Miller, John Paul (1918-2013)
Dates
- Existence: 1918 - 2013
Biography
John Paul Miller was born April 23, 1918 in Huntingdon Pennsylvania to Abram Brown Miller and Mary Hershberger Miller. His parents met at Juniata College where Abram was a student and Mary was the head librarian. She was also a watercolor artist. The Millers moved to Cleveland where John Paul’s father taught mathematics at the junior high level. He also taught at the Teacher Training School of Western Reserve University.
Mary Hershberger Miller passed away in Cleveland on February 12, 1920. The young John Paul was sent to live with his grandparents in Everett and Curryville, Pennsylvania. He returned to Cleveland at the age of five when his father married Florence Brooks. Florence was a graduate of Flora Stone Mather College and taught mathematics like her husband. The family lived near Rockefeller and Wade Parks where John Paul played, ice skated and sledded. He loved animals and had rabbits, guinea pigs, and fish as pets. John Paul continued to spend summers in Pennsylvania with his extended family well into his teens. He gained an appreciation for classical music and opera at a young age. His parents took him to Cleveland Orchestra concerts and the Metropolitan Opera when the company toured. This influence was so strong that he never worked in his studio without classical music playing.
John Paul began taking Saturday morning classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) at the age of five. His stepmother’s sorority sister from Mather College, Louise Dunn, was head of the museum’s education department. He continued taking classes and participating in the Saturday entertainments for young people for many years. In his oral history, conducted by the Archives of American Art, he described being entranced by the museum’s collection of gold and enameled boxes. He also loved and was influenced by the rare fourteenth century French table fountain [1924.859], the most complete example of its type known to have survived from the Middle Ages. His instructors at CMA included well known artists Otto Ege, Paul Travis, and Kenneth Bates who were also teachers at the Cleveland School of Art (later the Cleveland Institute of Art).
In 1929 the family moved to Shaker Heights where John Paul finished 6th grade at Fernway Elementary and then graduated from Shaker Heights High (1932-1936) where he also took art classes and first painted with oils. His interest in metalworking began when he read a Popular Science magazine article on making jewelry from wire. In junior high school he also got involved with stage acting and was a member of the Shaker Guild, an acting troupe of teens only partly associated with the schools. He also became involved in set design. One of the Shaker Guild’s productions was staged at Higbee’s department store in downtown Cleveland. The response was so overwhelmingly positive that John Paul was hired to continue creating sets for the Higbee’s children’s theater productions.
When he graduated from high school John Paul thought he might want to be a set designer which pleased his parents who were afraid he’d become an actor. In 1936 he interviewed at Yale Drama School where, because of the Great Depression, he was discouraged from choosing stage design as a career. Because money was tight John Paul decided to go to the Cleveland School of Art (CIA) although he had no specific goal in mind when he began in 1936. Here he met Frederick A. Miller who was seated next to him alphabetically on the first day of classes. They became lifelong friends and associates. Fred was four years older than John Paul but didn’t begin studying at the art school until 1936. He had been working as a photographer’s assistant in Akron where he grew up. His work drew the attention of designer Louis Rorimer and the wealthy Clevelander Hord family who financed his art school education.
John Paul’s teachers at CIA included Paul Travis, Kenneth Bates, and Viktor Schreckengost who had just started teaching the first ever class in industrial design. John Paul was interested in painting but majored in industrial design due to Shreckengost’s influence. He also began creating jewelry, primarily rings, learning techniques from Fred Miller, which he sold to his stepmother’s friends. During his last year he also taught freshman painting.
At that same time, still involved with the theater group in Shaker Heights, John Paul made a movie about a water nymph and a witch with fellow theater member James Card. John Paul created all of the film’s titles. Coincidentally CIA classmate Phoebe Flory’s brother John, who was an independent film producer in Hollywood, came to Cleveland to produce a film on the city’s ethnic communities. John Paul assisted with the editing work on this film, titled "Song of the City". In 1945 John Flory asked him to join his firm in New York as a film editor. He agreed but stayed only a few months because he didn’t like the city. CIA had asked him to take a teaching position and he returned to Cleveland. Flory approached him again in 1946 to produce a film on Presbyterian missionary work in Alaska. Flory gave him this opportunity because he knew Miller always wanted to go to Alaska. John Paul had gone to lectures by Roald Amundsen, Richard Byrd, and other polar explorers as a child and was always interested in the Polar Regions. He spent the summer of 1947 exploring Alaska and the Arctic Ocean while filming for the Presbyterian Mission.
