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Rachel Bubis: Your practice spans painting, filmmaking, and graphic design. Do ideas typically begin in one medium before finding their way into another? How does your approach change from one medium to the next?

Noah Thomas Miller: All the time, but it's a fairly natural process. I love working across mediums and finding intersections between them, and once I established my own visual language, it made it easy to blend whatever I'm doing. Normally everything starts from a written idea or a visual reference that inspires the work, and then it grows into something else for me. As it grows I can sort of direct it into, "Ok, this would work as an exhibition. This would work as a one-off design. Or, this has legs to be a short story."

Curiosity is my driving factor, I love to learn and to do so many different things. It helps to have so many irons in the fire, so that when one project hits an inevitable wall, I can hop to the next one and not stall out. So I'm always working on various projects at once (never been bored a day in my life, haha). I am currently figuring out if there's a way to marry my practice of film with my art work, we'll hopefully see the results of that soon

RB: You've described your work as a process of deconstructing and reconstructing scenes. What are you looking for during that process?

NTM: To find what's actually at the core of it all. When you're writing or rewriting, you're shaping up a new idea, so it's great to build it up and then strip it back down to see what part has the most meaning. It's the same with a painting or drawing: draw it, redraw it from here, sketch it again from there, what's the primary subject and what's it all about.

I'm always trying to figure out what the boundaries are, what the essence is, the nugget, the mood, the heart of the piece. Once I strip an image of its detail (or color), I can start to isolate the tone and the feeling of what that scene is all about to begin with. I think this is the best way to share and talk about a scene, or to even tell the narrative itself.

RB: Your paintings seem to operate in this way – they often appear simple or flattened, but there’s a vivid feeling when you look at them. Can you talk about a specific piece and the memory behind it? How did you distill that memory into its final form?

NTM: I’m glad that it comes across! That’s exactly what I’m hoping for. A good example of this is to take a piece that has an element of fire with the houses, to blur the line a little bit on what’s happening here: is the house on fire, or is this the glow from the hearth or fireplace. The takeaway is that I hope it feels like a scene where you’re feeling the warmth built into it all either way. Another thing I attempt is to blur the line of where one house might start and another might end, much like our compounded memory anyways, they start to merge and blend with one another. Especially thinking back to childhood, it becomes hard to differentiate some scenes from others in my mind. Most memories are an amalgam of so many different things, simplified or combined, but what we remember most is the feeling of that scene. Maybe this is why my paintings can sometimes feel childlike too (the way a kid tries to recall their own house and draw it) - sometimes no doors or proper alignment between one structure and the next - an architect’s nightmare, haha.

If you want an example of recent memory though I can try to give it, and in a way these paintings are a little more clear too. But, some of the recent big red framed houses that I’ve made are from wandering around Finland, by train and by foot. There’s not one house that they’re pulled from (if someone were to show me a photograph of this exact house I’d be so surprised!), but there are so many houses I sat with and interacted with that felt like these - another amalgam, just of recent memories.

RB: You describe yourself as a "red house painter." This description makes sense as you literally are a person that paints red houses, but does it mean anything else to you? What attracts you to red house paint?

NTM: Red paint just catches your eye and pulls you in, doesn't it? It also fades differently than most other colors, in a way that I like. But a lot of it is rooted in Finnish and Scandinavian structures too, either red siding or red roofs on most of the countryside buildings I've seen. So coming back here and drawing all of these Baltic houses, then painting them on Baltic birch wood, makes me feel like a simple house painter, working with materials that are typically just used for construction: layering it up, carving and engraving the wood, gluing and screwing it together, and using actual house paint to render the idea in the center

So describing myself as a “red house painter” is tied into the practicality of that. But, is it also a reference (or a joke) about the Red House Painters if you know them? Their last 3 records get A LOT of air-time in my studio while I paint. I think their band name comes from a painting crew that existed in the 90's here in Tennessee called "The International League of Revolutionary House Painters," which they shortened to "The Red House Painters." So, in a way, I'm reclaiming that name here in Tennessee, if anyone wants to join or unionize? - haha.

RB: And what attracts you to houses and domestic architecture as a subject?

NTM: Not sure how far back it goes, but I’ve always found myself photographing an eave, a painted doorway, the way the windows are positioned, the trim, the painted siding, the shake. I see a house and I want to show my appreciation, not necessarily to the home “owner”, but to the house as an individual itself. I want to slip the house a note, to tuck it somewhere into a crevice (think “In the Mood for Love” and the scene at Angkor Wat, but more domestic and on a much smaller scale, haha). I just want the structure to understand that it is understood. Because I know with my house, as I’m sure yours has too, has witnessed us at every second and at every stage possible.

