Recollection

"Recollection" is my piece exploring what carnival culture means to me as a child of Caribbean immigrants to the U.S.

Acrylic paint and ink on 6" x 9" latex paper.

Check out my new Website

Bassagirl in Sao Paolo -"This Woman is Not Called Jasmine"

Eric Marechal of the wonderful, Street Art Without Borders wheatpasted another one of my paintings on paper - this time in Sao Paolo, Brazil! More to come.

Check out some more of my work pasted by Eric, here:

At Last

"At Last" is the companion piece to Finally.

Acrylic ink and paint on 6" x 9" Latex paper.

"At Last"
by Tiffany Osedra Miller
Copyright 2010
all rights reserved.

Finally

I painted, "Finally" after an (aha!)moment!

acrylic ink, paint and pen on 6" x 9" latex paper.

Be the one to own this original. Click here for purchasing information.

The Armstrong Pageant

Some of my surreal, comic strip style storytelling.

Acrylic ink and paint on 9"x 11" canvas paper.

The Underwater Astronaut - Book Cover Art

This book was composed underwater and is to be read underwater. It features an Astronaut who lives and breathes underwater and has many kinds of adventures there.

Here's one found in his diary:

August 21, *********

"There, beyond the Sandwhale Shell Statue(try saying that three times) I discovered the most unusual planet floating amidst the coral. This planet - Spoon shaped and miniscule and full of vegetation, included many walking and flying forms of life, that I could see clearly with my naked eye. I've encountered many planets beneath sea level before but this one called to me like no other.

"Ernest," It said. "Ernest," it continued to speak, though I could see no mouth. Still, that voice drew me in. It was meant for me. I'd swear to it, though my name is not Ernest.

So, against my leader's prior warnings and instructions, and against my best judgment, I swallowed that Spoon Shaped Planet into what I call that Gargantuan, Shallow laboratory of the Self (my belly) to study it further. And though, I was spared indigestion, I wasn't spared anything else..."

Street Art Without Borders - "Noodle" and "The Princess Pays For Parliament" - Pasted in Paris!

These two pieces are feautured on walls in Paris thanks to generous amounts of wheatpaste, courtesy of Eric Marechal who spearheads a wonderful international project called Street Art Without Borders. Since I showcase and sell my original art work to people around the world, Street Art Without Borders and its mission of promoting street art and artists internationally seemed a perfect fit. Over 100 artists located around the world are involved in this project. Check out Eric's site. More of my work featured around the world to come. Stay tuned.

The Arrivers

The Arrivers arrive at a place called Beverly. You have to take the freeway there or go the other way. They chose the freeway but when they arrived they never felt more oppressed. They told the mayor-concierge that they wanted their money back but he had no money to give them, reminding them that the way they chose to come was for free. In fact, the Arrivers though penniless, dined well, but were forced to endure the overwhelming smoke of too many complimentary cigarettes and even had to force themselves to beg for everything they never truly wanted and certainly did not need.

"The Arrivers"
by Tiffany Osedra Miller

Colored pencil, oil pastels and ink on moleskine

Wild is the Wind

paint,ink and pen on 8 and 1/2" x 11" lightweight vellum

The Drill

Pen and ink on 8 and 1/2" by 11" board

Storybook Libation

acrylic ink and paint on an approximately 6 and 3/4" x 6" linen canvas sheet.

I created this piece as an illustration for this vignette:

STORYBOOK LIBATION

Most nights and on some mornings, I wake up to find seven spiders dangling above me as I lay in my cold bed. I can never recall whether or not they emerged from one of the webs hidden deep in the neighborhoods and boroughs of those planets called Dust or if they rose like eight-legged saviors from beneath my dry, frigid skin. They didn't often look like spiders either. They more resembled carousel horses straddled and driven nowhere but in circles by what appeared to be eunuchs wearing nothing but soldier helmets.

The remnants of a spider carousel existed one summer in the basement of the basement of one of the country churches of my youth. I was sure no one else knew of its existence but me and those savior-soldiers who rode their horse-spiders during church services.

From my shelter behind a long abandoned pulpit, I watched those seven beings crawl down webs they'd woven, lead their horse-spiders in unison and then gather together and speak quietly amongst themselves once they reached the floor. They continued this way until one of them let out a long, high note and then they all joined in with a musical overture to precede their ride. To hear them sing in such a state!

As I watched them, the savior-soldiers appeared to me fully clothed in skin and uniform in one moment. In the next, I was accosted with the image of them in various stages of decay; their wounds, black holes or deep fissures impressed on their skeletons. And even in my youth, I understood while watching them, that this was their burial ground.

