Angela Fraleigh and Josh Miller
Sound the Deep Waters
On display November 4–13, 2022
Allentown, Pennsylvania
Sound the Deep Waters is a projection-based art project that invites visitors to submit secret messages that are then translated into Victorian flower language before their eyes! Participants can use the interactive kiosk or send a text message to submit anything from love letters and prose to inside jokes. Visitors will watch the screen in front of them as their private words become bold, brilliant, larger-than-life floral compositions associated with their messages’ meanings. The title is inspired by Christina Rosetti’s poem “Sleep at Sea,” which conjures a hallucinatory dreamscape of slumbering sailors. In this work, the title alludes to an undetected sonar—one that rumbles beneath the surface, creating a deep sounding, or awakening, of a cultural psyche.
Biography
Angela Fraleigh is a research-based painter, weaving together realism and abstraction in lush and complex works, ranging from intimate portraits to monumental figure paintings that reimagine women’s roles in art history, literature, and contemporary media. Recently, her practice has become site-specific in nature and has led to collaboration with institutions to mine invisible histories or dormant narratives in their collection. Fraleigh earned a master of fine arts from Yale University School of Art and a bachelor of fine arts from Boston University. Selected solo exhibitions include Hirschl and Adler Modern and P•P•O•W Gallery in New York City, Inman Gallery in Houston, and Peters Projects in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her work can be found in museum collections such as the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri, and she has been the recipient of several awards and residencies, including the Yale University Alice Kimball English Grant; the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program in Brooklyn, New York; The Core Program in Houston; and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska, among others. Fraleigh has created site-specific solo projects for the Edward Hopper House Museum, the Vanderbilt Mansion Museum, the Everson Museum of Art, the Delaware Art Museum, and the Weatherspoon Art Museum. She lives and works in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where she is full professor at Moravian University.
Josh Miller works and teaches in the intersection between art, design, and software development. After receiving a master of arts in computer science and a master of fine arts in new media, Miller taught courses in web and graphic design, video game design, creative coding, user experience, and application development. Miller’s true interests lie in the intersection between design, programming, and innovative user experiences. This influences not only his teaching, but also his professional practices, where he focuses on development of interactive installations and user-focused online experiences. Miller has recently exhibited interactive installations in the Agrikultura exhibition in Malmö, Sweden; DLECTRICITY in Detroit; InLight festival in Richmond, Virginia; and a solo show in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Miller is an associate professor of communication design at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania.