Liz Miller

Acreage (Fort for 2021) explores broad ideas of infrastructure through abstract arrangements of materials that are at once structural and malleable, banal and decorative. Utilitarian, building, and sporting materials like gutter guards, nylon jersey mesh, and tactical rope are transformed into an elaborate site-specific environment that integrates ornate handiwork with materials that sometimes seem diametrically opposed to this treatment. The slow, elaborate act of stitching and the disposable, plastic elements that comprise the work’s armature exist in an inherent tension that is mirrored in the landscape where I live. During the isolation of the pandemic months, as I cycled the gravel roads of my rural environment, I experienced both a desire to fit into the landscape, and a desire to remove myself from it. I often saw remnants of building projects littered across the roads and in the ditches, and I imagined myself sewing my own fort from these elements. Acreage (Fort for 2021) is at once a protective barrier against the rural landscape, a celebration of it, and an escapist fantasy of what it would look like if I created my own makeshift environment. The installation builds and expands upon ideas first explored in a related work, Blind (Fort for 2020), exhibited at Textile Center of Minnesota.