From far away, Cheryl Miller’s collages could pass as illustrations, with their painterly lines and edges; only up close is it possible to see her pieces are actually made of fiber, intricately woven together with small bits of fabric.
“I use quilting techniques, but on a much smaller scale,” Miller said during an interview in her studio, an upstairs room in her Concord home.
Outside, it was a cold, wintery day, but inside, the studio was bright and tidy. On her table was a sewing machine and her “palette”– rows and rows of thread organized by color – and along the adjacent wall was a shelving unit housing all her fabrics and pieces made by other artists she admires.
It doesn’t surprise Miller if her collages are mistaken for paintings. Before she took up needle and thread, she was a painter who studied art history and studio art at Hope College in Michigan.
Her process is largely improvisational, starting with an idea, a pair of scissors and a pile of fabric. Then, her cut-up pieces are layered on heavy, acid-free printmaking paper and moved around until the composition feels right. Stitching adds the necessary depth, light, and shadows.
“I try to think about where the light is coming from,” she said, gesturing to one of her earlier pieces, “Strolling in the Tuileries,” which depicts the gardens outside the Louvre Museum in Paris and hangs on a picture rail in her work space. Atop the trees, the stitching is bright yellow, but below, it’s deep green. “Usually, if it’s a sunny day, the tops of the trees will be lighter than the bottoms because it’s shady underneath the branches,” she explained.
Miller says she always knew she wanted to do something creative with her life but for a long time felt outward pressure to secure and maintain a practical job. For a time, she worked for the State of New Hampshire but always dreamed of being a full-time artist.
She suspects her love for fabric began brewing during an interior design internship in New York City while in college. “I think that’s where I really started noticing fabric. He would say, ‘Go downtown and pick out 10 samples,’ ” she said.
But it wasn’t until moving to New Hampshire and joining a quilt guild 25 years ago that Miller began quilting seriously. At first, it was just quilts she made, but then she started stitching cards from tiny scraps of fabric, which did very well at craft fairs.
“I thought, maybe I have something. I kept working on it, and I sort of gradually decided I was really more interested in fabric than painting at that point. I love painting. But it felt like I was doing the same thing over and over. The fabric had a whole other dimension to it,” she said.
With fabric, she’s forced to be even more creative; patterns already exist, colors already exist. What can she make with what she’s got? Though most of her work is two-dimensional, over the pandemic, Miller began creating three-dimensional decorative houses, and she’s been incorporating more textural fabric into her art, like velvet.
Over time, her work has become more and more detailed, every stitch a different color, chosen to reflect the light, shadows, and movement of a piece. She gravitates toward landscapes and birds – ravens especially – and often, will tint her linens to get the colors and textures she desires.
“I do a lot of landscapes, which have more of an earthy look to them,” she said, pulling out some recently-dyed swatches, cloth splashed with dashes of green and violet. “I love batik fabrics, but some of them are just so bold. If you’re in Hawaii or somewhere, they kind of fit, but a little bit goes a long way for me.”
Even now, after more than a decade of doing this full-time, Miller says her work continues to evolve. She plans to incorporate more materials into her art – paper and maybe even paint – and lean into the abstract nature of it. This May, she participates in the New Hampshire Art Association’s show, “Earth Elements: Exploring the Textiles and Hues of Nature,” at Portsmouth’s Robert Lincoln Levy Gallery.
There are a lot of new things on the horizon. Technically, Miller and her husband are new residents of Concord, having moved here to downsize this past November. They wanted less house to maintain in a more convenient location, closer to a walkable downtown with shops and restaurants. In the coming weeks, they’ll be adopting a puppy.
For her, the changes are exciting. It’s a new place, a new time. New ideas are brewing.
“I can’t do the same thing over and over,” she said. “It just keeps evolving.”
Miller’s work can be found in most League of New Hampshire Craftsmen Galleries; in the New Hampshire Art Association’s Robert Lincoln Levy Gallery; in her Etsy shop; and on her website, cherylzmillerart.com.