The Treasury
Exhibition: Cutting the Puppeteer's Strings, Sammlung Philara Düsseldorf, Germany
20 October 2024 — 1 June 2025
The Treasury is a body of work that tells a story of Peg Miller, an American artist who lived in a bank building in Spring Green, Wisconsin for the last thirty years of her life. This neoclassical revival building was registered as a national historic site after her death, which I speculate would not have been possible without Peg’s occupancy. She used the bank as a home, a studio, and sometimes, a place to help other women maintain sobriety. Peg was a recovered alcoholic.
The Treasury includes a 12-minute video work that uses puppets to tell anecdotes shared in interviews, alongside footage from inside the bank – which has been repurposed into a restaurant. Often historically used to share dissident stories, puppetry is used here to perform a collective recollection of an artist who survived addiction and made her own economy. A small history becomes a portrait of both an artists’ life and the disturbance of a financial institution’s transition. This is a memorial for a joyful misuse of space.
An annotated script, a large painted quilt made from found and gifted fabric, a welded steel work the size of my bedroom window, and two large ceramic letters —one 'N' glazed with copper, and one 'D' glazed with photoluminescent glaze— are also works included in The Treasury.
Peg Miller is my mother’s aunt. I might have met her once. my only memories are black walls and patterned, or frightening, paintings.
- -Lili Huston-Herterich
