Miller, Elizabeth

Elizabeth Miller found her artistic voice by connecting with the primal forces and elemental forms of nature and an inner passion for preserving native animals, birds and plants when she moved to Volcano in 2004. Born in rural Iowa, she enrolled at Iowa State University to study quantum physics, but encountered a profound shift “to the right side of the brain” when she started to take art courses. After graduating in Art and Design with teaching credentials and a year of graduate work in “visual literacy and right-brain creativity”, she moved to Western Washington and stepped into the world of public art. There she created murals and sculptures with grants and commissions from such agencies as the National Endowment for the Arts, the Washington State Arts Commission and Pierce County and City of Tacoma Arts Commis- sions. She also taught art courses at The Evergreen State College, The University of Puget Sound, and Pierce College, along with being selected for many artist-in-schools residencies. Since moving to Hawaii and nally being able to work full-time in a spacious studio experimenting with wide range of media, her work continues to evolve intuitively and incorporates the science she loves into her paintings and the unique, hand-tooled metal work for which she is best known. Liz has won many awards and has work in several private collections as well as the Hawaii State Foundation public art collection. Her work is repre- sented locally by the Volcano Art Center Gallery located in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.