VERO BEACH, FL.- Get ready to feast your eyes on more than 40 large-scale glass sculptures comprising hundreds of individually molded and blown glass components artfully designed and playfully assembled by glass artist John Miller as Vero Beach Museum of Art presents Roadside Reverie: Glass Works by John Miller. The exhibition marks the artist’s largest solo museum exhibition to date. It is VBMA’s first solo glass exhibition in nearly a decade and the first organized for the Museum by Chief Curator Caitlin Swindell.

Roadside Reverie spans four of Miller’s artistic series: “Hot Stuff,” “The Blue Plate Special,” “Do Not Duplicate,” and “Classic Heat”—created from 2008 to 2024. The artworks reflect his fascination with and personal connection to American automotive and food culture and the Pop Art movement of the 1960s. Drawing inspiration from prominent Pop Art figures like Claes Oldenburg, Miller imbues his contemporary pieces with reverence and humor, evoking nostalgia and joy in visitors.

An instrumental work shown for the first time is Miller’s V-ATE, 2024, which cleverly references V8 engines. This piece combines select glass works by Miller integrated within a site-specific installation of a 1954 Ford Mainline. The inclusion of this artwork marks the first time that Miller has exhibited a mixed-media installation of this scale in a museum or gallery.

“V-ATE serves as a significant focal point in Roadside Reverie, merging two thematic groupings of Miller’s artworks included in the exhibition,” said VBMA Chief Curator Caitlin Swindell. “One body of work focuses on car culture, including hood ornaments, car keys, and tools, while the other features diner food such as hamburgers, fries, condiments, and other diner fare and accoutrements—all made from glass.”

Roadside Reverie: Glass Works by John Miller is organized by the Vero Beach Museum of Art and features select loans from the Tacoma Museum of Glass.

Artist John Miller has been working in glass for more than 30 years. He currently serves as an Associate Professor of Glass at Illinois State University. He earned his M.F.A. in Sculpture from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and worked for over 10 years at the renowned Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, WA, founded in 1971 by artist Dale Chihuly.

Regarded as one of the most esteemed centers worldwide for artists specializing in glass, Pilchuck enabled Miller to create in various roles as an artist, technician, coordinator, gaffer, and instructor. At Pilchuck, he worked with and alongside Dale Chihuly, William Morris, Dante Marioni, Judy Pfaff, and Kiki Smith among other artists. Miller’s oeuvre includes representational works, as seen in this exhibition, and abstracted vessels that push the boundaries of material interventions with glass. In his “Ribcage” series of colorful vessels, he explored how texture can form by utilizing copper wire with the amorphous material of glass.

Miller’s artworks are included in the permanent collections of several museums, including the Museum of Arts and Design New York, the Corning Museum of Glass, the Chrysler Museum of Art (Norfolk, VA), the Mobile Museum of Art, the Tacoma Museum of Glass, the Museum of American Glass (Millville, NJ) the Lowe Art Museum (University of Miami), and LeMay—America’s Car Museum.