Exhibitions
ALAINA MILLER: BECKONING
State Gallery + Studios (The Forge) / 217 Willow St. February 20 - March 17th
Alaina Miller
The Forge is proud to present Beckoning, a solo exhibition by multidisciplinary artist Alaina Miller. Bringing together works in clay, concrete, two-dimensional media, and sculpture, Miller’s latest body of work is a meditation on the transience of life, the weight of grief, and the search for beauty within the impermanent. Beckoning marks Miller’s solo exhibition as part of her 2024/2025 participation in The Forge’s Studio Residency Program.
Through a diverse range of materials, Miller constructs a dialogue between the physical and the philosophical, probing the tension between human fragility and existential endurance. The works in Beckoning wrestle with questions that have persisted through time: Are we bound together or separated by our shared fate of mortality? Can the inevitability of death be confronted without fear, but rather with reverence for the unknown?
Miller’s practice is deeply informed by personal experience—by a life marked with grief both anticipated and sudden. The death of a loved one, the specter of loss, and the quiet but ever-present erosion of time inform each piece, making the exhibition a deeply intimate yet universally resonant reflection on what it means to persist in the face of the inevitable.
“There is no escaping death; it is the consequence of life,” Miller reflects. “Grief is collective, yet it is isolating. It alters your perception of time, of meaning. You find yourself preparing for losses that have yet to come, reliving those that already have. It is both an anchor and an abyss.”
Pivotally, the exhibition invites its viewers to collectively and individually inhabit the space between knowing and unknowing. By working with materials that bear the marks of both fragility and resilience, Miller crafts an experience that is as haunting as it is cathartic.
About the Artist:
A 2024/2025 recipient of The Forge’s Studio Residency Program, Alaina Miller is an interdisciplinary artist whose work interrogates themes of mortality, grief, and the impermanence of human existence. Working across sculpture, painting, and mixed media, Miller constructs evocative pieces that blur the boundary between the material and the metaphysical. A recent graduate of MTSU, she currently lives and works in Murfreesboro, TN.
