Interview by Katie Aiken Ritter
“What does it mean to be human and live on this earth?”
Might it offend to say that artist Bridgette Guerzon Mills reminds me of…a spider? But not any arachnid—Bridgette brings to mind the beautiful, kind Charlotte of the children’s story Charlotte’s Web: prolific, observant, gently teaching, at once aware of life’s sadnesses but still hopeful—and capable of moving in many different directions at the same time, connecting those differing directions into a greater-than-its-parts collection of work that pulls you in and catches your imagination, making you long for something unexplainable, something…more.
Forests hold enchanting books she has crafted,
mysterious objects with pages of moss and cloth, metal and beeswax and thread. If you happen across one of these magical creations while wandering the woods, you cannot help but stop and stare for a moment, wondering what IS that? You reach for it as if it is sacred, as if the thing holds the words of time itself, spoken in the language of trees—and you feel certain that you have come upon something otherworldly, something secret, a thing of the fairy folk; a tribute to the mystery and power and timelessness of nature and trees. You stand bemused, every sense alert, experiencing something different in the forest, something breathtaking that you have never seen before.
She paints landscapes that not only show but let us feel the land
by working in encaustic. “I was in Seattle and saw a small painting. It was a painting, but it wasn’t…it was sculptural. It was translucent. I could see colors underneath colors underneath colors. WHAT IS THAT?! I wrote in my notebook, and under it the word encaustic.”
That word led to some deep research. Inspired and entranced by ancient Fayum mummy portraits of long-ago Egypt, Bridgette is one of a small subset of artists who use encaustic—simultaneously a medium and a technique (beeswax and damar resin mixed with color)—in a process that involves torches and heat guns to constantly re-melt the mixture, building up layers, engraving through them, giving a sculptural quality to the work as sculptural elements take shape, and blending layers of jewel-like colors impossible to create any other way. It’s a bit dangerous; an artist can only breathe in the fumes just so long and so often.
She creates abstract mixed-media pieces,
fascinating compositions that convey without words the delicacy and strength of our natural world, our environment and our human dependency on it. These pieces might express the passage of time, or speak of strength we carry inside…and of the way humans yearn for quiet and aloneness as they simultaneously crave community.
I got my degree in communications sciences, concentrating on communication disorders having to do with learning disabilities: autism, traumatic brain injury, stutterers. The work was intense. I was twenty-two years old and wanted to save the world, and I couldn’t. Art provided an escape. A move to Missouri led to work in a frame shop, where she could be surrounded by art and take a break from the emotional strain of teaching.
“I saw how much people paid for artwork. I’d always been practical—paid my way through college, earned a living—so I’d never really considered art. But something in me started wondering why I was not allowing myself to even try it.”
“It’s hard to envision now, but this was before Etsy, before PayPal. My husband is a web developer, so he offered to build me a website. At first, I couldn’t even imagine how that would help,” she laughs. “But one thing led to another, and then another. Teaching at retreats. Finding galleries who wanted my work, thanks to connections with friends. But the best thing was being able to be a mother at home with my children, painting while they napped, working my art around my family. It was demanding, I’ll be the first to admit—but I knew what a privilege it was to be able to live and work that way.”
The word ‘connections’ comes up again and again in our conversation.
Bridgette speaks of connections with past cultures, with past artists, with people who lived before us, now forgotten. “We—artists, whether visual or literary or music or dance—are so important. We once were the mages, the wise people, the keepers of the sacred. Now, much of society considers us expendable. Nice hobby you have, they say. But artists look at things differently in important ways. We ask important questions—and one of the questions I ask again and again is, what does it mean to be human and live on this earth? What does it mean to hold in one’s hand something another human created? What is our purpose—and what is our responsibility? Where does our strength come from?”
She asks those questions by using in her collages ephemera left by people who lived before us: bits torn from books, remnants of metal, scraps of stitching that remind us of the interconnectedness and interdependency of all living things—and often as not, bare trees. Stripped to their essence to withstand winter, they impart an enduring strength that Bridgette wants to offer to others.
We spoke of the evocative Portuguese word saudade; she uses the Brazilian pronunciation (saw-DADGE) for a complex word that communicates a desire for restored wholeness, for the return of that which is gone, for connection—yes, there’s that word again. It’s saudade that her work evokes, the sense of longing and aloneness shining with hope for connection, whether in her landscapes or abstract works or forest installations.
May I say it again, please? Charlotte spun her web knowing full well what was to come, bearing it with strength and grace while teaching her little friend Wilbur to understand. We need those among us who are strong enough to look ahead, to help us know what we must do. Bridgette does this in her work, if we but take a moment to look and listen.
Lastly, we spoke of an internal this-just-happened connection for Bridgette: how this show at Manor Mill’s gallery represents an important first for her.
“I’ve always shown my landscapes and my edgier mixed-media pieces in completely separate galleries. They’ve never mixed. This is the very first time I’ve exhibited these two sides of my art together in one show. The credit for that goes to the Mill’s gallery curator Lynne Jones. You think it will work? I asked Lynne, and she firmly said yes. I can’t express how much it means to me to connect my realistic works with my abstracted ones. It feels…complete.”
Bridgette Guerzon Mills is a multi-media artist. Her work incorporates a variety of materials including photography, paint, encaustic, and textiles, as well as reclaimed materials. Her artwork has been published in magazines and books and her work has been collected in the United States and internationally. She currently resides in Towson, MD with her family.
As a mixed media artist, encaustic is a versatile medium that allows her to create depth in layers and serves as a means for further exploration in both form and meaning. She combines her photography with encaustic to create a bridge between two worlds, the real and the reconstructed. The canvas becomes a multilayered surface that speaks to both the visual and tactile senses. Her landscapes are an attempt to capture a feeling of wonder, recognition and kinship with the land. She explores landscapes in both oil paint and encaustic.
Her outdoor installations, often created using foraged or recycled materials, focus on environmental issues and seek to engage and educate the public about these concerns.
