Education and Formation of Jim Miller-Melberg
Reflecting upon his art and its place in time, Jim Miller-Melberg once stated “Everything has changed. Nothing has changed.” A witness to the astonishing technological inventions such as television, computers, and space travel, Miller had also experienced war as the inversion of such progress. Reflecting on humanity, he realized that humans contain contradictions of violence and compassion. To Miller, this is reflected in the role of art in any particular place and time. To pursue his artistic curiosity and aspirations, Miller seemed to embark on many false starts. In truth each was forming a bright facet of his understanding of the world and the place of art within it.
The story of Miller’s education and formation reflects his aspirations, frustrations, and the independent (and sometimes impatient) side that he described as that of a “non-conformer.” Miller had considerable artistic talent but was uninterested in and challenged by traditional academics. His wanderlust was fulfilled with travel to Europe, and also ironically directed by service in the Korean War. When eventually working as a design instructor at the University of Michigan, Miller continued to be irked by the contrasts between dry academic theory and the living hands-on existential act of creating art with one’s hands.
Following graduation from Royal Oak High School, Miller enrolled at the College of Architecture and Design at the University of Michigan in 1947. For two years, Miller saw great success in courses on Drawing and Sculpture, and disappointing grades in courses such as Physics, English, and History. After a string of failed classes in those subjects, Miller withdrew from the U of M.
He continued his studies at Wayne State University from 1949 to 1951, taking courses such as Life Drawing, Aesthetics, Oil Painting, and Sculpture. The non-art requirements of the College of Liberal Arts continued to challenge Miller, and we feel some sympathy when again he took on and then withdrew from courses that did not develop his passion for artistic creation. He left Wayne State without a degree.
Miller sought solace and inspiration through travel in France, England, and Italy from 1951 to 1952. It was also part of an attempt to avoid fighting in the Korean War in which Miller had philosophical reservations. He spent the time visiting artists in their studios for the inspiration and direction that he had not so far found in his university studies. He admired classical art but felt compelled to understand and contribute to art that would be “relevant to our time.” His contacts with Hepworth, Moore, Leach, and Zadkine focused his passion and direction to this end, teaching him technique and artistic philosophy rather than mere theory. Each of these artists awakened Miller to an idea of a new art that was simultaneously from the primordial past; archetypal and earthly, and wedded to a present world of modernity with a thrilling future.
Miller’s meeting with British sculptor Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975) introduced this fusion of the ancient and the modern. Hepworth exemplified modernism with her sculptural work of curves, abstraction, and creative use of material. Yet her influences reached into the past, especially African Tribal, Pre-Columbian Mexican, and Ancient Egyptian sculpture. Around the time that she was meeting with Miller, Hepworth wrote in her book Carvings and Drawings:
I regard the present era of flight and projection into space and time as a tremendous expansion of our sensibilities, but in order to appreciate this fully I think that we must affirm some ancient stability – a stability which is inherent in land and rocks and trees, inherent in our capacity to stand and move and feel – in order to assess our true physiological responses to our poise in the landscape as well as to our position in space and time.
Hepworth influenced Miller not only with her bold abstract vision and style of sculpture but also with this impulse to create the art of the future with a grounding from the distant past.
Meeting with British ceramicist Bernard Leach (1887-1979), Miller learned about the quality of simplicity and the positive place for mass-production. Leach had studied in Japan, China, and Korea, often living as a local as he learned his craft. Leach was looking for something better than what he called the bad color, decoration, and form of most pottery that he knew in England. Especially influenced by the Japanese idea of Shibui, Leach embraced austerity and restraint in his works, and kindled a revelation that “everyday objects can be beautiful.” Here was another case of an artist’s future vision inspired by embracing an ancient tradition. To Leach, mass-production helped with artistic improvements and gave access to ordinary people enjoying their everyday objects. He proclaimed in his Potter’s Book in 1940: “Mass-produced wares can be of fine quality of body and beautiful in form if designed by the right men.” This was Miller’s future, though he didn’t know it at the time – Mass production of restrained and elegant everyday objects that would soon populate playgrounds across the country.
Spending time with English sculptor Henry Moore (1898-1986), Miller was also unknowingly glimpsing his destiny, as Moore would himself eventually work for the early play sculpture company Creative Playthings. Moore’s curved monumental sculptures with holes and hollow spaces certainly served as an inspiration for Miller’s later work. Moore also articulated the balance between art’s function of the “zeitgeist manifesting itself” with inspiration from the distant past. Heavily influenced by Sumerian, pre-Columbian, and African art, Moore’s art has most often been described as surreal, primordial, and archetypal, essential elements of much of Miller’s own future work.
