Artist Bio:
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 comfortable 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 solitude.
Artist Statement:
Art Show scavanger hunt
I make work in a few forms- sculpture, fabric photography collages and pastel lettering over printed photographs on canvas. It’s all about how quickly we judge things and write them off. My work comes from looking again at things people ignore or are quick to dismiss as bad.
For a while now I’ve been spending time with urban plants people call “weeds” or “invasives”. They’re treated like they don’t belong, but they’re often the first to show up in damaged soil- along roadsides, under power lines- starting to repair what’s been torn up and worn down. A lot of them are also useful for food, medicine, and habitat for wildlife, which tends to get overlooked.
I hang out in these environments, getting to know where the plants live, documenting them and harvesting them. Back in the studio, I work them by hand- felting, weaving, wrapping them with fibers- building forms that feel full and intentional, not disposable.
Lately I’ve also been photographing them where they grow. I print the images on fabric- pairing black and white, hard-edged landscapes with the plants in saturated color, often on velvet- pulling them forward, giving them a different kind of presence.
I’ve been playing with phrasing, landing on “Fluid by nature”– a way of describing both what these early succession plants are doing as they move through damaged ground and the way things shift when you spend enough time really looking.
It all comes back to slowing down, looking closer, and reconsidering what belongs.
Press:
Claire Millett Lima 