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Paver Patterns by
Serena Mitnik-Miller

Artist Serena Mitnik-Miller studies the quiet tension between repetition and variation, structure and fluidity. Working in watercolor, she builds layered compositions through hand-drawn lines, geometric forms, and translucent washes.

In this series, Serena explores our clay pavers as the medium, studying their tones, texture, and mineral depth. What begins as organic material is reinterpreted through paint and pattern.

Learn more about Serena’s process and her patterns inspired by California clay.

serena mitnik-miller

region: malibu canyon, los angeles
material: clay, watercolor

"Watercolor allowed me to explore how minimal gestures, repeated with care, can become immersive. It feels less like depicting nature and more like echoing its rhythm, letting the material speak for itself."

What first drew you to working with paint/watercolor? Was there a specific moment when you realized its potential?

I began using watercolor as a child. It was the first medium that felt intuitive to me, immediate, responsive, forgiving. Even then, I was drawn to the way it moved on its own. It never felt rigid or controlled. It felt alive.

Later, while studying at art school, I started to understand its potential more deeply. I noticed watercolor behaves much like nature, expanding, settling, evaporating. That balance between structure and surrender has stayed with me. Over time, I realized restraint could carry emotional weight. I have long been influenced by artists like Agnes Martin, whose repetition creates stillness, and Vija Celmins, whose quiet surfaces hold a sense of vastness.

Watercolor allowed me to explore how minimal gestures, repeated with care, can become immersive. It feels less like depicting nature and more like echoing its rhythm, letting the material speak for itself.

Can you walk us through your creative process for this series?

The process begins with observation. I spend a lot of time walking, especially along the coast and deserts, studying erosion lines, shells, branching forms, and tide patterns. I collect fragments through loose sketches and photographs, not to replicate them, but to internalize their structure.

In the studio, those fragments are distilled into rhythm and field. I build layers slowly, allowing each wash to dry completely before returning. The repetition becomes meditative, similar to the structural discipline in the Bauhaus, particularly in the work of Anni Albers, where pattern functions as both structure and language.

Even though the compositions appear minimal, there is constant calibration, adjusting density, spacing, breath. I am interested in how repetition can create calm without becoming static. The goal is to create a field that feels spatial rather than decorative, something the viewer can inhabit, and something that holds a quiet sense of material presence.

"Even within a modular system, I resist mechanical perfection. Slight shifts in line and subtle asymmetries help preserve the presence of the hand and the honesty of the material."

Your work is deeply rooted in observing seasonal change. How do you begin your day or week in the studio — is there a ritual or rhythm that guides your process?

Moving into clay, especially through the ORCA pavers, shifted the work from intimate to architectural. What felt essential to carry forward was organic irregularity. Even within a modular system, I resist mechanical perfection. Slight shifts in line and subtle asymmetries help preserve the presence of the hand and the honesty of the material.
Working at this scale made me think about artists like Isamu Noguchi, who blurred sculpture and environment, and Donald Judd, who emphasized material presence and spatial awareness.

The ORCA pavers function as both surface and structure. Clay holds shadow differently than paper. It gathers weather and time. Once installed, the pattern becomes something you move across, interacting with light, architecture, and landscape. There is a tension between permanence in the material and fluidity in the pattern that feels central to the work. It becomes less about image and more about environment and material experience. The pieces are small sketches of much larger concepts.

What recurring natural pattern or cycle has most influenced your design philosophy?

The Tides have had the strongest influence on me, the idea of return without exact repetition. Waves echo themselves endlessly, but never identically. That subtle deviation within consistency is something I continually explore.

I’m also deeply drawn to textures in nature, the way patterns collect in tide pools, in sediment, in bark, in shifting sand. How repetition forms slowly, through erosion or growth. There’s an intelligence in the way nature gathers marks: lichen spreading across stone, shells clustering along the shoreline, cracks mapping across dry earth. Pattern isn’t imposed, it accumulates.

Philosophically, I connect to the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, honoring imperfection and impermanence. In both gallery work and architectural applications, I want the pattern to feel alive rather than imposed, and to remain grounded in the nature of the material.

What materials are you looking forward to exploring next?

I’m interested in continuing to move fluidly between fine art and architectural surface, carved wood panels, glazed ceramics, possibly stone or textile installations. I’m drawn to materials that hold memory and change over time, materials that register touch, weather, light, and use. There’s something powerful about working with surfaces that age, similar to how fresco or ancient stone reliefs carry the imprint of centuries. The material becomes a record.

I love how simple shapes can interrupt space and create both geometric and natural explorations at large scales. Ultimately, I’m interested in how pattern behaves when it becomes immersive, and how it shifts when it’s no longer just on a wall, but integrated into the space itself. When pattern becomes something you walk on, sit with, or move through, it changes from image to environment.