Project Overview
Gaisman Mural | Gaisman Community Center
Artist Jason Miller intends for this mural to be more than simply paint on a wall—it represents a community endeavor, a testament to the people of the Gaisman Community, and a platform for civic awareness. Miller explains that the primary step in constructing this iconic mural began with familiarizing himself with the people and happenings within the Gaisman Community center. Miller first captured nearly 30,000 photographic images of the people who frequent the center and their various activities in order to provide a source for his conceptualization of the mural. He then used these images to translate his ideas into painted forms, and with the assistance of community artists, he created a piece that, as he explains, “externalizes the energy within [the community center] into a perpetual reminder of the vitality of Gaisman Community Center's role within the community that it serves.”
“The mural serves as a perpetual reminder of the role of the extraordinary individuals that make up the Gaisman community family inside the walls of the building.”
The subjects within the mural feature the real people who frequent and utilize the center on a daily, weekly, and annual basis. Miller says that portraying the actual people onto the mural was necessary to “capture the essence of the life that occurs within this wonderful structure, which testifies to the noblest characteristics of our humanity.”
The goal of the mural, as the artist recounts, is to serve as a perpetual reminder of the role of the extraordinary individuals that make up the Gaisman community family inside the walls of the building. “Just as a church is an empty frame without its parishioners and also as a home is where the heart is, so too is this true here at Gaisman. It's about the people.” The goal of the project also aims to raise a greater awareness in Memphis to the important life that happens every single day at the Center.
About the Artist
Jason Miller
Jason Miller is an artist and curator in Memphis, TN. He honors the concept that an artist should select suitable medium based on each idea, rather than committing solely to only one form of media or field. Experimentation is a constant throughout his work. Miller creates photographs, complex imagery, sculptures, paintings, songs, and poetry. He often focuses on generating conceptually driven images in- studio, Memphis, TN, his native city wherein he obtained his Master of Fine Arts Degree from The University of Memphis.
Miller’s work has been selected for exhibition by prestigious jurors including Alice Gray Stites, Carl Belz, Brian Rutenberg, Peter Frank, Meredith Ward, Peter Schjedahl, Fr. Terrence E. Dempsey, Dr. Ellen “Nan” Plummer, Charles Reeve, Beauvais Lyons, Gail Roberts, and Photographer’s Forum Magazine. Miller has also received awards from internationally renowned jurors and the American Civil Liberties Union. Other awards include Visual Overture Magazine’s Artist of the Week Award and Oxford American 100 most important artists in the South for the Visual South Issue, 76. Miller’s Dairy Diary series was featured in Vol. 35 of Seoul Korea’s Photo+ Magazine, and additionally included in Photo Eye Gallery’s Art Photo Index.
Miller has been the recipient of an image driven art commission for the City of Memphis through Urban Art Commission’s District Mural Project and has completed commissions for organizations including Le Bonheur Children's Hospital and The Memphis Flyer. Sculpture works by Miller have been selected by preeminent jurors for inclusion both in the Arkansas Art Center’s 56th Annual Delta Exhibition and Number Presents: Artists of the South, and Miller was selected for inclusion in the Winter Edition of Studio Visit Magazine by juror Carl Belz. Miller's film work was included in Stigmart Magazine's Film Biennial Edition, VIDEOFOCUS.
