1000 Moons Talk by Emily Jung Miller

What does it look like to imagine a lifetime?

1000 Moons is a visual representation of every full moon cycle witnessed by the artist’s grandmother from her birth to her death in January 2021. The project began shortly after both her grandparents died of Covid, as she struggled to stay grounded in her own life, and her understanding of time became distorted and unreal. Cutting up big, beautiful sheets of handmade paper she created years ago, Miller started building a collection of 3-inch circles, each representing a single full moon. She continued making moons from newly formed sheets of handmade paper using kelp, sheet music, and other materials linked to the story of her grandmother’s life, with the goal of recreating all 1,175 moons from the 94 years of her life.

Miller imagines her own lifetime overlapping with her grandmother’s in the physical space occupied by the 1000 Moons: how many of these moons they saw together, how many she shared with her grandfather, her father, her aunts. Which moons were darkest, and which shone bright? How does she measure the time passed since? In the absence of any time-based American tradition of mourning and grief, during a moment in history when existing grief rituals have been scattered, this work has become a new tradition for the artist to understand, honor, and process the time span of a life. Sharing this work is a way of inviting community into grief, in direct response to the isolation she felt after their deaths.

During this event, Miller invites all who have experienced loss and grief, especially during this current crisis, to share their new traditions for finding and following a healing path. She invites all participants to visualize their own life times, and those of their loved ones, within this space of 1000 Moons.

1000 Moons will be on display at two venues during Portland TextileX Month:

October 18, 2021 – January 5, 2022 window display at Crema Art Annex: 28 SE 28th Ave, Portland OR 97214