Enjoy a Station Wagon Vacation at Miya Gallery

Miya Gallery presents new work by Sue Wille, aka Suzie Millions, in an exhibition titled Station Wagon Vacation — Another Place, Another Time. “As Summer 2025 comes to a close, the nostalgia of the classic station wagon vacation lives forever in this unique exhibition,” says Jason Janow, owner of Miya Gallery. The show, the first for this series, opens Tuesday, September 2, and runs through Tuesday, September 30. An opening reception will be held Friday, September 5, from 6–8 p.m.

Wille taps into her own memories for this work, and invites viewers to do the same. “After I finished many of these pieces, not by my intention, they felt like they were not so much telling stories but inviting viewers to interpret the components and make up their own,” she says. “Because of that, viewers can connect with them regardless of whether or not they have experienced firsthand the mid-century station wagon vacations this work was born of.”

To tell the stories, Wille employs found photographs, ephemera and period-appropriate detritus. “They evoke the happy trails, the tourist shops, the ma-and-pa motels and the ‘we’re not in the Midwest anymore’ cultural explorations encountered along the highlighted route of the AAA TripTik,” she says. “Many of the pieces are on cedar planks, a visual and aromatic nod to the roadside shops filled with cedar souvenirs. They are cheerful, and cheerful is hard to come by sometimes.”

Wille’s art has generated a large following among well-known musicians, music writers, lovers of Southern culture, and museums dedicated to music including Al Green, Mrs. Roy Orbison, Susan Sarandon, the Jerry Lee Lewis Museum and the Loretta Lynn Coal Miner’s Daughter Museum.

Before moving to Asheville in 2010, Wille lived in cities known for their musical history, resident musicians and landmark venues, including Chicago, Memphis and New Orleans. In a time before the internet made it easier, she tracked down musical ephemera and artifacts to use in her artwork. For her drawings and paintings of Delta Blues musicians, for instance, she did not rely upon well-known images already circulating. “I traveled the Delta and took photographs of scenery and some of the old buildings that still existed from the era when those musicians were playing,” she says. “I used those photographs in my art. I spent two weeks in the Delta collecting dirt and shards from sites where blues musicians lived, worked and played—driving around in a beat-to-heck 1969 Ford LTD with writing all over it. I had boxes of Ziploc bags and a hand trowel and in two weeks not one person stopped me or asked me what I was doing digging and bagging. I made memory jars using what I collected. At a time when a lot of other people were making music-related art, it set my work apart.”

Miya Gallery is located at 20 North Main Street, Weaverville. For more information, visit MiyaGallery.com or call the gallery at 828.658.9655. Learn more about Sue Wille’s work at SuzieMillions.com.