Gary Snyder Fine Art Montana to Present Emerging Artist Ben Miller at Art Miami

Press Release November 14, 2024

Courtesy Gary Snyder Fine Art Montana & Ben Miller

Ben Miller, Dutch Creek, WA (4/9/24), 2024, acrylic on polycarbonate 48 x 96 inches, signed, titled and dated verso (Inv# BenM7846)

Proceeds of Artist in Residence Installation to Benefit Pelican Harbor Seabird Station

BOZEMAN, Mont. (November 12, 2024) - Gary Snyder Fine Art Montana (GSFAMT) will present twelve paintings by Bozeman, Montana artist Ben Miller at Art Miami, December 3-8, Booth AM128. Additionally, a painting by Miller on a large 1000-pound block of plexiglass, created on-site of the nearby Little River, will be installed in the Art Miami Café, to be renamed The Little River Café during the week of Art Miami.

In association with Art Miami, Mana Public Arts, and Pelican Harbor Seabird Station, Miller will be in residence over three days prior to the opening of the Art Miami fair. Casting with a fly-fishing-rod well over 6,000 times, Miller will construct a work on a 4 x 8-foot, 1,000 pound block of plexiglass reflecting his studies of the nearby Little River, a natural resource and historic site threatened by environmental stress and development priorities. Proceeds from the sale of this work will benefit Pelican Harbor Seabird Station, Miami’s premier native wildlife hospital and education center.

Over the last five years, Ben Miller has developed an international reputation for his unique paintings of rivers painted with a fly rod. The Endangered Rivers paintings, like the rivers themselves, are complex layers of color and transparency built from thousands of cast strokes. Miller’s stated goal for these works is to mark down the truth of a river and to raise awareness for the importance of river preservation.

Courtesy Gary Snyder Fine Art Montana & Ben Miller

Ben Miller White Chuck River, WA (3/21/23), 2023 acrylic on polycarbonate 36 x 48 inches signed dated and titled verso (Inv# BenM7819)

Miller’s passion for river conservation has led him to projects with the Gallatin River Task Force, Friends of the Chicago River, Hackensack River Keepers, Save Wild Trout, among others. Miller’s paintings presented at the Art Miami booth will include many of these works, along with more recent paintings of rivers in Montana and Washington.

Gary Snyder Fine Art continues Snyder’s involvement with fine art for over forty years. Snyder’s galleries in Soho, 57th Street, and Chelsea showcased modern American art of the 1930s through the 1960s. Following his move to Bozeman, Montana six years ago, Snyder discovered Ben Miller painting by the banks of the famed Gallatin River. Miller’s unique painting process led to a recent film collaboration, a documentary short directed by Manabu Inada titled The Rhythms of the River, which can be viewed here. This film drew the attention of the Japanese fashion brand South2 West8 which launched a clothing line inspired by Miller’s artwork.

For more information, including endangered river projects, writings and video, visit www.oxbowgallery.art, or email blythe@biggerfishpr.com, or call 406-600-9431.

Courtesy Ben Miller

Courtesy Gary Snyder Fine Art Montana & Ben Miller

ABOUT BEN MILLER

Ben Miller is a Montana-based painter best known for his Endangered River series. He received a BFA in art from Washington State University in Seattle and spent 12 years teaching art before moving to Bozeman, Montana in 2016. He has spent the past seven years painting the endangered western rivers of Montana, Washington, Colorado and Wyoming, and more recently the rivers of Chicago, New Jersey and New York. Miller began his Endangered Rivers series out of his deep passion for raising the awareness and importance of river preservation.

The Endangered Rivers paintings, like the rivers themselves, are complex layers of color and transparency. Each work is created in reverse, with marks made on the back of a plexiglass panel. When turned around, the first strikes of paint represent surface reflections and whitewater rills. These highlights are then backed by successive color layers of deeper and darker forms. While his preparation is calculated, the execution must be spontaneous. He must first find the right spot, then read the river and the day.

Miller’s stated goal for his works is to mark down the truth of a river, not something he thinks it should be. Miller’s paintings are not abstractions but a collection of moments that reflect the onrushing life of things in constant, and constantly varied, collision - a complex snapshot of one place on a particular day. Miller’s Endangered Rivers expresses the idea that small parts of the world can hold our deepest attention, and looking closely offers great rewards.

Miller has exhibited at Story Mill Pop-Up Gallery in Bozeman, Montana in 2020 and 2021 and at Two Rivers Gallery in Big Timber, Montana in 2021. In 2022, he was one of 16 international artists selected to participate in EXPO CHICAGO’s PROFILE section. In the fall of 2022, Miller conducted a four-day residency at MANA Contemporary in Jersey City, NJ where he created paintings of the Hackensack and Hudson Rivers, subsequently exhibited at MANA. Miller exhibited again at EXPO CHICAGO in 2023. Most recently Miller’s paintings were presented at Oxbow Gallery in Bozeman, Montana.