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CFHS grad paints way to art success
(by Dwight Woodward - October 04, 2012)
CFHS grad paints way to art success
By Dwight Woodward
CHAGRIN FALLS – In 1972, John Miller graduated from Chagrin Falls High School, worked for the Chagrin Falls Township road crew paving village streets the summer after high school and headed east to the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).
As a senior in high school, Mr. Miller won a statewide contest and a full scholarship to study at one of the country’s premier art schools.
Forty years later, after a career of making and teaching art, Mr. Miller returned last week to Chagrin Falls, where he was inducted last Thursday into the high school’s Achievement Hall of Fame. He and five other alumni were honored with a dinner at the Chagrin Valley Athletic Club and a presentation Friday on Harris Field at the varsity football game.
Mr. Miller, professor of professional practice at Columbia University’s Department of Art History, was awarded the 2011 German Wolfgang Hahn Prize, which included a prize of 100,000 Euro (approximately $129,000 U.S.). He is represented by six galleries in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Berlin and Cologne, Germany.
Mr. Miller’s resume and bibliography of written work list decades of constant work making art. His work has been purchased by the Whitney Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, among others, and numerous private collections.
Mr. Miller credits his mother, Barbara Miller, as an important early influence in his wanting to become an artist.
“My mother played an important role,” he said recently. “She played piano and never pushed brother Dave or me in any direction. There were always art supplies around the house. Most importantly, we had complete freedom in the summers. We spent much of the day in the summers roaming around the village and surrounding woods.” His father, Bainbridge native John Miller, is also a graduate of Chagrin Falls High School.
As a lad, Mr. Miller considered joining the Coast Guard, but a class with local artist George Roby and encouragement from the Chagrin Valley Artists Association (now the Valley Arts Center) convinced Miller to stick with art.
“I think I was 13 when I decided to become an artist,” he said. “The Chagrin art community was an important influence. Pat Wetzig gave me one of my first shows at Chagrin’s Little Theater.”
Mr. Miller graduated from RISD and completed a master’s degree at the California Institute of the Arts. He decided to live in New York City, where he literally lived the proverbial life of the “starving artist,” living in small, cheap apartments while making art and doing odd jobs such as word processing to make ends meet.
When Mr. Miller isn’t making or showing art or teaching it, he likes to play music, often with wife Aura. The couple’s daughter, Carmen, works at an art gallery.
In addition to the dinner and ceremony, he said he was looking forward to seeing old friends and coaches.
He was a member of the Chagrin Falls High School cross-country team that went undefeated and won the 1971 AAA Ohio state championship. In a speech at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony, he praised retired cross-country coach John Hurst, who attended the banquet, for his low-key coaching style that emphasized persistence and practice, something he has incorporated into his art work.
Mr. Hurst remembered Mr. Miller’s persistence as he was not leading the pack like his classmate Dan Miller, now owner of Chagrin Falls’ Miller Plumbing and Heating, who placed third in the 1971 AA state championship meet. When contacted by phone, Hurst, a member of the Hall of Fame applications committee, added a bit of levity about the two Millers.
“We wanted to know which of the Millers bit the other one in the head in gym class.”
When contacted by phone, John Miller said, “Yes, I did ‘bite’ Dan Miller’s head during gym class, as commemorated by an award I received from the cross-country team later that year. He bolted and his head hit my front teeth, leaving a big gash on the top of Dan’s head.”
To view Mr. Miller’s art, visit lownoon.com.
Dwight Woodward is a former newsman for The Associated Press. He writes from Russell Township.
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