WARNING:
this post is very photo intensive.

the show went off on friday night. it was unbelievable. i guess i'm a 'real' artist now. even sold at least one piece. how 'bout that?

first off i'd like to thank mt dear friend Bryan aka ~49pearls for all his help putting this show together. no way i could have done it without you my friend.

also i'd like to thank Jamey aka ~savezlamour for driving all the way from Memphis to see the show and hang out. it was a pleasure to have you around for the weekend. i appreciate it more than you can imagine.

thanks are in order to ~pipersmoon for composing my bio. we don't see eye to eye on many things these days, so i really appreciate that you put that aside for a few minutes while composing my story as you see it.

finally, thanks to `jerryhazard for the artist photo, the note on friday morning, and, well, for sharing this great gift with me.

i'd also like to thank everyone out there in internet land for all you've done to help me over the last three years. it's been awesome. you're all great and i am honored to call you my friends.

as far as the final details go, i hung 33 pieces in the gallery. some of my paintings will go up in two weeks when one of the other artists pulls her stuff out of the gallery (ugh, what a bitch). more on that later.

as i mentioned before, ~pipersmoon wrote a bio for me and `jerryhazard provided the photo of me for the show. the text of the bio is as follows:

allen j. miller captures the romance of his nomadic life with his lens, his heart and his soul.

upon moving to New Mexico in 2003, he got his first glimpse of the deserted land that has captured his heart and continues to spark his creative imagination. Ever since allen started his photographic journey in 2006, he has traveled from the American southwest to the cliffs of Malta. he prefers the solitude of back roads far from the beaten path. he shows us the traveler’s life and all the beauty this desolate land hides. allen provides the visual soundtrack to that road trip we never had the time to take.

allen pulls vibrant colors out of the ordinary places around us. with his love of the wind and the wild, he grabs scenes that we would pass by and shows them to us in all their forgotten beauty. in allen’s photographs, you feel the wind on your face, you smell the clean air, and you taste the freedom of the road.

allen has recently started turning his lens toward people. in an upcoming series of spontaneous portraits, you'll see what his efforts to expand his photographic horizons have yielded. even though he is broadening his creative scope, allen never strays from his concept of real photography for real people. whether the subject is landscape, portraiture, plant life or highways and back roads, allen stops and smells the roses. He captures the forgotten lands of America, the serene cliffs of a small island, and the friend sharing a laugh at the end of the day.

Despite endless bumps in the road, allen j. miller continues to roam his world, living the nomadic life of the wanderer, and sharing the beauty of that life with us through the lens of his camera and the eye of the artist.


thanks Z. it was really nice.

i also wrote three artist statements that correlated with the themes of the show. they are as follows:

desert(ed)

with this series i’ve tried to capture some of the wonder of the desert southwest. from the Rocky Mountains of Colorado to the low desert of Arizona to the sandstone cliffs of Utah to the White Sands of New Mexico, the American Southwest is all the proof i need of a higher being. i hope you can find god, whatever that idea means to you, in these images.
i’ve been asked countless times how i pick my locations. the answer is simple; i drive until i see a sight that moves me, get out of whatever i’m driving and shoot until i believe i’ve captured what moved me about the spot. then i get back in and drive on the next spot that moves me. i rarely use a map, and sometimes it takes all day to go fifty miles. i repeat that process over and over until i, inevitably, bump into reality, and it calls me back to the day to day i loathe so
much.

the road to nowhere

this series is dedicated to the notion, most famously attributed to Stephen Tyler, that;

life’s a journey, not a destination.

the road is my life. it calls me every day. some days i don’t even try to resist its call. those days are getting closer and closer together. i’m on an odyssey and the roads of the world are the source of all my adventures.
ultimately, this series is about the road and the adventures i find on them. though i’m convinced that one day i’ll break free of Calypso’s hold and find my Penelope. but for now i let the road take me where it may.

malta: the jewel of the Mediterranean

in September 2006 i spent three weeks in Malta, an archipelago of four tiny islands between Sicily and Tunisia in the Mediterranean Sea. it was a life-changing experience. there is no blue on Earth like the blue of the Mediterranean. from the sandy beaches of Ramla Bay to the Cliffs at Dingli, those islands have been and always will be my favorite place on earth.

strangely enough i came up with these on my own. when i sent them out for approval no one made any edits. i think this is the first time in my life i've written something that didn't require any changes. i guess i can thank my father for that. every time i got in trouble as a kid, my dad would make me write a paper about the evils of whatever 'sin' i'd committed. for example, in 1990, when i got busted, at school (a christian school, lol) with a Hustler magazine he made me write ten pages on the supposed social consequences of porn. then later when i described my views on homosexuality dad made me write 15 pages about HIV/AIDS. that paper won a national competition in 1992. the 'lessons' he was trying to teach may not have taken hold, but i learned how to bullshit from those experiences. so thanks dad.

anyway, tangent. sorry...

so here are the photos...
they're all courtesy of ~savezlamour



<sub>yours truly with Jamey (~savezlamour) on saturday about to paint.



yours truly being a goofy fucker, elvis lip curl and everything



jamey being a goofball



some random dude checking out my stuff



the chick in the black is Jeannine. the others are unknown to me



this is Steve, my new host out here in the sticks. more on that in a bit



Bryan (:dev49pearls) and Leo the pro-bono painter



Jeanine's mom. totally forgot her name.



one of my artist statements



some other random person checking out my photos



the bio courtesy of ~pipersmoon and the photo courtesy of `jerryhazard



on the left as soon as you walk into the gallery



there are more photos on my flickr if you're interested. enough here for now though.

there's a built-in edit since i started this saturday night...

sunday afternoon i set out for a farm in the middle of nowhere. it's really great. no ghosts, no worries, and a job roofing. i'll be here for about a month until the photos come down on July 17th. then i'm headed to MI to replace and remodel a house for my aunt. while in Michigan i'll be working on a portfolio of portraits. so if you know i=any models anywhere in MI that want some pro-bono portrait work done send 'em my way. i'll also be whoring myself out to the senior portrait market in the Detroit Metro and even some church directories (ugh) and family portraits. the goal is to open a studio and gallery in MI for summers. then once that's set up and running well, i'll head to Alamogordo NM for to set up my winter residence complete with a photgraphy gallery and studio. sounds like fun, eh?

i also have at least four ideas that i could get grants for. you know, human interest type stuff. does anyone know a grant-writer that works for cheap?

the ball has begun to roll. no reason to stop it. carpe diem as some would say. anyway, once again i want to thank all of you fine people out there in internet land. if not for the support and encouragement over the last few months i would have given up. so thanks.

and, anyone who captures my 75k pageview will be forever on my cool list. it's coming soon




ajm</sub>