That summer, I marveled that I could hear the voice of the preacher from so deep within the earth's core where I was. I distinctly remember one Sunday morning as I watched the relentless ride of those soldiers, hearing the Father say: "Forget the five lives of starfish, the nine lives of cats, and the one sinful life you lead and recall, instead, the eight lives of spiders, the eight legs of horses, the high song of eunuchs and the sad spirits of soldiers."

by Tiffany Osedra Miller/aka Bassagirl
Copyright 2010

The News

"The News"
(Mixed media on 8 and 1/2" x 11" lightweight vellum paper)
by Tiffany Osedra Miller

The Earthquake in Haiti

There are many ways you can send aid to Haiti

Please click the link below:

The Earthquake in Haiti Relief Effort

Discipline and Vanity- book jacket art and a poem

Discipline and Vanity

Upright animal
your music feels bluesy
your window looks shattered
the voice emanating
from your silhouette
sings the word, "insane."
How could you tell anyone
that inside you feel lonely
inside you feel lonely
when no animal
has ever uttered the word, "alone."
Yes, you stand upright,
supported by uneven heels
sickled foot arches
coiled up with memories
of how you street walked
the wild.

You'll tell us stories
of how you branded history with heartache
leaving men more alive than when they were dead.
But death you'll insist is merely the birth of eternal dreaming.

We interrogators will tell you to shut up and look pretty
shut up and look pretty
while we undress you for bed.
Afterwards, you'll want to try to talk without lipstick
about love and its laws
and what can you do to learn them
as you live best you can.

Our answer will be to release you into its poverty.

One day you will try to find us
find us and kill us
for setting you free
because you will find that freedom is boredom
compassion is selfish
only slavery will save you
when your blue animal runs wild.

We will always be your imperfect bishops,
who build brothels beside and inside of cathedrals
but never above us or outside of reach.
Our dreams of you, finite, our love, conditional
Though our memories of your music, immortal.


poem and image by Tiffany Osedra Miller

The Leaning Candle of Jesus

THE LEANING CANDLE OF JESUS:
An autobiographer's ruminations
on some of what caused
the "Violent Beauty of Urda Louise"

The last night you lit
The Leaning Candle of Jesus
to talk to the spirit traveling
inside the body of that
Giant, neglected, wax figurine,
an old film of His superhumanity
genuflected in the reels of his eyes and
He showed you a version of Himself
sitting among his own small section of pews
inside the Church buried inside you
the one that you can get to only when you rise
from beneath a body of reservoir water.
-This Baptism your reward for
shooting heroin into your veins
two times with your boyfriend, Charlie's, pistol
while touring your shadow through a
crack house
that you didn't expect to re-enter.
You had been hailing Mary a long time then
from that sterile mattress you were born on
that became the filthy mattress that supported you
while your spirit dressed in storefront smoke
tried to fly
calling out to Mary
never thinking that
anyone, let alone Mary or your Mother would come.
You never suspected that you would meet your dead mother mourning,
while soaked in Funeral colors
her spirit accentuated with
a wide brim hat and veils.
She sits alone inside
The Leaning Candle of Jesus Church
mesmerized by a stationary hologram
of that image of Jesus programmed into all of us.
"Your unhappiness is murdering me, further" she says,
when you ask her why she sits all alone.
You say, unhappy? who?
You think right then of that handsome underwater astronaut -
the immaculate man-fish who pulled you out from the skeletal grasp
of Charlie Christ's arms,
through the narrow crack of that house
into warm soapy sea water
- the one who said
"underwater astronauts are your able bodied angels, Urda,
and we are here just for troubled ones like you-"
when you had been hailing your Mother and Mary
and Jesus had become just a low flame for your pipe.
But what of rites, wrongs, religions and rituals, you wonder,
and passages along the base of the pyramidal volcano
that ancient, ailing, addicted street archaeologists
dug up between corroded alleyways
that mirrored the rope of their veins.
Passages that lead to narrower streets
flanked by cobblestone tenements
with black windows
and the enormous
crumbling floor-less church
with the nodding, cracked congregation
shooting up heroin, collectively, in the undercroft.
Do such saviors have solstices, too?
If aliens teach our children Sunday school
and the only place for African ritual exists
through the corridors that appear behind
unused church altars - if you search carefully -
where on the other side
you watch African women dive into and emerge from
the earth as if the earth is the wild woman's water,
while your mother sits alone in the ruined belly of the church
calling out to you with her entire heart
"know and recognize your Father, Jesus - "
The miracle man you can only remember embodied
inside a large wax candle, deformed, maligned and leaning
-while your mother mourns your neglect of religion
for your interest in what she calls ignorance and idols
believing that it is the absence of Jesus
and not her decay, disintegration, and death
that causes the sadness in you.



poems and images by: Tiffany Osedra Miller
1st image, "Unbelievable" acrylic ink, india ink on 6" x 9" latex paper.

Purchase "Unbelievable," HERE.

2nd image, "The Leaning Candle of Jesus" oil pastels on 8 1/2" by 11" lightweight vellum paper

The Aliens Born of Immigrants

"The Aliens Born of Immigrants"
Acrylic ink and acrylic paint on a 6" x 6.5" linen canvas sheet