Daily Special: The Art of John Miller

Daily Special: The Art of John Miller serves up a visual feast of American food favorites, all set within an environment that evokes classic diners and other eateries of the 1950s and 1960s.

Miller hand blows and molds his exuberant, oversized glass sculptures of hamburgers, French fries, frosty soft drinks and decadent donuts that pop off the plate and into the gallery. His work pays homage to post-war popular design and draws inspiration from pop art, particularly the soft sculptures of Claes Oldenburg.

Miller grew up going to diners with his parents in his hometown of New Haven, Connecticut where his father had a motorcycle shop. He began working with glass as an undergraduate at Southern Connecticut University and went on to earn an M.F.A. in sculpture from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. He worked at Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, WA, beginning in 1993.

Miller is an associate professor of glass at Illinois State University and has exhibited nationally at museums and art institutes. His work is in numerous museum collections, including the Corning Museum of Glass, the Chrysler Museum of Art, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City, the Museum of Glass, Tacoma, and the Cafesjian Museum of Art, Armenia.