Karen Miller Reimagines School Picture Day
by Steve Desroches
School picture day is an iconic staple of most American childhoods, a mass cultural art project that chronicles the growth of a child with each passing academic year. Order slips are sent home and on the scheduled day kids dress for the occasion with neatly combed hair, clean faces, and orders to stay that way until after the photographs were taken. And smile, please, smile. No frowns, grimaces, or closed eyes. For the most part things go well and the photos are shared with grandparents and end up in the wallets of parents. As time goes by the photos are tinged with the sting of children growing up, a reminder that time passes quickly. However, some photos become time capsules of a time better left behind; often portraits feature the most hateful aspects of puberty, like acne and braces, or endearing eccentricities like thick glasses, cow licks, or missing teeth.
And then there are just some where all one can say is, “Yikes!” That’s the source of inspiration for artist Karen Miller. The Mona Lisa may have had an enigmatic smile, but give Miller a subject with crooked glasses, frizzy hair, and a wonky smile any day.
“I love the yikes,” says Miller. “I tend to go for the photos that are really awkward. I like painting teeth. Painting teeth is fun. I like painting glasses. Remember head gear?! I haven’t done that yet. That’s an added challenge.”
These documents of the dorky and art of the awkward make up Miller’s latest show Picture Day, an exhibition of small painted portraits with actual school photos as the source material. What is a daily practice for her as a painter? It’s the images that are so universal in their expression of the “vulnerability of youth” and reveling in the gangly and weird, perhaps as a reminder that indeed it does get better than that photo of you from the sixth grade. And if art builds empathy, Picture Day squeezes the heart that it elicits a few moans and winces of camaraderie as, unless you peaked too soon in your youth, we’ve all been there.
In this digital age school picture day photos abound on Google, Instagram, and at websites like AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com. And it’s easy to find actual prints on e-Bay, at thrift stores, and Brimfield Antique Flea Market as there’s a growing interest in vernacular photography. Even friends have given Miller old school photos they don’t want taking up space in drawers and closets. And Miller half-jokes she has the “disease” of collecting. Her studio space at the Community Studios on Shank Painter Road, an expansion of The Provincetown Commons, is full of the fruits of her accumulating tendencies. There’s an old bread box, a baby doll’s head, and lots of books. But it’s all orderly and surrounded by all the patina the items have, it makes her space feel like a time machine, much
like her work.
“With school photos I definitely have a nostalgic feeling,” says Miller. “I don’t paint newer ones. I’m drawn to the vintage ones where you can tell it was a long time ago. I like the ones that have mullets.”
There’s no self-portrait, at least not yet, from her own school days. But there is one of her now, holding a gun with her dark-rimmed glasses on top of her head. Prior to beginning Picture Day, Miller primarily painted women with guns. Still does, as is evident by a larger painting of a woman holding two revolvers, barrels pointed upward, a sly side-eye glance on the subject’s face. These images are a larger exploration of Miller’s work which is primarily focused on women, their relationships to one another and with power. Culturally, images of men holding guns is common, so it’s a bit striking when it’s a woman. These works aren’t about the guns, or any type of statement about them or the politics that surrounds them, though she isn’t afraid to go there, she says. Rather it’s an exploration of women and power. It’s also tinged with nostalgia for Pam Grier movies and Angie Dickinson in Police Woman.
Glancing at a portrait of a woman pointing a shotgun and then over to the wall featuring sweet and goofy children, Miller lets out a sigh that deflates her shoulders. The shooting at the Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis that killed two children, injured 14 more, as well as three adults, and traumatized many more, happened the day before. These portraits of anonymous children carry a touch of heartbreak. Children, in particular, are to be protected. And the continued failure of our government and culture to do anything substantive to change this awful spasm of violence becomes increasingly unforgiveable. Miller points to a stack of t-shirts she had made, neatly folded in a variety of colors with an image of an AR-15 on them with the words “It’s The Fucking Guns” above expresses how she feels. And the childhood images also convey her thoughts.
“It’s a weird thing, how divided the U.S. is now,” says Miller. “These paintings are so cheerful. There’s no political innuendo, though I’m not afraid of it, but they’re just cheerful. We need that now.”
Picture Day by Karen Miller is on exhibition at The Commons, 46 Bradford St., now through Sunday, September 14. An opening reception will be held on Friday, September 5 from 5 to 7 p.m. For more information call 508.257.1748 or visit provincetowncommons.org.
