JULY NEWSLETTER FROM THE STUDIO OF RAQUEL P MILLER

Happy July to you all. What a warm month, full of new blooming summer flowers, kayak rides, swimming, and cooler nights. I’ve been working towards creating new work for my upcoming markets—the Queer Maker’s Market in Westbrook Commons on Sunday 8/10, and one at Broadturn Farm on Saturday 8/23 as part of SPACE Gallery’s annual Feastland, where I will also have some of my paintings installed. With all that, I’m also continuously thinking and working towards my duo show Memories to Give with Esper, opening the first Friday of October at 82 Parris in Portland. So much to think about and so many beautiful creative opportunities. I feel so grateful, and yet I still struggle to balance my time with my busier full-time-job work schedule. It has admittedly been harder and more frustrating to feel new constraints on my creative practice and the administrative parts that are so essential. But I am doing my best. Which is still pretty good.

In my writing group this month, someone said, “A half written letter is better than none at all.” And that couldn’t ring more true. So here I am, showing up with this month’s (last month’s? who knows really…) newsletter, and while complete, it is embracing an air of “half-written and sent in the mail anyway.”

My ceramic work has been so rewarding. I created my first jar this month and will have a new, small batch of ceramics to share at my markets. I also began a new Handbuilding class with Amy Larkin that I am really excited about, and I hope to complete a large vessel for Esper and my show with Amy’s guidance and class structure. And I began a new small sketchbook. I’ve allowed myself the moment to lose the structure of “painting in it every! day!” and instead, I make a painting most days, when I can. And I much prefer seeing a collection of unrushed paintings that represent moments in my week where I was able to slow down and create. It feels so much better.

So really, these past couple months have been filled with letting go, redefining what feels good for me and my practice, allowing myself to show up “half written,” and realizing that effort is still remarkable, and enough.

I am so happy to participate in one of the upcoming Queer Maker’s Markets this Sunday at Westbrook Commons from 11-3pm. I will have a new hot, fresh, right-out-of-the-kiln batch of ceramics to share, as well as new 4 x 6 postcard designs. Returning to the market sphere are my ceramic flower magnets, cards, small postcard prints, and original paintings! I really hope to see you there.

So grateful to have been asked to collaborate with SPACE Gallery for their Feastland 2025 event at Broadturn Farm!  I am excited to install four paintings around the barn space at Broadturn Farm.  I’ll also be tabling at this event, selling ceramics, paintings, and prints, with the inclusion of my comic “Sometimes the fog greets you as warmly as the sun” and my zine, “Everything comes undone, we do this over and over.”  Last day to buy tickets for the dinner is the 11th, but I hope to see you there!  

“This year’s event revives SPACE’s sold-out party from 2024 and the original Feastland party in 2012, bringing a wild evening of food, site-specific art projects, drinks, music, and county fair vibes while adding a new roster of sights, sounds, and sensations.”

My studio time looks a lot like this:  painting in my 3” x 5” yellow sketchbook on the stoop of McArthur library during my breaks at work; working on a grant with Flo Edwards; setting a timer for 15 minutes (also sometimes during my lunch break or before I get into bed) and painting a section of my fabric painting I’ve been working on for months; checking eight collectively heavy books out from McArthur Library on ceramics or Ecuadorian ceramics or an adjacent topic, and asking the librarians if you can somehow check these out for an extra long time, and they say yes?!; going to class at Mill Pond and learning how to hand build pots; going to Mill Pond (also on my lunch break) to see what came out of the glaze kiln; or heading in for two hours on a Saturday morning to make a couple small vases and only ending up with one.  It also looks like years of working on my mom’s really old iPad that can’t hold a charge, and if the iPad itself is not dying, it’s the pencil, and finally, one random Sunday in August, going to the Apple store and investing in an iPad for myself!  It also looks like muddling my way through creating new postcard prints and redesigning new business cards.  Do people really use them?  I try to make one side like a tiny print and I imagine someone might have placed it on their fridge, or used it as a bookmark.  It also looks like me squeezing in time to write this newsletter because I truly love it as part of my practice.  

Ya girl made a jar!!! And I love her!!  The last couple of months I have been trying to throw with larger amounts of clay and attempting to throw taller pieces.  I’m building skills and confidence so that I can finally make my mom an urn for her ashes. 

As I type this, in the whirlwind of life, I realize her five year anniversary of her death is coming up at the beginning of September.  I hope that by the end of this year or beginning of next, I will finally have a resting place for her that is not the plastic box from the funeral home.  Not funny but kind of funny. 

In all realness, I dream of what she might think of this new medium for me and my art.  She always gasped when I showed her my art and thought they were the most amazing things, as most moms do.  But I still think about what she would think, or if she would like it.  In some ways it makes me sad to think of all we can’t share, but I also feel proud to have made so many things that would have made her smile.  

A throwback to my time in 2024 as a David C. Driskell Fellow at Black Seed Studio, I’m so happy to share my artist video highlighting my process and time in residence with Indigo Arts Alliance. I’m so grateful to share this portal into my work and process, but also grateful to see my process reflected so beautifully. The work I made at Black Seed continues to drive my work. I am in love with the altar and all that it can mean to me.

This video came to me on a morning that I was experiencing some self-doubt and feeling guideless, and after watching it, I felt reminded of my work and it’s meaning, my passion for it, and that I remain on the path meant for me. I’m excited to continue exploring the altar and all that it can hold, and the space it paves for transformation.

Thank you to Indigo, as always, and to Charlie Nordstrom for the beautiful work on this video.

Right now, I am making paintings on fabric, paper, and panels of an arched shape that I am calling an altar, as I explore this shape in four ways: as burial (object), as window (lens), as portal (transformation), and as threshold (in-between space, neither here nor there).

I was able to see Daniel Minter’s piece, “In the Voice of Trees” on the first day it was open to the public at Deconstructing the Boundaries 2025. Tucked away, in the quiet of the forest trees, stood pillars of red pines adorned with strings of beads. It echoed the land around it and felt very much a part of it. I was struck by the earthen tones of the red pine and the the array of earthen clay color variations throughout. Closer looks reveal the indentations, the marks, and the hands of the community that helped shape them. I feel so grateful to have been a hand in the making of these beads.

I was also able to visit the second commissioned piece this year by Arisa White, following the pathway poem “revolution is ritual.” I loved carrying these words with me as mantras, and I borrowed a line for the title of my newsletter this month from this piece.

“listen for the portal”
”you are the answer to be trusted”
"[this] wild and liberatory path longs for you—”

Thank you for making it to the end.  My newsletter is always free, always wordy, and always colorful.  I try to pack it full of images of my art and process in ways I would want to see from others.  So thank you for browsing these images and reading these words.  I hope to see you at some markets.  If you ever feel called to reply and send a message or thought, you just have to reply to this email!  Thank you to those who do this or have done this in the past.  It always is such a surprise and a treat.  I love my newsletter process and knowing someone simply read it, really fuels me.  See you next month, friends.