Dan Robert Miller
(American, 1918-1991)
Dan Robert Miller
Abraham Lincoln, 1975
Carved Wood
38 x 17 x 34 inches
On Loan from the SC State Arts Commission, Columbia, SC
Dan Robert Miller
MLK/RFK/JFK, c. 1975
Black gum wood
80 x 35.75 x 35.75 inches
On Loan from the SC State Art Museum, Columbia, SC
These two works by Dan Robert Miller feature icons in American political history – Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy – all instrumental in the struggle for equal rights and justice, and all assassinated for their work in these areas.
We can only speculate how life in a rural African-American community may have influenced Miller’s thoughts, emotions, and ultimately, his artistic production. In a 1981 essay for Worth Keeping, an exhibition at the Columbia Museum of Art in Columbia, SC, curated by Tom Stanley, curator and folklorist Roger Manley (Davidson College Class of 1974) notes, “It is remarkable….to encounter a living South Carolina artist who produces work that is occasionally larger-than-life and reflects both cultural antecedents and powerful personal feelings.”
Biography
Photo by Roger Manley, Davidson College Class of '74
Miller was born in Orangeburg County and was raised by a single mother who died when he was just nine years old. By the time he was fifteen, he had worked various jobs, such as picking cotton, working in a sawmill and driving a truck. His health eventually began to fail and during a period of depression, he found what he called a “God-given gift” for woodcarving. A self-taught artist, Miller lived in Orangeburg County until his death in 1991. Miller’s Abraham Lincoln and MLK/RFK/JFK (also referred to in previous exhibition catalogs as Standing Figure and The Kennedys and King) were exhibited in Tree of Life, the 1995 inaugural exhibition of the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, MD.
