The Brown County Art Gallery addition. photo by Cindy Steele
Steve Miller
Brown County Architect
~ by Boris Ladwig
Steve Miller at his studio in Nashville. photo by Boris Ladwig
When Steve Miller graduated from architecture school in 1972, he returned to his native Nashville with the intention of staying for a year, just to reconnect, before moving to Boulder, