Dr. Betty G. Miller, who resides in Washington, DC, was born to Deaf parents in Chicago, IL.  She is a well-known professional Deaf Artist who taught art at Gallaudet University for 18 years.  She left Gallaudet in 1977 to co-found Spectrum, Focus on Deaf Artists.  In 1986, she was an Artist-In-Residence at the Model Secondary School for the Deaf (MSSD) in Washington, DC.

Dr. Miller has participated in numerous art shows in Washington DC, Maryland, Texas, California and Massachusetts.  She is primarily known for her visual representation of her Deaf experience, some of which has been published in "Deaf Heritage" by Jack Gannon (1980).  Her first one-woman show depicting the Deaf experience and entitled "The Silent World" was held at Gallaudet College, where she was an Art professor, in 1972.  In the eighties and nineties, she continued with her one-woman and group art shows, on the theme, "The Deaf Experience" in Takoma Park, MD in 1989, at Gallaudet University, in 1989, 1990, and 1992; and in the Capitol Hill area in Washington, DC, and in Chicago, IL, 1992 and 1993.  Dr. Miller's artworks also appeared with those of eight other Deaf artists in a first of its kind art show of works relating the Deaf experience at Northern Essex Community College, Haverhill, MA, in September, 1993.

Dr. Miller has become increasingly interested in neon as a medium for her artwork.  In 1996 she completed a 16' x 6' neon work commissioned by the North Carolina Arts Council for the recreation center at the Eastern North Carolina School for the Deaf, Wilson, NC.  1998 saw the completion of neon artwork commissioned by a deaf couple for their home.  Her most recent exhibits, in April and May of 1999, were at the Deaf Studies VI Conference in Oakland, CA, and at the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression in Charlottesville, VA.

Among her influences she cites her father, the Deaf artist Ralph R. Miller, Sr.; one of her art education professors (also an artist) at Pennsylvania State University; and Nancy Creighton, another deaf artist who "also inspired me in the past ten years."

Artist's Statement

"Much of my work depicts the Deaf experience expressed in the most appropriate form of communication: visual art.  I present both the suppression, and the beauty of Deaf Culture and American Sign Language as I see it; in the past, and in the present.  I hope this work, and the understanding that may arise from this visual expression, will help bridge the gap between the Deaf world, and the hearing world."

The artist's webpage is at:  http://hometown.aol.com/betgmiller