Profile: CATHRYN MILLER artist Last Update:July 14, 2015

A former theatrical designer and fibre artist, Cathryn Miller has focused on book arts and paper making for the past twenty years. Throughout her career she has won numerous awards and is the only Saskatchewan craftsperson to have received the Premier’s Prize at Dimensions (the annual juried exhibition of the Saskatchewan Craft Council), in two different media.

Under the imprint of Byopia Press, Miller’s handmade paper and book works are held in more than forty public collections in Canada, the United States, and England, and in private collections the world over. A homecoming of sorts, Elemental is Miller’s first solo show in Toronto, where she was born and lived as a child before moving around the country, eventually settling in Saskatchewan in 1973.


image: Cathryn Miller, Snowy Owl, 2009
more images to come

I am a maker. I have always been a maker. It isn’t just what I do, it’s who I am. I have made marks since I was old enough to hold a crayon. At the age of two I decorated the maroon tiles in our bathroom with toothpaste. At three and a half I was given a pair of blunt-nosed scissors and some paper to play with. Within a day I had left small cut-out shapes in every room in the house. I have used my hands to make things (drawings, sculptures, maps, costumes, tapestries, theatre sets, books, …) ever since. I once told a customer that I thought I was a little OCD. He replied that I was probably what he called an “obligatory artist”. Apparently some of us just can’t help it, though I suspect a 12-step program could be developed to treat the condition. My work is based on whatever has intrigued me/enlightened me/inspired me/challenged me/entertained me. The phrase “What if I …” is often a trigger.