Baker Artist Portfolios

 
FRANK W. MILES was born in Warren, Ohio in 1947. At the tender age of two he already displayed a talent for drawing. In school his impressive drawings often gave him an advantage.
 
In the early sixties Frank received 1st Prize for two consecutive years in a drawing contest held by the Baltimore City Health Association, which resulted in a four-year Ford Foundation scholarship to the Maryland Institute College of Art. After one year of study Frank withdrew for financial reasons.
 
Frank’s first one-man exhibition of Lino-prints was held in Baltimore, Maryland in 1965.
 
In 1970 Frank’s lifelong love affair with clay began and, after building salt-glaze and raku kilns, he began to produce ceramic sculpture and pottery, in both hand-built and thrown forms. An exhibit of drawings and sculpture followed at the Ann Hathaway Gallery of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.
 
In 1972 Frank spent the summer in Poros, Greece, where he initiated a program of ceramic courses at the Aegean Institute for Mediterranean Studies, an extension of Tufts University and Hood College. In 1977 he returned to Greece and spent a year drawing and painting.
 
The lure of Greece was so strong for Frank that he moved back there in 1980 and stayed for seven years, learning to speak the language fluently and producing earthenware sculpture and pottery, as well as works on paper. During these years he held several exhibitions of his art in galleries in Athens and Sparta. He also enjoyed the friendship of loyal patrons who regularly visited his studio.
 
Back in the U.S.A. in 1987 Frank built yet another salt-glaze kiln and continued to produce ceramic pottery and sculpture. He exhibited his work in several venues, including the National Museum of Ceramic Art, the Gallery Unicorn and the Mid-Atlantic Crafts Exhibit in Baltimore, and the Aaron and Franz Bader Galleries in Washington, D.C. In 1994 an exhibition of his drawings was held in the Latrobe House Galleries, also in Baltimore.
 
Frank received Shaktipat initiation, a spiritual awakening, from an Indian guru in 1993. The following year he met his future wife, Carol Cavey-Miles.
 
It was in the year 2002 that Frank began to experiment with the art of the comic book and The Living Chronicles of Psychi-Man began to emerge. From November, 2006 to January, 2007 original art from his comic book was exhibited at Eastern Michigan University. The exhibition, entitled “Leapin’ Lizards: Comic Art Returns to EMU”, celebrated the gala opening of the gallery at the university’s new student center. The curator of the exhibit, Professor Richard Rubenfeld, described the story of Frank’s first comic book as “original and compelling” and praised the “strong lines and rhythms” of its images.
 
After the four years it took to complete both comic books, Frank was ready to move on from the comic genre. Picasso once said in a film, “Let’s do colour now. It’s more fun!” Frank was listening and moved into painting with a bang.
 
The large acrylic on canvas paintings he has produced from 2009 to the present have, in Frank’s own words, “allowed an inward nosedive that has released inspirational floodgates. These works are created in a state of full surrender, in the form of symbols indicated by the mandala process.”
 
He goes on to describe the process of painting that requires “a prolonged relationship and absolute devotion. The images for the paintings arise spontaneously with as little intellectual intervention as possible. Each painting writes its own story which reveals itself through the symbols portrayed. Myth is created by this process from the matter of inspiration.”
 
Frank Miles is currently working on the 19th of this series of paintings. He and his wife reside in Hampstead, Maryland.