Terry Miller

Winter, what there was of it, disappeared rather quickly, and with studio windows wide open and song birds trilling away outdoors currently, Terry is fast at work completing the remaining works that will go to the Woodson Art Museum this fall for a small-scale retrospective of his works during this year's edition of their internationally acclaimed annual exhibition, Birds in Art. With great emotion, surprise and feeling quite honored, he received a call in mid February from the museum's director, Kathy Foley, naming him as this year's Master Wildlife Artist, the 33rd so named in the history of this well respected and hotly contested competition. As the museum has stated on its web site, this recognition "honors artists who have demonstrated outstanding achievement in using bird imagery in their artwork." To that end, Terry will join a host of the world's top wildlife artists including the likes of Roger Tory Peterson, Robert Bateman, Keith Shackleton, Richard Sloan, Ray Harris- Ching, Nancy Howe, John Sharp, and Walter Matia to name but a few of the 32 previously named Masters.

From that phone call forward, the studio has been humming with new works being executed especially for the retrospective and calls have gone out to several of his long time collectors to borrow works back for the September through November installation. With the idea in mind to try and not duplicate bird subjects and to depict a range of ideas, compositional frameworks and emotional content, 14 works will hang in the mini retrospective, eight of which will have been newly completed this year. The exhibition will have its public opening on Saturday, September 7 at the newly expanded and renovated central Wisconsin museum.

Speaking of Birds in Art, the touring portion of last year's exhibition, comprising 60 of the two and three dimensional works from the originating 120 piece exhibition, will hang at the Newington-Cropsey Foundation in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York through May 5th, and then travel to Knoxville, Tennessee to the Frank H. McClung Museum at the University of Tennessee where it will hang from May 25 through August 18th. Terry's work, Florezca el Flamenco, is included in that tour.

With the bulk of studio time having been given over to completing his Master's exhibition of late, Terry will return to composing new works for gallery exchange later this spring, as well as conjuring up ideas for other jury competitions and special events yet to come. New works are being added to the web site frequently, so check back often to see what will be coming off the drawing board!