STATEMENT
Sean Owen Miller is an American artist best known for collaborative works that merge the roles of artist, curator, and collector. Miller employs intermedia approaches, experimental exhibition formats, storytelling, and speculative design strategies to examine historical events, institutional frameworks, and scientific knowledge. Miller’s practice seeks to raise awareness, empathy, and wellness in the individual and the natural world. The concept of the archive or cabinet of wonder is an organizing principle for many of his projects.
BIO
Sean Miller holds an MFA from University of Colorado Boulder and is a co-founder of SOIL artist-run gallery in Seattle, Washington where he organized and curated multiple exhibitions and started his Art Museum Dust Collection project (with Phil Stoiber and later Connie Hwang). In 2003, Miller founded the John Erickson Museum of Art (JEMA), a location variable museum, a conceptual museum project. In 2008, while in residence with Flaxart Studios and exhibiting at Golden Thread Gallery in Belfast, U.K., Miller/JEMA presented Ono’s IMAGINE PEACE (2007) and WISH PIECE (1996) and Green’s A Project for the New Free State of Caroline (2008) both based at Golden Thread and performed/presented throughout the city of Belfast.
Since 2010, Miller has collaborated with Fluxus artists: Eric Anderson, Philip Corner, Ken Friedman, Bibbe Hansen, Billie Maciunas, Yoko Ono, Ben Patterson, and Ben Vautier. Other notable longtime collaborators include designer Connie Hwang, Chip Lord, and Jack Massing.
In 2016, Miller co-founded and co-organized the Crude Life Portable Biodiversity Museum: A citizen art and science investigation of Gulf of Mexico biodiversity after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill with Brandon Ballengee and Prosanta Chakrabarty funded by National Academies Keck Futures Initiative. In 2019, Miller founded, Drifting Cabinets: A Portable Collection of Gulf Biodiversity. Both collections toured numerous museums, galleries, nature centers, schools, and public events in California, Louisiana, and Florida.
In 2022, Miller performed/exhibited in exhibitions: Fluxus 1962 – 2022 Sixty Years in Flux and 88 New Works by Philip Corner, Sean Miller, and Jack Massing (Genoa, Italy). Most recently, Billie Maciunas and Sean Miller co-curated Fluxus in the Swamp, a series of exhibitions, performances, and lectures in Gainesville, Florida supported by Santa Fe College, University of Florida, and the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art.
In 2022, Chip Lord, Jack Massing and Miller released the film Exquisite Moving Corpse which featured 60 artists in 60 minutes each responding to the last frame of footage from the previous artist. A majority of the film was created/organized during Covid lockdown. The film toured cities in the U.S. and Europe and was reviewed in the International Journal of Surrealism and elsewhere.
In 2025, Wes Kline, Chad Serhal, and Sean Miller released the film titled, Piano Aktivitys as a Disciplind Destruktshun (a piano work’t) as a documentary based on two scores and a performance penned by artist and composer Philip Corner. The film features Corner, Miller discussing the score and includes Miller and performers Bibbe Hansen, Billie Maciunas, Jade Dellinger, Jack Massing, Craig Coleman, Dan Stepp, Benedicta Opoku_Mensah, Kyle Selley
Selected exhibitions, screenings, and performances by Miller include: FLUXUS 1962-2022: Sixty Years in Flux, Villa Croce Museo d’Arte Contemporanea (Genoa, Italy), Stupendo Gallery, Spazio Unimedia, and Palace Ducale (Genoa, Italy), The Exquisite Moving Corpse and other Collaborations, Archivio Emiy Harvey, Venice, Italy and Scope Art Show (Miami), 88: Philip Corner, Jack Massing, Sean Miller, and Friends, Spazio Unimedia (Genoa, Italy), Drifting Cabinets: A Portable Collection of Gulf Biodiversity, Orlando Museum of Art (Orlando, FL), Crude Life: Portable Museum for Gulf Biodiversity, National Academies Keck Futures Initiative Annual Conference Exhibition (California), John Erickson Museum of Art: Eleven-Year Retrospective, Bob Rauschenberg Gallery, John Erickson Museum of Art (various exhibitions): Deitch Projects Art Parade (NYC), ACC Galerie (Weimar), National Museum of Ireland (Dublin), Spazio Utopia (Campagna, Italy), Spazio Unimedia (Genoa, Italy), Museo Raccolte Frugone (Genoa, Italy), Indianapolis Museum of Art, Contemporary Museum (Baltimore), Aqua Art Fair (Miami Beach), Golden Thread Gallery (Belfast, N. Ireland), and Catalyst Arts (Belfast, N. Ireland), and Theseus Wants His Boat Back, Werkstadt Gallery, Berlin, Germany, Arcane Space (Tbilisi, Georgia), Arnolfini Art Centre (Bristol, U.K.), Athens Institute for Contemporary Art (Athens, GA), UICA (Michigan), CoCA (Seattle), COCA (St. Louis), Post Gallery (Los Angeles), Howard House Gallery (Seattle), Saltworks (Atlanta), Roq La Rue Gallery (Seattle), Blackrock Castle Observatory (Cork, Ireland), Limerick City Gallery (Limerick, Ireland), Microscope Gallery (NYC), Pallas Projects (Dublin, Ireland), Los Angeles Center for Digital Art (L.A., California), Quint Gallery (San Diego), Museum of Art and History (Santa Cruz, CA), Signal Art Centre (Bray, Ireland), UnimediaModern Contemporary Art (Genoa, Italy), Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art (Gainesville, FL), and HorseHead Outdoor Sculpture Exhibition in (Seattle and Belfast, N. Ireland).
Selected coverage of Miller’s work includes: Art Papers, Art Districts, Burnaway, CBS, New York Times, The Nation, New Art Examiner, Sculpture Magazine, RTÉ, Irish Examiner, Baltimore Sun, Issues magazine, LA Weekly, Houston Chronicle, Modern Art Notes, Seattle Times, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Qantas, Miami New Times, Daytona Beach News-Journal, The Stranger, Seattle Weekly, USA Today, ArtStar, Dish Network (2008), Oddities (Science Channel) Season 2, NVTV, Northern Visions Media Centre, April 21, 2008. “How to Start Your Own Country” (2009) Documentary by Jodi Shapiro.
Sean Owen Miller is based in Gainesville, Florida where he serves as an associate professor with University of Florida’s School of Art and Art History where he teaches Sculpture and Extended Media, Art/Sci courses, and the Workshop for Art Research and Practice at University of Florida. Miller is an associate professor with the School of Art and Art History at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida where he lives with artist/professor Bethany Taylor.
John Erickson Museum of Art http://www.jema.us
Dream Registry http://dreamregistry.net/wordpress/
UF Faculty Page https://arts.ufl.edu/directory/profile/2017