KINGSTON, R.I. –-August 13, 2009—The University of Rhode Island’s Department of Art and Art History has awarded the 2009 Visual Arts Sea Grant to Hannah Elise Miller of Providence. The department administers the grant, which is funded by Rhode Island Sea Grant and is awarded annually to an artist whose work addresses the environment of the ocean and its coastal communities.

Miller, a photographer and filmmaker, will use the $2,000 grant toward her 16mm film “Fluid Boundaries, a study in perimeters and shifting language.” She wrote: “This film will explore the boundaries, real or ambiguous, of the named bodies of water in Rhode Island; the places where rivers flow into bays, two bays merge and open out to Rhode Island Sound and where the sound becomes the Atlantic Ocean.”

Miller earned her MFA in 2008 from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and her BFA from Illinois State University. She has made several other films and exhibited her work in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York and Illinois.

The Visual Arts Program of Rhode Island Sea Grant was established in 1988. For more information about the program go to http://www.uri.edu/artsci/art/v_a_grant.html.