Meditations on an Unending Line, Lilli Miller

The Jane Hartsook Gallery is pleased to present ceramic work by Lilli Miller. Diligently working in clay since 1952, this exhibition demonstrates a lifelong, extensive practice exploring the ceramic vessel. Previously studying dance and music, Lilli Miller translates similar modes of harmony, repetition and balance towards the manipulation of clay forms. She finds a likeness between these exercises, as they all provoke a meditative practice. Her variation of size, shape and color express a search for tranquility and beauty. Working with clay at Greenwich House Pottery for over 60 years, she communicates that the place has always been a “precious haven” to her and for her work.

“As a young modern dancer, I was often preoccupied with how to achieve and extend an unbroken line moving through space. Years later, studying the cello with my remarkable teacher, Barbara Mallow, I understood that the same principle applied: how to give the musical line breath and continuity so as to achieve the deepest expressiveness.

And so, what I look for in my pots, and hope the best of them achieve, is that they grow and breathe – that their forms travel into space and their rims move like the planets, endlessly.” – Lilli Miller, 2016

Lilli Miller was born in 1921 in New York, New York. At a young age she was exposed to the arts through the University Settlement House in the Lower East Side. While studying at Brooklyn College, she received a scholarship from the New Dance Group to study the Graham Technique. Miller danced professionally with Anna Sokolow and Jean Erdman and also danced at the Yiddish Theatre on 2nd Street. In 1945 she married Joseph Miller, eventually discovering Greenwich House Pottery. Beginning on the wheel, Miller gravitated to hand-building where she continues to devote ample amounts of energy for her ceramic work today.