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Millers

My dear friend Glenn sent me this article about how he and his buddy Jack started in New Orleans. I met Jack a few years back at the French Quarter Festival (I met Glenn MANY years ago at the Jazz Fest in New Orleans)...a few days after I got home I found this Jack Miller etching from 1972 at a thrift store.
Jack R. Miller

By Patricia B. Mitchell, November 1974

Two adolescent yellow tomcats, Billy Joe Bob and Homer T, curl up in Jack Miller's lap. The cats look pleased with themselves, as cats will. These felines have a right to be vain, for they recently acted as models for a Miller etching of a whimsical alley cat. The radio plays rock and pipe smoke drifts through the Bienville Street studio.

In 1968, Jack, his wife Marcia, son Sean, and artist friend Glenn Miller (no relation) drove from Erie, Pennsylvania to New Orleans. They came in a car and a van, carrying their furniture with them (“Grapes of Wrath-style…,” says Jack with a grin at the memory). The men had been “Sunday painters” in Pennsylvania, working in oils and watercolors. Jack wanted to come to New Orleans because “I had to break away from my old life. I had to come down here…brought my family… I started all over again, but this time I was going to be an artist instead of whatever the hell I was back there, which wasn't very much. I had lived on a farm, gone into the service, then worked in a factory.”

“We felt the art scene here was healthy. We felt like we could cope with it. It wasn't too big or too far out or anything… There are several good artists here, sort of underground.”

After arriving in town Jack got a job at Century Printing Compan y, but in 1970 Century closed down temporarily because of a strike by the printers' union. When the strike was over, he did not go back to work. He became a full-time artist.

Jack had a little studio as his house, where he had been painting in the evenings. After quitting his job at Century, he got some watercolors together and went out to Jackson Square.

“I worked on the fence for about a year. I hated it. I'll never go back.”

During this period, Jack and Glenn Miller were befriended by Norman Criner, an experienced local engraver. Using the press at the old Quarter Print Collector on Royal Street, Criner taught Jack and Glenn how to create etchings. They rented a studio, then acquired the press which had belonged to the late Eugene Loving, another local printmaker. Then they began to experiment with various etching techniques and subjects.

Jack worked with representational line etchings, depicting “the surviving architecture” of=2 0the Quarter. He also created traditional life study prints. Surprisingly, his French Quarter etchings seldom contain human forms. When asked why, Miller quipped, “It's hard to draw people with their clothes on.”

Discussing his lifestyle, Jack explains that he works harder at his job than people might realize.

“Being an artist, you get a lot of freedom, but then you have a lot of responsibility — you have to motivate yourself.”

Jack is usually in his studio seven days a week from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. or even later.

“I don't think of it as work, though. I enjoy being in the studio. The more I'm here, the more creative I am… Sometimes I just sit and think.”

Recently, Jack has been developing a more impressionistic style. He is experimenting with multicolor etchings and collographs, and also doing some oil portraits. He does not want to stop making prints, though.

“I do like etchings. When you pull a plate, it's sort of a suspense. It may be a week that you've been working on one plate. The excitement builds up and finally, after you've gone through everything, you pull that piece of paper off and see what you have. That's the most exciting part of etching.”

Some of Jack's most commercially successful prints have been editions depicting French Quarter landmarks such as Café du Monde, Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop, and the Napoleon House. One of his most popular impressionistic collographs is the burnt-orange “Sunburst.”

very funny

Ebay Offerings

Hope everyone is having a lovely and fun summer...here is something I have on Ebay right now...back to the alien theme...click HERE to see all my ebay paintings.

Amazing Graffiti Art by Banksy

Banksy is a well-known English graffiti artist, possibly named Robert Banks. His artworks are often satirical pieces of art which encompass topics from politics, culture, and ethics. His street art, which combines graffiti with a distinctive stenciling technique, has appeared in London and in cities around the world.

the art heist

here's a painting I am selling on ebay for the guy I work for, it's called Studio Doll, by the now deceased local artist Ramon Santiago:
The story behind this painting as that 2 years ago on Halloween someone came into the frame shop where I work and stole a Santiago painting, unbeknownst to us. The next day, someone came in and I caught him running out the door with another Santiago painting. Looking around I realized all three of the original paintings we had there were gone. I immediately thought of a particular customer who was very much interested in Santiago's work and in the subsequent days, made this known to the investigators. Well, turns out I was right. This customer was a local Rochester attorney who hired 2 thugs who he'd previously represented to come in and steal the paintings off the walls of the frame shop. He was to give them $5000 for their stealthy efforts. The paintings combined value was $31,000. This was all very big news here in town and a lot of people came in to chat about it...sales were very high by the end of the year! One lady came in and told me the lawyer used to come into her bank (she was a teller) and that they had him on surveillance camera stealing one of their fancy calculators off of the counter. In the end the 2 thugs ended up in jail and the lawyer, though he confessed, got off scott free...

william hawkins

this is an early piece of mine with the patterned edges totally influenced by the late great William Hawkins. I saw some of his stuff at an outsider art show at the Eastman House here in Rochester, NY and was mesmerized. I bought a book and fell in love...here's one of his titled Yellow Buck:

for all new pulver ebay posts, kindly click HERE where you will find the lion painting currently for sale..