It feels both like one of the closest friends I’ve ever had, but it also feels like the most accurate reflection or representation of myself at the same time. So I use it as the foundation of my work, and lean on the imagery of the house to show this appreciation and reciprocation of caretaking.

When my exhibition DAYS opened, my American uncle gave me a copy of "The Poetics of Space" by Gaston Bachelard, because of how I happened to be writing about these ideas. I found so many parallel thoughts to what I was working on, even though it was written in 1958, describing our memories and ourselves through the language of a house. I've reread it so many times, integrating these ideas into my practice further. I could use that book to write a dozen theses & exhibitions at this point.

RB: So why are all the houses on fire?

NTM: A question I used to not like to answer, because initially it was personal. But, there are so many reasons this imagery took hold as the center point of my work, and I'm now working on a whole visual essay answering that question, haha.

There’s the physical sense of a House on Fire, represented in my paintings as an actual fire, (although my family and I have lost them to Tornadoes or other disasters) - a similar devastation in concept. My family was the volunteer fire department in the small town I grew up in, so there’s been a connection and witnessing to the literal sense of houses on fire around me as well.

But there’s also a metaphorical meaning to a house on fire, using the imagery as an analogy. A sudden sense of grief, a shocking diagnosis, and the days and states that followed filled with smog. (Personally - having this feeling of your own walls burning, after battling stage-3 cancer seven years ago and fighting that fire). We all seem to have experienced some variation of this now, like a row of houses on fire. Losing your foundation. Losing individuals and even whole communities. Losing yourself. Losing another. These pieces are meant to be shared in this way.

Or maybe there’s a choppy or more poetically blunt way to say it all. Take the Talking Heads song (not “Burning Down the House”) but “Love → Building on Fire”. It might be another reason for painting houses on fire. Falling in love while making this body of work, and feeling like a building on fire: “Which is my face - Which is a building - Which is on fire”!

RB: House paint is designed to preserve and protect buildings. Does that function resonate with your interest in memory and archiving?

NTM: I love this question because I don’t think I’ve drawn the connection between the two, so thank you! Woah. I mean the reason that I use house paint is because I’m not a traditional painter by any means. No formal training at all, I studied film & design at Memphis College of Art. So getting my paint mixed at the hardware store is the only way for me to actually attempt painting, haha. I’ve got to sit with your question a little more, I think it has more meaning than I realized!

RB: Do you see archiving itself as an artistic act?

NTM: I want to believe it is. The preservation itself isn’t quite an artistic act, but what you do with all of the objects, images, pieces after is. So I guess you could say curation is an artistic act, exhibition design, or assembly once you’ve done the leg work of cataloging. But, that work is necessary!

I think as an Artist though, or maybe just as a person, it feels like paying it forward in a way. If you give time, attention, and this weight to what’s come before you - to really invest & cherish artwork, stories, objects from someone else - then there is this hope that someone might do the same with your life’s ambition too once you’re gone.

RB: What are you working on now and what’s next?

NTM: Trying to bridge the gap of what we just talked about. My Grandpa, Don Royce Miller, just passed away. I’ve been spending years recording his practice. He was a truck driver & a farmer who has scratch built model towns, hand painted backdrops, made wooden trucks. Giving the attention to these worlds he created in his lifetime. And then I’m trying to continue to build my own! Adding a bit of him & his process to what I do: I’m making lots of models based on my paintings lately. Feels like I’m playing around, haha. But writing and tying it all together as best as I can for a show later in the Fall this year.

Still painting, filming in the background, listening & playing on the radio too. Getting to ease back into things: a group show in Fayetteville, Aberdeen, Chicago, & back here in Memphis. Prepping a fairly large solo exhibition, and then a project with the Children's Museum of Memphis as well this fall. There’ll be plenty more to share before the year is out, between sharing my Grandpa’s work, helping my sister Emily Elizabeth Miller with her exhibitions, and presenting you with a whole village to step into and see. Stay tuned.

Noah Thomas Miller is Illinois-born, but finds his home in Memphis. He works in multivalent mediums, whether that be woodworking, film, sound installation, or a combination of materials, to preserve memory and tell stories. He attended Memphis College of Art and has continued his practice through work with museums, film programs, art institutions, and most importantly at home.

Rachel Bubis is a Nashville-based independent arts writer, regular contributor to The Focus blog, and LocateArts.org Web Manager for Tri-Star Arts.