Wardell Milan facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Wardell Milan
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Milan in 2016
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| Born | 1978 |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | University of Tennessee Yale School of Art |
Wardell Milan is an American artist who lives in New York City. He creates art using drawing, painting, and photography. He also builds special 3D scenes called dioramas. Wardell Milan thinks his art tells "visual stories." These stories can be seen in different ways by people who look at his art. He often uses existing photos and objects he finds in his artwork. He gets ideas from books, deep thoughts, and how people act. Milan has shared that stories by writers like Tennessee Williams, Alice Walker, and James Baldwin have helped him understand storytelling.
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Early Life and Art Journey
Wardell Milan was born in 1977 in Knoxville, Tennessee. It was there that he first showed a strong interest in art. His parents, Wardell Sr. and Linda Milan, even gave him a special "studio space" at home to work. His teachers also encouraged him throughout high school. When he was a teenager, Milan mostly focused on photography, even though he was good at many types of art.
He went to the University of Tennessee and earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2001. After college, Milan spent time as an artist at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine. He then earned his Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale University in 2004. Soon after, he moved to New York City to continue his art career.
Exploring Art and Themes
Milan uses many different art forms to explore ideas about beauty and what it means to be a person today. He also looks at themes like who we are and our bodies. He often gets ideas from sports, fashion, and other parts of modern life.
In 2005, after finishing graduate school, he showed his work called Frequency at The Studio Museum in Harlem. This exhibition showed how skilled Milan was at using many different materials. He displayed paintings, drawings, and large photo collages. In the same year, Milan had his first international show. It was called La Beaute de l'Enfer and took place at the Galerie Rodolphne Janssen in Brussels.
Creating 3D Dioramas
Milan creates special three-dimensional scenes called dioramas. He builds these scenes and then photographs them. He never shows the actual physical dioramas. Instead, he presents the photographs of these scenes as large, flat pictures. These dioramas often show strange places where objects and characters interact. At first glance, his work might look like it was changed using computers. But if you look closely, you can see that Milan uses his camera to create these unique images. These scenes create spaces and "moments in time" that would not exist in real life.
The Boxing Series
His Boxing Series was inspired by a book called The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells. Milan was especially interested in a scene from the book called the Battle Royale. He focused on the main character and his role in that part of the story to imagine that specific moment.
This series, like some of his other works, uses photos that Milan found and then put together like a collage. He used photographs from a book called The Fights, which features pictures taken by Charles Huff. Milan was interested in using the book not just for ideas, but he also thought of it as his "canvas." This series helped Milan create even larger art projects that also tell visual stories in a similar way.
Wardell Milan once explained his work in an article, saying, "I like this idea of creating duality of this uncomfortable shift for the viewer when they're looking at the work." This means he wants people to feel a bit surprised or challenged when they see his art.
Recent Exhibitions
Since 2012, Wardell Milan has been showing parts of his ongoing series of drawings and photographs. He showed A Series of Inspiring Women (2012) at the Louis B. James Gallery in New York. He also presented Kingdom or Exile: Parisian Landscapes (2013) at Savannah College of Art and Design. In 2014, he had another show called (Show Untitled) Parisian Landscapes, which was put together by Isolde Brielmaier, at Osmos Address in New York. For his art, he received an award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists in 2014.
