Karen Miller
Karen D. Miller is a contemporary textile artist and writer who uses her work to illuminate the overlooked and the undervalued. From her graduate level education in law and social systems, through her professional career as a lawyer, to her life as a mother, Karen has always been aware of the difference between what she has been told “should be” the experience of women and what actually “is”. Karen explores the concept of self-identity and societal perceptions as they relate to women in modern life, including how they change as we mature, how they affect us throughout our lives, and how the uniquely complicated and all-consuming experience that is motherhood upends everything we ever knew. Her work demonstrates a wider sympathy for all manner of things under-appreciated and misunderstood, expressing the fundamental optimism that one day recognition and understanding will be attained.
Karen’s textile art has been shown in exhibitions across Canada and the United States and included in publications around the globe. She is passionate about helping women find their voices through art; her book Eyes Open to the World: Memories of Travel in Wool and her frequent magazine articles all use her own artistic discoveries to encourage others to find and nurture their own artistic expression. She is the founder and organizer of In the Studio, a monthly online opportunity for anyone to hear artists present their work and artistic experiences. She is a member of 44.4 Mothers/Artists Collective in Ottawa, and of Craft Ontario. Her next book, a chronicle of the complexities of motherhood featuring her own work and over twenty collaborators, is forthcoming in 2022. Karen lives and works out of her studio in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
