Miller Opie

Miller Opie’s work explores and exorcises her life-altering experience that began in 2009 when she learned that she had several benign tumors that were destroying her jawbone. Over three years of surgeries and procedures inspire her to intimately explore beauty, decay and fragility. Opie has had a lifelong passion and obsession for collecting bones, shells and other natural objects. Working with found organic materials allows her the thrill of the search, the experience of discovery and the joy of combining and manipulating shapes. Opie’s desire is to create something better, something more compelling, by repairing a broken cow femur, reimagining deer vertebrae or combining moose ribs with feathers. Inspired by the new metal plate in her jaw, Opie adds brass screws, metal chain or silk thread to these discarded, decaying animal parts to give them a new life. Opie is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, a member of the Sculptors Guild of New York City and is represented by Fountain Street Gallery in Boston, MA.

Used to refer to a time rather than an aesthetic, Contemporary art generally describes pieces created after 1970 or being made by living artists anywhere in the world. This immediacy means it encompasses art responding to the present moment through diverse subjects, media and themes. Contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, performance, digital art, video and more frequently includes work that is attempting to reshape current ideas about what art can be, from Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s use of candy to memorialize a lover he lost to AIDS-related complications to Jenny Holzer’s ongoing “Truisms,” a Conceptual series that sees provocative messages printed on billboards, T-shirts, benches and other public places that exist outside of formal exhibitions and the conventional “white cube” of galleries.

Contemporary art has been pushing the boundaries of creative expression for years. Its disruption of the traditional concepts of art are often aiming to engage viewers in complex questions about identity, society and culture. In the latter part of the 20th century, contemporary movements included Land art, in which artists like Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer create large-scale, site-specific sculptures, installations and other works in soil and bodies of water; Sound art, with artists such as Christian Marclay and Susan Philipsz centering art on sonic experiences; and New Media art, in which mass media and digital culture inform the work of artists such as Nam June Paik and Rafaël Rozendaal.

The first decades of the 21st century have seen the growth of Contemporary African art, the revival of figurative painting, the emergence of street art and the rise of NFTs, unique digital artworks that are powered by blockchain technology.

Major Contemporary artists practicing now include Ai Weiwei, Cecily Brown, David Hockney, Yayoi Kusama, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami and Kara Walker.

Find a collection of Contemporary prints, photography, paintings, sculptures and other art on 1stDibs.