Miller & Shellabarger: Love & Loss Shine in Simple Objects

Chicago Artists Return to Milwaukee for May Gallery Talk And Performance

May 02, 2012

11:05 p.m.

An expansive paper garland, an opened book showing two profiles or two initials entwined on a pillowcase: Artworks that represent the husband and husband team of Dutes Miller and Stan Shellabarger, a conjoining of opposites, shadow and light on paper, short and tall, compact and lanky in person. Both partners sport shaggy and slightly pointed beards similar to the unshaven Amish man because the beards have become an integral element to their art. Chicago's Miller and Shellabarger visited Milwaukee to install their exhibition at the Peck School of the Arts Inova/Kenilworth Gallery. In an exhibition titled “Hiding in the Light” based on artist books and paper sequences of their own silhouettes, these two husbands incorporate drawings of their full bodies or only their facial profiles into their exquisite pieces. The exhibition opened April 20 on Gallery Night and the congenial pair returns for a gallery talk and performance art this weekend, May 3, 4 and 5 at the Inova/Kenilworth Gallery.<o:p /> Simple materials and methods imbue their artwork with clarity that establishes an immediate, visceral connection to the viewer. Birdseed, hair, paper, photographs, pillowcases, scissors and sewing needles can be found in almost any household. What these two do with these domestic tools also embodies the seemingly mundane: couching, crocheting, cutting silhouettes as children do paper snowflakes or embroidering a pillowcase. <o:p /> Their results prove to be anything but mundane. Miller and Shellabarger embody masters at these supposedly time honored crafts that meticulously and miraculously unfold across a gallery ceiling in reference to an ancient Greek or Roman architectural frieze they title their Garland Series. Or when the silhouettes become layered in large, pierced paper sheets of black against white, that begin what they name their Veil Series. One with the title Circle, Mirror, Transformation after a recent play written by women playwright.  Several of the artworks from their Silhouette Series on display for the very first time in the Milwaukee exhibit. Garlands and veils, as Dutes and Stan title them, resemble delicately cut paper chains on a grand scale taken from the tradition of paper cutting techniques found in many cultures including the Chinese, German and Mexican. Men depicted in poses and postures named Wrestler, Peak, Reach and Spread. Postures to entice and intrigue the viewer depending on the particular stances. While the pure black and white paper reveals no defined scenarios in these human positions, the viewer's imagination invisibly reconstructs them. Each garland or veil hides the intimate relationship the two partners have shared for almost 20 years. A partnership inherent in any human relationship, one of love and loss that stretches between child, close friends, parent, lover or partner as their garlands do across walls. This philosophy extends from the French author Jacques Derrida, who believes the process of mourning begins from the moment any significant relationship starts because one of the two persons will ultimately face death before the other. A fact people often forget when two individuals first meet one another. That moment acknowledged even at birth when a parent attaches to the dependent and yet unknowing child. Dutes and Stan process this principle through their unique performances they have constructed numerous times, including in Portland, Oregon. Where each one will dig a large hole that resembles a grave, and then each enter the hole they dug to tunnel a pass through across the underground so they can hold hands. The artists explain it as, “There's a mourning metaphor for friendship, and it's bittersweet, continuing after one dies.” <o:p /> To show these intimate connections, Miller and Shellabarger create large books, three feet high by four feet wide, executed in exquisite printmaking paper capped with deckled edges. Dutes will always appear on the left, and Stan on the right with a gutter between them, in a silhouette that is physically traced by the other. Where their beards provide the artistic nuances to the cut paper and tiny hairs can be detected in the cutting. While the silhouettes replace a portrait, the genre plays with shadow and light, the absence and presence of the person, a paper stand in for the pair's actual profile. The silhouette is then conjoined in the large scale artworks displayed in the gallery, where instead of the book's gutter separating the two husbands, they are always conjoined, usually by their beards. Beards tied, touching or woven together in each of these pieces to invisibly project their relationship, which people often deny. A concept that will be explored further in the embroidered pillowcases seen in the glass cases opposite the conjoined silhouettes. The pillowcases feature the cipher S & M, again intertwined and couched (a very difficult technique with this thin thread from hair) in the separate colors of their beards, one taken from Miller and the other from Shellabarger. Ciphers that weave a double entendre on the typical wedding monograms used by heterosexual couples, the Victorian practice of intwining a loved one's hair for remembrance and mourning or slyly refer to S & M sexual practices that the beard hair invisibly signifies. Beard hair being a sexual characteristic a man, or women in the form of pubic hair, confronts during the teens when an individual begins to discover these relationships that inevitably determine love and loss, mortality and mourning. <o:p /> While Miller and Shellabarger rarely strive to be political, their art touches on the issues of same-sex marriage, what happens in a bed covered with these couched pillowcases. and the inherent morality of these situations. Beds were perceived to be warm and safe, while at other times dangerous and perverse. Which then leads to why viewers refuse to admit the pair\'s long-term, same sex partnership or its validity in today's world. The two husbands have experienced every reaction to their art, where viewers softly giggled or walked away in disdain. Unfazed, Miller and Shellaberger believe that all these reactions expose these loving relationships to the light in contemporary society. So their multi-layered meanings shine against the elegant and simple forms the artist conjoin to illuminate their own unique love. The Peck School of the Arts at the Inova/Kenilworth presents Miller and Shellabarger: Hiding in the Light through July 15. The Gallery Talk on May 3 begins at 6:00 p.m., and two performances on May 4 and May 5 will begin at noon. <o:p /> <o:p> </o:p> <o:p> </o:p> <o:p> </o:p> <o:p /> <o:p> </o:p>

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