UC San Diego

ABSTRACT OF THESIS

Can’t Tell / Won’t Tell

by

Joshua Jon Miller

Master of Fine Arts in Visual Arts

University of California, San Diego, 2015

Professor Anya Gallaccio, Chair

The body of work presented in Can’t Tell / Won’t Tell consists of nineteen wallmounted

sculptures, three floor based sculptures, four body-size painting, and twenty-six

foot long panoramic painting (fig. 1). All of the works are figurative, with imagery

primarily sourced from thrift and antique store objects. They present a range of

questions about material culture, sexual and racial identity, and culturally embedded

languages of abstraction. The thesis essay and interview examine the artist’s approach to this range of subject matter, his processes of formulating the work, and biographical

anecdotes informing these processes.