Artists & Communities Host Site: Real Art Ways, Inc.
56 Arbor Street
Hartford, CT 06106
Web site: www.realartways.org

Millennium Artist:
Elizabeth Miller
Videographer and Media Artist
Massachusetts
E-mail: lizmiller@contrition.net
Web site: www.node.net/lizmiller

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

"Memories Under Construction: A Neighborhood In Progress," was the theme of videographer and media artist Liz Miller's Artists & Communities residency with Real Art Ways and the Parkville Senior Center of Hartford, Connecticut. Miller's residency began in May 2000 and concluded in September.

Chicago-based Liz Miller has worked for many years with communities in Central America and throughout the Northeast, teaching media skills and directing projects enabling participants to create videos and personal Web sites addressing issues of identity and community. Together, Miller and the Parkville seniors used new technologies to reconstruct and describe how their industrial neighborhood has changed over the last 100 years.

"This is the first time we have ever done a project like this," said Parkville Senior Center Director Margaret Merriman. "It is exciting to learn something new about your own neighborhood, it's exciting to learn the new technologies - we learn some and we have a thirst for more."

As lasting components of the residency, Miller and seniors created a Web site, a quilt, a video to accompany the quilt, and a series of video portraits that were screened at outdoor projections throughout the community, as well as before feature films in the Real Art Ways Cinema.

The Web site, http://www.realartways.org/visualarts_f.htm, is accessible through Real Art Way's Web site. The site features a description of the project; visual and audio portraits of Parkville seniors; a photo gallery documenting the residency; the millennium quilt, and an invitation to "post a memory" about life in Parkville.

The Millennium Quilt, a centerpiece of the project, was hand sewn by master quilters at the Senior Center, and is comprised of 20 black and white historic photographs transferred onto cotton muslin fabric. Each 12" square patch has a story associated with it. The video, which accompanies the quilt, was produced with the help of community members who contributed stories, photographs, and technical assistance.

As an additional component of the project, seniors guided students through the Parkville neighborhood, using the black and white photographs selected for the quilt as a reference. In coordination with the Hartford Public Library, the Parkville participants also shared their video with members of the Hispanic Senior Center, resulting in a rich exchange of stories about ethnic origins and ongoing challenges for the community.

MILLENNIUM ARTIST BIO

Elizabeth Miller is a multimedia artist working in digital video and web design with an MFA in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Committed to community collaborations, media literacy, and youth productions, Miller is interested in how new media can be used as an activist and a pedagogical tool. Through her art work and in a range of media projects with nonprofit organizations, Miller works to visualize perspectives that are not often reflected in the art world or mass media.