ABOUT
Claire Millett Lima is a mixed-media artist exploring belonging, perception, and the ways we assign value to the natural world.
MILLER STREET STUDIOS · SOMERVILLE, MA
Artist Biography
Claire Millett Lima is a mixed media artist raised in coastal Newport, Oregon. At age 16, she dropped out of high school to focus on her education.
From her dad
she learned that being an artist is a way of seeing;
From her mom
she learned that art materials grow on trees;
From her backyard
she learned that weeds tell stories of survival;
From her hometown
she learned that misfits offer secret wisdom
From her travels
she learned that unassuming places hold immense power;
From her thief
she learned to be uncomfortable with uncertainty;
From her guides
she learned to see beyond the lens of her opinions;
From her children
she learned to follow the path of play and curiosity;
From the ocean
she learned that she is nothing and everything;
From the forest
she learned the power of reflection and solitutde.
artist statement
LOOK AGAIN
We’re very good at deciding what we like.
Beautiful. Ugly. Good. Bad. Useful. Useless. Belongs. Doesn’t belong.
Most of these decisions happen so quickly we barely notice we’ve made them. We see something, recognize the category it belongs to, and move on.
My work starts somewhere around that moment.
What happens if we don’t move on? What changes when we spend enough time with something to understand it a little better? Does our opinion change? Does the thing itself begin to look different? Or do we just start noticing how much of our original judgment was borrowed from somewhere else?
Weeds are a particularly good place to play with this. The word itself comes with an opinion attached. We’re taught that weeds are unwanted, invasive, messy, something to pull out and get rid of. But a plant growing through a crack in the sidewalk doesn’t know it’s breaking the rules. It’s just growing.
“A plant growing through a crack in the sidewalk doesn’t know it’s breaking the rules. It’s just growing.”
And sometimes it isn’t one plant. It’s hundreds. Acres of them. Entire stretches of landscape overtaken by species we’ve decided don’t belong.
Invasive plants complicate the judgment even further. They can displace native species and alter ecosystems, while also taking root in damaged places, creating shelter, food, and habitat where little else might grow. They can be destructive and resilient, unwanted and useful, beautiful and troubling—all at once.
So I go looking for them.
I spend time with plants in the places we tend not to look twice—along roadsides, under power lines, beside railroad tracks, in construction sites, and across other disturbed corners of the city. I photograph them, gather them, and bring them back to the studio, where I felt, weave, wrap, print, paint, and build.
A plant that might normally be pulled from the ground and thrown away becomes something to handle carefully, spend hours with, and look at closely. A photograph of a place we might usually pass without noticing becomes a landscape worth lingering over. A sprawling mass of invasive growth becomes something to consider not simply as a problem, but as a living system with its own complexity.
I work across sculpture, textiles, photography, painting, and moving image, following the questions wherever they lead. The materials change, but the impulse is the same: to take another look at the things we think we’ve already figured out.
I’m not particularly interested in convincing anyone that weeds are beautiful, or that everything we reject is secretly wonderful.
I’m more curious about what happens to us when we look long enough to find out.
Maybe the judgment changes.
Maybe it doesn’t.
Either way, something has shifted.
PRESS & FEATURES
Arts Worcester Collaboration
The Telegraph · 2021
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Inside Voices — Selected Artist
ArtsWorcester
Claire Millett Lima 