Richard M Miller

Richard McDermott Miller, who was known as The Figure Sculptor of SoHo died on Christmas Day at Saint Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan. The cause according to his wife, Gloria Bley Miller, was pancreatic cancer.Miller, who was born in New Philadelphia, Ohio in 1922, began his interest in sculpture early. At age 10, he was modeling animals and figures in the solid clay banks of the Tuscarawas River near his home. At 14, he discovered on his own how to cast his sculptures into lead. At the Cleveland Institute of Art, where he received his formal art training, Miller garnered various awards including a scholarship enabling him to travel and study in Mexico. Soon his work was being shown locally and winning prizes at the Massillon Museum, Butler Institute of American Art and the Cleveland Museum of Art. After World War II, Miller assumed responsibility for managing his family’s manufacturing company. Despite its demands, he still found time for his art. At age 40, he sold his interest in the business and headed to New York to work full-time at sculpture. Finding a small studio in the East Village, Miller began to produce the body of work that established his reputation. Swimming against the abstract art current of the time, he worked directly from life, modeling his figures in wax and clay and having them cast into bronze. His figures ranged in size from a few inches to over eight feet tall. The critic, John Gruen was prompted to describe them as “Â?fluid, beautifully executed. Their sense of life borders on the remarkableÂ? (They) attest to an observant and keenly perceptive eye that searches out and tellingly communicates the natural grace of the body.” Miller, who subsequently moved his studio to SoHo, has had more that twelve one-man shows in New York and others in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and London. His work is represented in various collections including those of the Hirshhorn Museum, The Whitney Museum, Brookgreen Gardens, the National Academy of Design, The Canton Art Institute and other public and private collections. In 1980 he was given a 20-year retrospective exhibit at the Artists’ Choice Museum in New York. Richard Miller has received a number of honors including two gold medals from the National Academy of Design, the Art Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Arthur Ross Award for Sculpture given by Classical America. From 1967 to 1992, he taught sculpture at Queens College CUNY. He is also the author of “Figure Sculpture in Wax and Plaster” published by Dover Press. In the 1970’s and 80’s Richard Miller headed the Alliance of Figurative Artists, a Manhattan-based artists’ group. From 1989 to 1992, he served as President of the National Academy of Design and from 1997 to 2000 as President of the National Sculpture Society. In addition to Gloria, his wife of 43 years, Miller leaves from a previous marriage, a daughter, Sue, to granddaughters, Michelle & Melinda, and two great-grandsons, Wolfgang and Corwin.