Tom Miller (performance artist)

Tom Miller (born October 5, 1965 in Hialeah, Florida), is an American writer, film director, artist, painter, musician, actor, poet, and performance artist.

Early life

Miller was adopted by Nathan Anderson Miller and Alfreda Rowena Reed Miller and lived with his aunt, Alice Miriam Reed, who worked as a piano teacher.

Miller showed interest in playing the piano starting at age three and at the age of 15 he enrolled in an acting school run by Ruth Foreman, Florida's "First Lady of Theater". He worked there as an actor and sound and light technician for five years and appeared in several TV commercials and locally produced television programs.

Miller was inspired to learn to play the bass guitar and record his own songs after listening to bassist Paul McCartney. He recorded a 45 rpm record called “The Underground” at a recording studio when he was 15 years old. During his high school studies, Miller met Charles McWhorter and they began writing and recording songs together. They were joined later by guitarist John Williford and formed the Miami band, Penguin. Over a ten-year period, the band in its various iterations recorded and released five albums. After Penguin, Miller co-founded the band Middle Earth with school friend Don Traub. Middle Earth rehearsed for two years, played only two shows and then disbanded.

Career

Miller began his career in Gainesville, Florida, in 1984. He performed in the bands Plastic Age, Middle Earth, Penguin, NDolphin, Bill Perry Orchestra, The Space Masons, and Chicago's Vini and the Demons as the bass player. He is the author of 45 chapbooks, and has over 50 CDs to his credit. His poetry has been published in many small press periodicals including Ploplop, Abbey, Poetry Motel, Moon and Jim Chandler's Thunder Sandwich. His most recent written work, titled Project r, explores the concept of reality using a mixture of Miller's stories, poems, articles and blogs and has some autobiographical content.

Miller is the writer and director of more than 100 independent video films. He is also known for stunts including a naked press conference, a 17-hour reading of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and frequent UFO secrecy protests. In 2010 he produced a 30-hour marathon to raise awareness of Transcendental Meditation with an extended showing of the TV series Twin Peaks. In 2016, Miller stared for two hours at a photograph of Presidential Candidate Ted Cruz's Mouth, as reported in the Huffington Post's News of the Weird. Miller has painted portraits of many Gainesville celebrities and public figures, including mayor Pegeen Hanrahan, former Gainesville Mayor Craig Lowe, former Gainesville chief of police Wayland Clifton, hemp activist and former candidate for Florida governor Michael Geison, and Gainesville's house drag queen at The University Club, The Lady Pearl.

Miller was a candidate for the Gainesville City Commission in 1995. He was the host of Gainesville's HempFests, and was a plaintiff among several organizers in a 1995 First Amendment lawsuit which the city lost, both on its initial filing and on appeal. Miller's avant-garde variety show, The Tom Miller Show, has been a staple of entertainment in Gainesville from 1984 to the present.

Miller has received significant press coverage for his writings, artworks, performances, and activism in Gainesville over the last two decades. He continues touring with live performance art shows, poetry readings, videography, and currently performs on electric bass with various groups.