For the past six months, Cliff Notes subscribers have gotten the smartest/coolest/nichest/most fascinating art recommendations from four of our favorite regional writers, Mariah Green, Vanessa Perez Winder, Jas Keimig, and Sam Wrigglesworth. Check out their past picks in the Cliff Notes Archive here.
But here at Variable West we’re all about a diversity of voices, and we’re thrilled to introduce you to our next four columnists! Meet Christine Miller in Oregon, Rachel Elizabeth Jones in Southern California, Samantha Hiura in Northern California, and Nia-Amina Minor in Washington.
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Read on to learn more about our our new columnists.
Christine Miller
Christine Miller (she/her) is a conceptual artist based in Portland. With a background in product development and an extensive understanding of manufacturing processes, Miller’s work focuses on the design intentionally of physical products, literature, and advertisements that have been used to dehumanize African Americans. Her art centers around racial stereotypes and histories, while simultaneously reframing cultural narratives.
Rachel Elizabeth Jones
Rachel Elizabeth Jones is an artist and writer who grew up in Vermont and lives in Los Angeles. As a writer, she has contributed on art and cinema to publications including Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles (Carla), Los Angeles Review of Books, Hyperallergic, The New Inquiry, and The Brooklyn Rail. As an artist, she is drawn to folk and vernacular modes and uses sculpture, installation, and video to engage with concepts of paradise, longing, and fantasy under capitalism, as well as complex tensions between urban and rural outlooks. She founded the garage art and project space Flower Head in 2020.
Samantha Hiura
Samantha Hiura (she/her) is a second year graduate student in California College of the Arts’ dual degree program for Visual and Critical Studies (MA) and Curatorial Practice (MA). Her academic and professional focuses are centered on contemporary art as forms of resistance, with particular interest in the intersections of queer and BIPOC representation. She also holds a BA in Humanities and Art History with departmental honors from Seattle University. She has previously worked at Chihuly Garden and Glass (Seattle, WA), Micki Meng Gallery (San Francisco, CA) and currently as the Curatorial Fellow at the Institute for Contemporary Art San Francisco.
Nia-Amina Minor
Nia-Amina Minor is a movement artist and choreographer originally from Los Angeles. Her work focuses on the body and what it carries using physical and archival research to explore memory and history. She has received regional and national commissions for her choreographic and film work and has a working background as a performer and dramaturg. Nia-Amina is co-founder of Black Collectivity, a collaborative project that explores and celebrates memory and culture through embodied responses. In 2021, she was recognized as Dance Magazine’s 25 Artists to Watch. Nia-Amina holds a MFA from UC Irvine and a BA from Stanford University is currently based in Seattle, WA.