Lydia AM Miller

Lydia AM Miller was born in Eastbourne Uk in 1988, shortly thereafter her family settled in Canada. However every summer, Lydia had the privilege of returning to England and travelling to various countries. Lydia remembers the facets of culture that intrigued her most was that of craft and textiles. She remembers studying tapestries and baskets, contemplating their composition, and appreciating the mark of the makers hand. 
In 2009, Lydia was accepted into the BFA program at Alberta College of Art and Design, in her third year she made herself a home in the Fibre department. Creating Art that boasted beauty while offering function and tactility was fulfilling, and she revelled in the knowledge that every material she would ever need could be sourced from this Earth. After relocating to the Kootenays, Lydia spent her time weaving and connecting with the environment that would deeply inform her practice. Foraging for her materials, Lydia weaves to connect with the energies felt but not often seen, and to experience the duality of physical and intangible realms. The woven structures of Flora and Fauna foster curiosity and catharsis. They present an opportunity to acquaint with species in a new and complex form, and observe Nature’s cohesive systems through an obscure lens. She aims to examine our place and our conditioned ideas of the hierarchy of the living, and to focus perspective of the role we play and how we affect those breathing with us, even when they aren’t visible.
Lydia now resides on Vancouver Island where the lush and diverse biospheres offer year round musings, materials, and the comfort of home. 

Weaving offers a transcript for the inescapable cycle of Creation. It is a method that can write a narrative for each organism that serves and fulfils authentic space on Earth. Just as each thread, be it warp or weft, plays a hand in the integrity of the cloth, every species is responsible for maintaining our cohesive ecosystems. The denial of connection and relation between our human species and its biosphere is incessantly compromising the structure of our existence.

As a Weaver, the desire to mend the holes torn throughout the tapestry of humanity feels fated. To contribute to the reconstruction of how we think, interact, and exist with and within Nature, quells the pressure from mortal institutions as we know them. 
The Flora and Fauna providing the structure to this body of work are offered a platform to express the stories and Spirit of lives once lived. They orchestrate movement and configuration through their individual boundaries and qualities; tendrils unfurling to emerge as entangled effigies. May they illustrate and illuminate the vital connections and relations allowing us to function and survive amidst the Living World.