MILLICENT YOUNG

Overview

“Her objects, like wisps of memory, hold space for a full spectrum of being: becoming the bird that took off from the ground, became airborne, and left its limbs behind; the skeleton that feels at one with the ground and will slowly merge with it over time; the tree limbs that hover, never quite touching either realm just as we dream, hovering between life and death, momentarily conduits to that which might astonish us.”

-Seph Rodney

Alter Altar : 20 Years is a solo exhibition of sculptures and site-specific installations by Millicent Young. The exhibit includes seventeen works fabricated over 20 years installed in two historic barn buildings in upstate New York. These artworks range from loft-filling installations, sculpture embedded with motion activated sound, and wall-mounted works that respond to the hand-hewn quality of the vernacular spaces, Young's work draws on the power of simple materials such as clay, horsehair, sticks, metal and rope to weave, thread, stitch, join, forge, hammer, sculpt, bind, and scribe the surrounding environment with a clarity and austerity that elevates the common and creates space for being.

Art critic, Seph Rodney, writes about Young: “Her objects, like wisps of memory, hold space for a full spectrum of being: becoming the bird that took off from the ground, became airborne, and left its limbs behind; the skeleton that feels at one with the ground and will slowly merge with it over time; the tree limbs that hover, never quite touching either realm just as we dream, hovering between life and death, momentarily conduits to that which might astonish us.”

Work included in this exhibition was supported with an Individual Artist grant from the New York State Council on the Arts/Arts Mid Hudson.

Millicent Young has participated in numerous international exhibitions such as the Biennale Internazionale dell’Arte Contemporanea, Florence IT, Museum of Contemporary Art, Merida Mexico, Museo d’Arte di Chianciano Terme, IT and upcoming at DOX Center for Contemporary Art Prague, Czech Republic. Nationally, Young has had numerous solo exhibitions including Les Yeux du Monde and Chroma Projects Art Laboratory (Charlottesville, VA), McLean Project for the Arts, (McLean, VA), Sweet Briar College (Sweet Briar, VA), Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts (Wilmington, DE), Hillyer Art Space, (Wash. DC), Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, (Tivoli, NY), and Cross Contemporary Art (Saugerties,NY) among others. She has also been featured in many group exhibitions most recently at the Dorsky Museum (New Paltz, NY), the Fridman Gallery (Beacon, NY), Eco Artspace, Williamsburg Art and Historical Center, 100 Bogart Street and the Art on Paper Fair (New York City, NY), the Joan Hisako Gallery,(Wash. DC) and the Portsmouth Museum of Art, (Portsmouth, VA) among many others. The recipient of many awards and grants, including a Distinguished Alumni Award, from James Madison University, VA, three grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and two New York State Council on the Arts/Arts Mid Hudson Individual Artist Grants, Millicent Young was featured on the cover of March/April 2020 Sculpture Magazine and this exhibition was reviewed by Nina Chkareuli-Mdivani and published on October 13, 2023.