Handprints on the Sky opened almost a month ago at 205 Ocean Avenue Studios. The last few months have been such a whirlwind. I feel so happy with the work that I created for this show, and love the way the work rises up the spiral staircase, ascending to the sky. Much of the work depicts nightscapes, birds flying, butterflies in flight, and it feels as if we are meant to view this work while looking up to it. Looking up to the sky, placing my hand to the sky, reaching toward the sky, are all visual experiences that deeply influence my work, and it wasn’t until we were installing that I realized just how fitting it was that many of these pieces were displayed here.

This show is open for 4 more weeks, which will fly by. We have an Open Studio event scheduled for this upcoming Saturday from 2-5pm, details below! And, I will be gallery sitting at 205 on Sat Oct 10th from 2-4pm and Sat Oct 17th from 1-3pm with open gallery hours. I will be available Oct 9th-19th to schedule any gallery visits while Rosalba is away on vacation. Please don’t hesitate to reach out! Let’s find a time.

All of my new paintings and ceramics from my solo-show are up on my website for viewing. I am so proud of this new body of work. It was admittedly, scary and challenging at times. A lot of the work felt different, evolved, and embodied this in-between transitional space I feel the show is about. With that, there were many awkward phases of a piece, where I moved towards finishing it by doing something I’ve never done before. But this process tested my intuition while pulling from blueprints I’ve been creating from my previous works. I was using the mantra of “I always figure it out. I always get it done,” and at times, wondering if I would. But I did. And I feel so happy and proud to be soaking it in, moving through one side to the other of this threshold of uncertainty.

Continuing her work with the altar as it shapeshifts between a place of burial, a window, a doorway, and a threshold—a space neither here nor there, her work moves in cycles. The Blue Morpho carries us through doorways, connecting with both the cosmos of the night sky and the blue skies of a sunny day, but also drops us in places where we are both here and there, neither here nor anywhere, existing in spaces entirely in between.  The threshold acts as a dynamic space for reflection and transformation, moments before the change itself. 

Grief’s journey carries us through life in a way that connects us to the expansiveness of time and the expansiveness of love rather than through its limits alone. Grief connects us to the past, present, and future all at once.  Raquel’s work once highlighted absence and loss in the expansive distance between her place on earth to the night sky, where her dead relatives and ancestors are held. In her recent works, her arm is still outstretched to the sky, but it begins to fill the space as an altar adorned with Blue Morphos and Forsythia, communicating with her loved ones and her grief itself.   

Handprints on the Sky asks how the sky can be both a vessel for grief, and altar to it; how it can be both a lens to our world, dreams, or planes of existence while also acting as a doorway to them;  and how some days we live in grief’s threshold, and the next day on either side of it. This journey is not linear. If we honor the expansiveness of grief, we transform it, and it transforms us, carrying us across the sky like the moon setting, making space for the sun to rise over fields of yellow flowers pointed to the sun. 

Curated by Ashley Page, Our Dreams are a form of Divination, opened under the cool autumn evening on Friday September 18th at Sidle House Gallery in Freeport, Maine.

I have four works included in this show, curated by the amazing Ashley Page. Three out of the four works are new, and I feel so excited about how I have begun to embrace the fusion of painting and clay, rather than feeling like they needed to be separate. (Above and below photos were taken by Bret Woodard Photography from a visit with Creative Portland).

Visit Sidle House at 20 Bartol Island Rd, Freeport, ME.

GALLERY HOURS
(9/18-10/31) THURS FRI SAT 3-6 PM & by appt.
To visit during off hours, please call/text Maddy (Sidle House) at 512.771.1149

Join 205 Ocean Ave Studios for our Open Studio on Saturday, October 3rd from 2pm-5pm featuring resident artists Rosalba Breazeale, Carina Cilluffo, Julia Lipner, Ashley Page! This year, Raquel P Miller, whose solo exhibition is currently on view, will be joining us as well.

Raquel P Miller will give tours of her exhibition, Handprints on the Sky. If you haven’t had a chance to see her work, this is a great chance to chat with the artist. All works are for sale.

Enjoy food, beverage, grab a tour of the building and hang out in our beautiful backyard! Flo of Indigo Oyster Co. will also be there, oysters shucked first come, first serve!

This past September, I was lucky to facilitate a Plein Air Day at Surf Point. I often do a mini-sketch before I start a plein air landscape, and I end up really loving how those turn out. With a little less time to work as a facilitator, I embraced this day to give it a try and made three small sketches of this glorious tree on the Surf Point property. Upcoming Plein Air Day scheduled for Oct 10th with the marvelous Kristy Cavaretta! Don’t miss it! I’ll be there, too!

I’ve been recentering myself after a whirlwind of making and prep work for both my solo show and show at Sidle House. This involves a lot of studio organizing and reorganizing, pulling out projects I paused, creating new systems to help me in the future, and most excitingly, creating mini weavings on an Altoid tin. This has been truly so magical and sweet. It’s been the best way to learn, and move my hands, and soothe my anxious mind, creating downtime by doing something creative, for the sole purpose of my joy.

Thank you so much Tender Table and the incredible Caroline Hadilaksono for such a sweet night at the BIPOC Night Market. I felt honored to be in the company of Caroline, an incredible illustrator, writer, potter, author, designer, audio engineer, and friend. After facing a lot of self-doubt this year, this evening offered me so much support and joy as I shared my work with a community of black and brown and queer artists. Being able to share my work in this space felt really special.

I spent a bit of time this week revisiting old sketchbooks. I found one of my favorites, from a time when I began to paint with gouache. The pages read like small stories, comics even, in the way I built small compositions on a page. Time is always full of coincidence and I found myself looking at this page feeling both so familiar, yet so far away. I painted this on October 3rd of 2023. And here we are, October 2nd of 2026. Time is always flying. I sometimes tell myself I was once a bird, a condor, and I often find myself watching the birds in the sky, hoping that I, too could soar through the expansive blue sky on the strength of my wings alone.

Until next time friends. ✿ - Raquel

Catch these shows in their final weeks!