Published: Sept. 25, 2001

Kay Miller, an associate professor in CU-Boulder's fine arts department, has received a $10,000 award from the Creative Capital Foundation, a national nonprofit organization that supports artists pursuing innovative approaches to form and content.

Miller's work, titled "Kiss of the Wild," will include five new paintings that depict the relationship between the human and spiritual worlds. "Kiss of the Wild" will draw upon indiginous people's understandings of and approaches to contemporary social and environmental issues.

Boldly colored and filled with animal and cosmic imagery, Miller's paintings often integrate discarded objects and materials that are given new life through inclusion in her work.

Miller is one of the leading American contemporary painters. Her recent exhibitions include "Ra Tahi" (2000) at the Toihoukura Tairawhiti Polytechnic in Gisborne, New Zealand, "Keepers of the Wild" (1999) at the State University of New York, and "The Sniper's Nest" (1998) at the New Mexico Museum of Fine Art in Santa Fe.

Miller has received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Nancy Gray Foundation, the Colorado Council for the Arts, the Ford Foundation and the Joan Mitchell Foundation.