The Grizzled Wizard: P.R. Miller

This article originally appeared in Akron Life & Leisure's May 2010 issue.

If ever the medium were the message, it’s in the work of P.R. Miller.

Miller, who creates works of art out of "junk" and was practically drummed out of Canal Fulton because the locals didn’t care for his particular brand of recycling, has found a home and success in Akron.

Now comes the self-proclaimed “junkman’s’’ latest in a long (and recent) list of accolades: Miller is Akron Life & Leisure’s 2010 Artist of the Year.

Life hasn’t always been this good for Miller.

He began his career as an actual junkman, then, after taking classes at The University of Akron art department when it was under the direction of Emily Davis, he gradually became a transformer of junk into art, eventually showing his work in 2001 at the Massillon Museum. Several of Miller’s whimsical, outsized sculptures made from heavy industry castoffs were installed both inside the museum and out on its front lawn.

Shortly thereafter, Miller lost his fight to keep his creations at his Canal Fulton home/business. He also lost his marriage of 33 years and his home.

At that time, Miller was still primarily a junkman who made his living hauling discarded scrap, metal and otherwise, to his junkyard where he either sold it to foundries or recyclers or recycled it himself into his trademark sculpture.

But neighbors didn’t like the display his trove manifested and sued to have him removed. And in August 2001 the neighbors got their way.

Miller’s life since can be compared to that of the mythical Sisyphus, pushing a boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down.

Miller, who would probably see himself as more of a Merlin (or in the more recent “Harry Potter” parlance, an Albus Dumbledore), has moved from place to place and created one studio after another only to have to move on when those whom he terms “the muggles’’ weary of the detritus left in the wake of his sculpture.

With the launching of his “company,’’ International Amalgamated Thing Makers, he also became a kind of latter-day Isaiah, using his knowledge of the composition of the industrial waste he had either recycled or reworked into sculptures to warn of the dangers of pollution.

Miller’s environmental proselytizing hasn’t always worked out.

“ It’s totally unreal what’s going on out in the muggle world,’’ he is wont to say. “These muggles have totally screwed it up.’’

“ As a junkman who’s watched what we’ve done to the planet for a long time, I have to tell you, there’s real onerous stuff going on,’’ Miller says. “Look at what’s happening down in West Virginia with mountaintop coal mining. Those people ought to be shot, just on moral principles.”

As usual, Miller’s quips are controversial. When he taught his course at Walsh, the students wrote critiques of his class. “There was absolutely no one in the middle,’’ Miller noted. “It was either this guy is Satan or this guy is the Archangel Gabriel.’’

Miller offers no apologies, however. He says he’s only doing what his mother brought him up to do, clean up after himself. “That’s my whole life,’’ Miller adds. “I stand up for what I believe. If someone tries to knock me down, I pop back up.’’

But the last couple years have been good. He became Stan Hywet’s first artist-in-residence, bought a house, was asked to give presentations and workshops at Mount Union College and Walsh University, has been contracted for three commissions, and in April he led a workshop for the Akron Art Museum’s Teen Council.

“ And now I feel validated,” he says. “I’m not this flaky idiot...well, maybe I am a flaky idiot, but I’m just trying to do some good.’’