BMA 1988.3

Jungle Chest has two black antelopes outlined in pink gamboling about on a yellow field, bordered on each side by a white grid pattern on red. Below, two elephants, each set against a bright red oval, stand guard over the drawers, which can be opened by pulling the golden handles on the elephants' ears. The black feet of the chest sport red toenails.

"He takes the forlorn and makes it cheery," said one art critic of Miller's work. Another simply calls it "furniture with a smile." Miller explains his approach by saying, "A lot of my objects become personalities, rather than just chairs or tables. I think things should be friendly, not menacing or overpowering."

The playfulness of Miller's furniture is due in large part to his bright colors and lively patterns. Virtually every surface is covered with spots and dots, squiggles and swirls, dashes and wavy lines. Far from being chaotic, the effect is very orderly with each type of decoration keeping to its proper place as defined by the structure of the chest.

The bright yellow legs are speckled with red and black dots packed densely together on the legs and spreading further apart on the horizontal crosspieces. The dots shift their color to red and white on the green background of the chest's "apron." Along the sides and across the top, long yellow brushstrokes swish across the red background like the swishing tails of exotic beasts. In the space between the two drawers, five yellow snake-like forms wriggle their way across a bright red rectangle.

Miller's "Afro-Deco" style, as he calls it, expressed his personal daydreams. "I sort of live out my exotic daydreams in my art. And I always go somewhere warm, terribly tropical, especially when it's 14 degrees outside!" He rarely sketches his plans ahead of time.

When Miller was a boy, he was used to seeing his grandparents repaint their furniture as part of their spring cleaning.

"A lot of times if you couldn't get anything new, you painted," he said. Enamel was fairly cheap. I remember my grandmother had a lot of painted furniture in her house. My grandfather was a housepainter, and every couple of years he would paint the table, or paint the chairs."

Tom Miller had many years of experience as a conventional painter on canvas before he started painting on furniture. He majored in commercial art at Carver Vocational High School in Baltimore, then earned a scholarship to The Maryland Institute, College of Art. After graduating in 1967 with a degree in fine arts, he became an art teacher in the Baltimore City Public Schools.

As a teacher, Miller realized that using "found materials" was often a good solution to the problem of never having enough materials and supplies to offer his students. Not only were "found materials" free, but they also encouraged him and his students to be innovative and experimental. After eighteen years of teaching, Miller was able to return to the Maryland Institute as a graduate student to continue his own training. People began to buy his painted furniture and art galleries showed his work. "Every time I sell a painting or do one to my satisfaction, it's like dunking a basket," he said.

When The Baltimore Museum of Art included a number of pieces of Miller's painted furniture in an exhibition in 1988, he realized how far he had come.

"Before going to college, I had never gone to a museum or had the concept of what a gallery was.... I never in my wildest dreams thought that I'd be showing at the museum. It shows young and minority artists that it really can happen."