Toxic Bloom

Toxic Bloom begins with a buried story. Hidden in the courtyard behind The Bearded Monk rests an abandoned time capsule, meant to preserve a piece of Denton's history and forgotten before it was ever opened. Weather and neglect have fractured its concrete shell, and a fluorescent substance has seeped into the soil. The dormant catalyst has awoken underground. Carnivorous flowers now tower from planters, inviting guests to observe their dangerous beauty. Don’t get too close, or their glow will pull you in and you’ll become forever entangled in their grasp.

Jacob Phillips leads the artist team at Bearded Monk as mentor, and Ollie Miller is his mentee. Phillips is an interdisciplinary artist whose creative journey transports viewers into an imaginary Southern landscape, offering a perspective shaped by the experiences of queer identity. He earned an MFA in Sculpture from the University of North Texas in 2021 and a BFA in Sculpture from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2017, and now holds the position of Sculpture Visual Arts Technician and Adjunct Professor at UNT. Miller makes work that challenges the thresholds of social anthropology, exposing the harm placed on those who don't fit the molds society considers respectable. Centered on the marginalization of women, trans, and queer people, Miller's work protests those constructs and the traumas they have created. After their brother's passing, they began grouping grief, religious trauma, and liberation into work intent on displaying growth, change, and revolution.