale is not simply in the happy ending. Rather it is their danger and difficulty that inspires wonder. But they consistently maintain a promise of hope and offer examples of morality. Southern gothic and magical realism stories contain a similar darkness, and my favorites put me into a world that is at once unsettling, eccentric, and hauntingly beautiful. I look for a similar balance of darkness, hope, and mystery in my work.
What made it so significant to identify the feeling and act of protection?
Being in a position of responsibility to protect small children, and then watching them want to protect the things they find, has been a large part of this series. But I think the work is really about the futility of this desire to protect. I haven’t actually protected the bugs in my pieces, because, of course, they were already dead. We can protect children to a certain extent by keeping them out of unsafe situations, but we can’t shield them from life’s difficulties. Despite the futility, I find so much beauty in this collective effort and desire to protect.
At the opening of my show, I saw this desire reflected back to me. Many people asked me what I did to preserve the bugs. I loved this! I didn’t do anything to preserve them except remove them from their setting (the floor, the windowsill, the sidewalk) and put them in mine. I’m not sure what the process of decay will be or what this will look like for the artwork. But when I was asked this question so many times, it seemed to be with the expectation that I had embalmed these insect bodies with chemicals to make them last. I laughed because I have no idea how I would even begin that process. But I also loved the confirmation that my viewers, too, want to see delicate things last, to have them kept safe and beautiful.
Your works have a sense of nostalgia that brings the audience back to childhood. How does this recall of memory shape the experience of your installation, in your opinion?
I hope the audience remembers what it’s like to have the active imagination of a child when they look at my art. Children do not already know what things mean and have the freedom to construct their own narrative. I remember, as a child, having the ability to easily travel into and between imaginary worlds, being fully present in whatever story I was pretending to be in. I create these pieces in hopes that they will be small but elaborate worlds, too, with hidden details that reward you for looking closer, asking the audience to immerse themselves in a story.One of your works requires audience participation. What made you want to include the viewers in this way? Why was this piece chosen to be interactive while the others were not?
I decided to ask the viewers to participate because this means asking them to look closer. If they have to open the box themselves, taking an active role in revealing the piece, I hoped they would be more curious to discover what’s hiding inside. They are no longer just the viewer, but now an explorer. If people are asked to touch a piece of artwork in a white wall gallery, they also feel like they have to be very careful, calling on closer attention and alertness. Ideally, I would want more (or all) of my bug boxes to be interactive. It became clear that this was the only practical interactive piece in this series because the others actually were too fragile. I think that going forward, finding different ways to allow for audience participation will be an exciting new part of my practice.