During World War II Miller deferred entry into army until July 1941 in order to finish teaching duties at CIA. He was sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky where he learned to drive tanks. While there the army decided that their military chapels needed religious images and John Paul was tapped to paint a nativity scene. His work was good enough for the army to assign him the task of painting six large murals about the history of armor in the recreation hall. He was still working on these murals when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and although he expected to be called to active duty he remained at Fort Knox to complete them. He also continued to make silver rings which he sold to fellow servicemen for their girlfriends. Rather than being sent to active service he was put in charge of the recreation hall and then assigned to the Training Literature Department where he worked on tank tactic manuals for the remainder of the war. He also sold watercolors through a local department store’s soldier’s art shows.
Traveling was a regular part of John Paul’s life. Beginning in 1946 he made annual summer camping trips out west. He would be accompanied by family, friends, and students. The first trip was with Paul Travis and Joe O’Sickey from CIA. The three discovered the ghost town of Bodie, California, which they photographed and painted. In the early 1960s Miller participated in Ansel Adams’ first annual Yosemite Workshop. In 1949 Baron Erik Fleming, considered the greatest living silversmith of the time, wanted to see the United States and although in his sixties, accompanied John Paul and Frederick Miller on this annual trip. The Baron knew Fred and John Paul through several of his silversmithing workshops sponsored by Harmon & Handy. John Paul and Fred Miller also traveled every spring to northern Europe primarily visiting museums and buying jewelry supplies. Fred also made buying trips for Potter and Mellen, the fine jewelry store established by Horace Potter that he worked for and then became part owner of in the 1960s.
After the war and sojourn to Alaska John Paul returned to CIA. His responsibilities included teaching three-dimensional design, jewelry, and metalsmithing. Films and filmmaking were part of his teaching methodology. His teaching philosophy was that the intent of color and design were to invoke feeling. He also designed the school catalog and exhibition announcements; and installed and photographed CIA gallery exhibitions. After each day of teaching he and Fred Miller worked on jewelry and silver pieces at Potter and Mellen. John Paul would sometimes stay with Fred and his wife Mary at their apartment instead of going home. He eventually became part of their family, living and working with them at their home in Brecksville, Ohio. Fred and Mary and their children also occasionally joined John Paul on his annual camping trips.
As a student, Miller had seen images of gold granulation techniques by the German goldsmith Elizabeth Treskow in the magazine Das Kunstmagazine. He began studying this ancient technique of fusing tiny gold beads to a gold surface without solder in earnest. He gave up watercolor painting to focus on jewelry at the recommendation of CIA director Laurence Schmeckebier. He studied and experimented with the granulation technique as best he could although there was not much literature on it, some of it archeological. He continually sketched ideas, working to achieve the right feeling in each potential piece of jewelry. A drawing would have to be fairly exact before he began creating the item. He worked on one piece at a time. Although he photographed most of the pieces he didn’t keep track of owners. Because he was always fascinated by the natural world he took his inspiration from these forms which to him suggested the character of granules. His pieces were also inspired by classical music. He saw his black and gold works as muted musical pieces. The granulation technique he developed was complex and technical, requiring a tremendous amount of patience. Because of the detail involved he used photo flood lights to see how the granulation process was working. Miller received many requests to lecture about the granulation technique but hated the idea of public speaking and instead made a film about the process in 1955.
John Paul Miller was a long time exhibitor in the CMA’s annual May Show. This juried exhibition featured artists of Cleveland and the surrounding area known as the Western Reserve. His works were exhibited from 1938 to 1976. His early May Show entries were primarily silver pieces from forged round and square wire. As he perfected the granulation technique his pieces became more sophisticated and complex representations of nature. Miller was able to sell jewelry pieces regularly through the May Show, exhibitions at other venues, and commissions. He was always anxious to exhibit as much as possible in order to gauge interest in his work and support himself through sales. Early sales included many wedding rings. He created renderings to show clients before creating pieces. He never had enough pieces that he could sell through a gallery but as he developed a reputation there was a waiting list for his works. In addition to private collections his works can be found in the Cleveland Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Renwick Gallery, Minnesota Museum of American Art, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar, and Yale University Art Gallery. The winner of many awards and accolades, John Paul Miller was the first recipient of the Cleveland Arts Prize in the visual arts in 1961. He won the May Show’s Horace Potter award for excellence in jewelry in 1951, 1955, 1962, 1969, and 1974. He won the Viktor Schreckengost Award for Teaching Excellence at CIA in 2003. His work was celebrated in the 2010 exhibition The Jewelry of John Paul Miller at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
When he turned 65 (1983) Miller retired from teaching and took his first trip to the Antarctic. He traveled to the Antarctic every year for fourteen more years and also traveled to Mexico and Greenland in addition to backpacking out west every summer. Miller also continued making his jewelry. Between 1990 and 2000 he cared full time for Fred Miller who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, passing away in 2000. Mary Miller died in 1998. John Paul Miller passed away in his home in 2013.