Steven Miller came early and late to art. Growing up in rural Ohio in the 1950’s he learned to draw and paint with the encouragement of his artist mother. But other interests intervened—he earned B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry and served on the faculty of the Department of Chemistry at Oakland University from 1962 through 1994. In 1995 he began a full time commitment to sculpture and drawing.

His art education is based on a series of non-degree studies starting in 1985 and continuing to the present. Instruction in sculpture, drawing and printmaking has been taken at the Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center (BBAC), the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit (CCS), the Fechin Institute in Taos, New Mexico, and the Scottsdale Artists’ School (SAS) in Arizona.

I arrange inert materials to express vitality and evoke feeling from the viewer. I want to present sculptural ideas with just that degree of abstraction that lets the viewer be simultaneously aware of the inert nature of the sculpture’s material body and the vital feeling of its soul. I use the properties of clay, wax, plaster, bronze and patina to help the viewer share in the mysteries of substance and process embodied in the finished works.