Milo Ackley's Projects

BFA Alumni

Major: Illustration

Graduation Year: 2015

Artist Statement:

While society is continuously moving forward on the coattails of technological “progress” and the excessive culture of consumption that it entails, the need to return to where we started is becoming more and more apparent; where will we be if we forget the building blocks of culture amongst the conveniences of technology? Yet to look back or exercise nostalgia is seen as a taboo in our modern world bent on progress. Really, our tendency towards binary systems hurts us; that the past is then and this is now, or that to look back means you don't want to go forward at all. When we take time to take in all the other choices and possibilities outside binary views, we can choose something that feels more ourselves. In the face of our modernity, I emphasize simpler and more alternative values, such as the practicality in being able to produce or locally source the objects in one’s living space, and to purchase with intent on the grounds of function and real value to you, rather than blind consumption.

Biography:

WEBSITE: inkybluestudio.com

I use my studio practice as a learning tool for what I experience. I like to explore techniques and mark-making so that I may more richly articulate what I want to say, from experience and imagination.

I live in mid-coast Maine in a cabin I built with my partner. I graduated from Maine College of Art in 2015 with a BFA in Illustration and started Inky Blue, my artist studio. I was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease in 2010, and have spent a lot of my life since then learning to balance living with a chronic illness and living my life. For example, in August I like to gorge myself on wild berries from the yard and sometimes I go to rock shows and throw my arms out "dancing".