Miller’s most important European teacher was Russian-born Cubist sculptor Ossip Zadkine (1888-1967), who taught at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. Miller had enrolled at the Académie, attracted by its connection to Modigliani, its well-known freedom from academic rules, and one of the lower tuition rates in Montparnasse. As Miller camped out in his studio for an extended time, Zadkine taught Miller technique and further inspired a view of archetypal artistic modernity. A fellow independent and restless artist, Zadkine looked to the distant past of the Nile Valley and ancient Greece for inspiration. To his biographer Jianou, Zadkine saw the future while taking on the weight of history. From Zadkine, Miller learned concepts not usually associated with sculpture: freedom from gravity, seeing through the opaque, and transmitting energy. Zadkine’s fascination with the complementary oppositions of the Apollonian and Dionysian in art certainly fueled Miller’s thinking along the same lines. Above all, Zadkine’s proclamation that he was above all a craftsman certainly appealed to Miller, the Patternmaker’s son who felt equally at home in a workshop or an art studio.
The splendors of Paris soon gave way to the realities of the 38th parallel, as Miller’s time avoiding Korea ran out. Faced with jail, Miller served in an infantry division from 1952 to 1954, earning a bronze star amid what he has described as the “ruined society” and the “detritus of war.” Experiencing the horrors and realities of war cemented within Miller a lens on the world split between Leach’s Yin and Yang, between Zadkine’s Apollo and Dionysus. Decades later, Miller wrote of seeing a Korean boy that informed his art for the rest of his life:
The image of that small boy covered in the cloak of a G.I. field jacket standing in a cold rain in front of a small restaurant in Seoul in 1952 has stuck with me all these years and that image became the outer shell and the inner form of some of my sculptures.
Returning from the war and taking advantage of V.A. benefits, Miller decided to continue his artistic work at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI.
Perhaps Cranbrook had been an obvious place for Miller all along, with its philosophy of artistic freedom, encouragement of independent study, and eye to the modern.
Cranbrook was also the home of Swedish sculptor Carl Milles who Miller greatly admired. In his first year at Cranbrook, Miller thrived. His sculpture instructor Glenn Chamberlain’s evaluations speak volumes:
Very talented – a great deal of inventiveness – a colorful person – enthusiastic – curious – very alert, outstanding ability, an intelligent and sensitive artist.
Miller’s work also caught the eye of Cranbrook painter Zoltan Sepeshy, who wrote him a strong letter of recommendation for a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant.
However, family and financial troubles took a toll on Miller’s work at Cranbrook. His classmates remember his (first) wife Kiki being in the hospital frequently, and in 1955 Miller took a leave from Cranbrook, writing that “my wife has been seriously ill.” In the fall of that year, Miller withdrew from Cranbrook “because of the need to work.”
One of Miller’s eventual jobs, working as a clay modeler at General Motors, caused him to cross paths with one his most important collaborators, Bob Vigiletti (1931- 2024). While Miller was helping Larry Shinoda design the 1961 Corvette XP-755 Mako Shark concept car, Vigiletti was working nearby for GM Photographic as an industrial and advertising photographer. A fellow Detroit artist, Korea-era veteran, and the same age as Miller, Vigiletti was a peer and a ready partner in developing the look that would define and sell Miller’s playground pieces. Guided by his goal to make photos that “provoke aesthetic enjoyment and visual entertainment,” Vigiletti worked with Miller to bring his sculptures to life within their ideal contexts of nature, children, play and imagination. Perhaps Miller’s last “teacher,” Vigiletti and his unique eye worked interdependently with the designs that Miller would develop throughout his playground sculpture career.
Miller’s education and formation stretched from from the University of Michigan, Wayne State University, the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, to Cranbrook Academy of Art, working with names like Hepworth, Leach, Moore, Zadkine, Chamberlain, and Vigiletti. Over his long educational journey Miller knew success and failure, triumph and loss, experienced inspiration, love, and war, and stayed true to his vision and himself.
[Sources: Cranbrook Archives Collection, Miller-Melberg, Bogart, Hocking, Hepworth, Leach, Neumann, Jianou, Jurrjens, Woo, Minton, Vigiletti. Details in Sources page]
