John F. Miller Print Signed Small Print c. 2000 Chicago Artist & Catalog

Description

John F. Miller Print, Signed Print, Chicago Artist
11 x 8.5 inches.  Digital composition - layered from Miller's photographs of urban detritus, graffiti and landscapes around his west loop studio.  Exhibited: John Miller Retrospective, Rare Nest Gallery 2019.
Plus, 2004 catalog for Miller's digital "Dypytryps", 8 x 8 inches, full color, 10 pages with essay by Daniel Schulman.
For more than 60 years, the artist John Miller combined layered, gestural abstraction with rich, intense color in his paintings and prints.
Miller was born in Princeton, Illinois, in 1927.  He served as a sign painter in the US Army in Korea from 1946 to 1947. After returning, he attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Chicago.
In 1953, with financial assistance from local benefactors Doc Walters and his wife Shirley, a teacher in the Chicago Public School system, Miller founded the 414 Art Workshop Gallery, one of Chicago’s earliest “alternative spaces.” Miller was a member of the workshop’s faculty, teaching classes in painting, design and jewelry-making, in addition to serving with other faculty in an advisory capacity from 1953 to 1959. He was a constant and influential fixture on the Chicago art scene over the years and taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1958 until his retirement in 1998 as Professor Emeritus. He also taught painting at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois (1959 - 62); the Hyde Park Art Center (1957 - 58); the University of Illinois, Chicago (1959 – 62); and several classes at Kendall College, Evanston (1964 - 65). Miller was a frequent exhibitor in the Art Institute of Chicago’s Chicago & Vicinity shows from 1952 – 1962 and was active on the board of directors of Exhibition Momentum in 1956 – 1957. He exhibited in another important alternative space in Chicago, Superior Street Gallery (1959 - 61). Except for the year he spent living in Mexico from 1970 to 1971, and a Fulbright-Hayes Teaching Fellowship spent in England during 1975, Miller lived in Chicago most of his adult life.
Miller devoted his career to exploring painterly and material issues, consistently combining a lush handling of pigment and color with an investigation into compositional structure. Miller began to concentrate on the monumental architecture of abstract, largely geometric forms set in dynamic equilibrium with energetic passages of freely painted, gestural strokes. Experiments with detritus led to large format collage paintings of laminated “junk” mail –then photographic compositions of garbage found in the alleys and streets around his west loop studio.  From at least 1998, Miller translated his painterly concerns to the computer, producing unique large-scale modular archival prints that have been termed “digital paintings.”  The artist layered his own photos with acquired patterns in vibrant hues, manipulating and “drafting” over progressive iterations.
Circa 2012, Miller exhibited signs of Alzheimer’s disease and currently lives in excellent care near Milwaukee Wisconsin.
SELECTED AWARDS & FELLOWSHIPS
1992/86  Norris Gallery Vicinity Exhibition, St. Charles, prize winner each year
1975       Fulbright-Hayes Teacher Exchange Fellowship,
Wolverhampton, England
1963       Second Annual Chicago Arts Festival, McCormick Place, Prize winner
1959       Hyde Park Art Center, Annual Art Exhibition, Chicago, First Prize
1957       62nd Annual American Exhibition, Art Institute of Chicago, Prize
EDUCATION
1947-1951             School of the Art Institute of Chicago
1955-1956             University of Chicago
COLLECTIONS
Susan Aurinko
Greg Hertzleib, Valparaiso, IN
Brauer Museum of Art, Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, IN
Block Museum, Northwestern University, Evanston
Elmhurst College Art Collection, Elmhurst
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
Northern Illinois University, DeKalb University of Chicago, Chicago
Campbell Mithune, Chicago
Kirkland & Ellis, Chicago
Estate of Joseph R. Shapiro
Samuel M. Budwig, Jr.
Mrs. Blanche Koffler
Estate of Ms. Claire Zeisler
Mrs. Joanna Beal Westermann
Mr. & Mrs. David C. Ruttenberg, Sr.
Estate of Franz Schulz
Union League Club Chicago
ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS
1958-1998             Associate Professor, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
1975                      Wolverhampton Polytechnic, Wolverhampton England,
1965-1967             Kendall College, Evanston
1956-1963             Northwestern University, Chicago
1959-1962             University of Illinois, Chicago
1958                      University of Chicago, Chicago
RELATED EXPERIENCES
1984-1988             Founder and Director, Fox River Center for Visual Arts, Aurora
1959-1961             Chairperson of Superior Street Gallery Corporation, Chicago
1956-1957             Board of Directors “Exhibition Momentum,” Chicago
1953-1958             Founder and Director, 414 Art Workshop Gallery, Chicago
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