The Crowell Public Library will present a rotating exhibit of the work of San Marino resident Charlotte Miller, a local artist and writer, from January 11 through March 31, 2020. The works will appear in the Trustees Display Case, which is located in the lobby adjacent to the Barth Community Meeting Room.
Miller’s art has been exhibited in special showings at the Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. and the gallery at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, Virginia; published in Lark Books’ Five Hundred Beaded Objects, and in multiple editions of Bead & Button and Bead Dreams magazines. She has also donated her work for fundraising events at the Los Angeles Zoo, the San Diego Zoo, and the recent Delicious Destinations fundraising event at the Crowell Public Library.
Miller didn’t set out to be an artist, but after a cross-country publisher’s promotional tour for her first book, she experienced writer’s block. To work through it, Miller took a class at UCLA called ‘Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.’ Not only did she overcome the block, she discovered her own artistic talent in a variety of media, among them, casting sculptures in bronze, paper, cement or clay; twisting and combining sterling silver wire with beads to create tableaux featuring humans, animals and vegetation; designing and producing unique jewelry; inventing a three-dimensional collage process; painting real or fanciful faces on river rocks and hand-braiding pure wool rugs from scratch in what is fast becoming a lost-art technique.
Though Miller has been successful as a multimedia visual artist, she is also an accomplished writer. While still a young housewife in Boston, she began writing comedy for Phyllis Diller and Shari Lewis, created the Temper Tantrum song and dance for Decca Records, reported women’s news for WNAC-TV in Boston and wrote a television special starring Mrs. Elva Miller—who is of no relation and famous for her unintentionally comedic, off-key recording of Nancy Sinatra’s hit These Boots Are Made for Walkin.’ She moved to Los Angeles to write Mrs. Miller’s live act at the world famous Cocoanut Grove and remained on the West Coast to become the talent coordinator of the Joey Bishop Show on ABC, discovering and booking then-unknown Glen Campbell when he was appearing at the Hollywood Palladium, who at the time was anonymously billed on the marquee among “…and many others”.
That appearance launched Glen to overnight stardom and he took Charlotte with him as his assistant on The Glen Campbell Good time Hour. She later became the executive assistant to the producers of The Andy Williams Show and The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, but she spent nights and weekends writing her first novel, A Life of My Own, on a manual typewriter at her kitchen table. It took three years to complete and was sold to Dell Publishing over a weekend. As a result, Bantam Books commissioned her to novelize the screenplay of the movie, Claudine, which starred James Earl Jones and Diahann Carroll. Subsequently, Charlotte wrote her own screenplays on assignments for Columbia Studios, Universal Pictures, and television shows for ABC and CBS.
“Having been a Los Angeles resident for many years, San Marino is a revelation,” Miller said. “Warm and welcoming, but non-intrusive. The perfect environment for an artist.”
Miller is currently completing her next novel.
