Interlaced Pathways
Christine K. Miller
Weaving, Wire, and the Possibility of Change
For more than fifty years, Christine K. Miller has worked at the loom, exploring what fiber can do and, increasingly, what happens when the language of textiles is translated into metal. In Interlaced Pathways, that long investigation becomes the foundation for an exhibition about material, memory, adaptation, and change.
Miller’s practice has moved through weaving, sewing, basketry, embroidery, felting, dyeing, knitting, crochet, and sculpture. Yet weaving has remained a constant. For the past three decades, wire has become one of her defining materials—a seemingly unlikely fiber that allows her to preserve the movement and fluidity of cloth while introducing strength, tension, and permanence.
When Metal Behaves Like Cloth
Her sculptural works begin either as metal fabric, handwoven on a floor loom, or as stainless steel mesh that Miller colors with heat before folding, shaping, and manipulating it into vessels and bas-relief forms. The resulting pieces often occupy an intriguing space between opposites. They appear delicate yet are structurally strong; rigid materials seem to bend, ripple, and flow. Metal takes on qualities we more readily associate with cloth.
In this exhibition, celebrating Miller’s fifty years at the loom, that transformation of material becomes more than a formal concern.
The seemingly delicate surface of Protecting belies the strength of its material. Miller folds and shapes stainless steel mesh into a sheltering form, allowing rigid metal to behave with the movement and pliability of cloth. The work captures one of the central tensions in her practice: strength held alongside vulnerability, and structure transformed through manipulation.
Protecting, 2026. Flame-colored stainless steel mesh. 6" H × 8" W × 8" D.
Material and Mind
The exhibition brings together two- and three-dimensional woven-wire sculptures alongside Miller’s exploration of chronic pain and the developing understanding of neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to form and reorganize neural pathways. Having lived with chronic pain for many years, Miller became interested in research suggesting that persistent pain can become reinforced through patterns within the nervous system, and that those patterns may also be capable of change.
The connection to her studio practice is both metaphorical and remarkably physical.
Wire resists. It remembers its form. It must be persuaded, redirected, folded, woven, and reshaped. In Miller’s hands, something rigid becomes responsive. Lines cross and reconnect. Structures change without losing their underlying material.
Seen through this lens, her sculptures invite another way of thinking about the body and brain—not as fixed systems, but as structures capable of adaptation.
“The exhibition asks us to look closely at what may at first appear fixed—and consider how much movement might still be possible.”
Patterns, Interrupted
Importantly, the work does not attempt to illustrate neuroscience or offer a simple visual explanation of pain. Instead, Miller uses the ideas surrounding neural pathways as another point of entry into questions that have long existed within her work: How can a material change while remaining itself? What happens when repeated patterns are interrupted? How much transformation is possible within an established structure?
Those questions give this anniversary exhibition an unexpected sense of forward movement. Fifty years at the loom could easily suggest a retrospective. Miller instead treats that history as a foundation for continued inquiry.
What connects these works is not a single material or form, but Miller’s ability to move between them while maintaining a recognizable visual sensibility. Woven wire, fiber, beads, and stainless steel shift from dense, gathered volume to linear rhythm and translucent folds. Color is equally important: earthy copper tones, saturated blue, and restrained metallic neutrals give each work a distinct presence while reinforcing the exhibition’s broader contrast between structure, movement, and transformation.
Cinched, 2024. Wire, fiber, copper beads. 8" H × 14" W × 8" D.
Choppy Waters, 2026. Wire and fiber. 13" H × 11" W × 4" D.
Lifted, 2026. Flame-colored stainless steel mesh. 22" H × 35" W × 3" D.
Five Decades of Making and Inquiry
Miller’s five decades of practice extend well beyond the studio. An artist, educator, and author, she has exhibited widely throughout the United States, with work recognized in juried exhibitions and featured in publications including Fiber Art Now and Shuttle, Spindle & Dyepot. Her 2023 book, Weaving with Wire: Creating Woven Metal Fabric, documents and expands upon techniques she has spent decades developing.
Here, however, technique is ultimately in service of something larger. Across woven surfaces, folded forms, and shifting lines of metal, Miller considers both the durability of patterns and the possibility of changing them.
The Possibility of Change
What emerges is an exhibition as much about possibility as process. Across woven surfaces, folded forms, and shifting lines of metal, Miller asks how established structures might be altered without being erased—and how change can begin within the very systems that once seemed fixed.
Interlaced Pathways is on view at the ArtCentre of Plano through October 17, 2026.
Interlaced Pathways
Christine K. Miller
