Exhibition - Peter Millett: Built Forms

Peter Millett, a Seattle-based artist, has been exploring the mystery of common forms in his artwork since the late 1970s. Raised within the rich architectural history of Chicago, Millett’s journey across the world brought inspiration from costume and ritual, vernacular architecture, and sacred monuments. His geometric intricacies, evident in both sculpture and drawings, echo the intense patterns found in ancient tile work of Iranian mosques, while the repeated but irregular lines carry the memory of textiles woven on simple looms by Andean weavers.

Millett’s work, with its abstract quality, is a blend of personal and global influences. The construction-grade dimensional wood, painted in monochrome hues, hints at the timber of the Northwest, grounding the work in a regional context. His art embodies a unique blend of barn-door modernism, steering away from the slick minimalism of New York.

Curated by guest curator Greg Bell, Peter Millett: Built Forms is the artist’s first museum survey, showcasing artworks from Northwest private and museum collections. This exhibition is not merely a retrospective but a distillation of Millett’s style, emphasizing his masterful craftsmanship. His use of rich colors and deceptively simple shapes reveals the complexity of intersecting lines and the transparency of overlapping planes, celebrating Millett’s act of remembering intertwined with the art of making.

Peter Millett: Built Forms, the artist’s first museum survey, features artworks from Northwest private and museum collections in a review of the artist’s expansive body of work. The exhibition is accompanied by a major catalog (96 pages, full color, hardcover, 9” x 11”) documenting this momentous exhibition.

Very few exhibitions and publications are realized without the support of avid collectors, private galleries, and museum institutions. We are especially indebted to those who have lent their works to MoNA in an effort to foster the appreciation of Peter Millett’s work by wider audiences.

About the Artist

Peter Millett was born in Evanston, Illinois in 1949 and grew up in the Chicago area. He attended Rhode Island School of Design, earning a BFA in 1971. He traveled to Europe soon after and upon his return, in 1973, he went west and settled in Seattle. Millett attended graduate classes in painting and sculpture at the University of Washington in the mid-1970s. He taught figure drawing at Cornish College for the Arts, while exploring more abstract forms in other paintings and sculpture.

An extended trip to Iran in 1975, while his architect father was working on a project there, proved to be informative to Millett’s sculptural visual vocabulary. This established a pattern of travel, visiting Malaysia, Bali, Peru, Ecuador and Mexico, and cultural learning that has continued throughout his career.

The artist has shown in Seattle with Polly Friedlander Gallery, Foster White Gallery, Linda Farris Gallery and has been with Greg Kucera Gallery since 1993. His work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Seattle Art Museum; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tacoma Art Museum; Henry Art Gallery, University of

Washington; King County Public Art Collection; Microsoft Corporation; Boeing Corporation, Chicago, and other private and public collections. He has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including an Artist Trust Grant and the Betty Bowen Committee Special Recognition Award from the Seattle Art Museum. Millett lives and works in Seattle with his wife, artist Sherry Markovitz. He would like to acknowledge the support of his son Jacob Millett, as studio assistant, the Greg Kucera Gallery, and his family for all the love and support all these years.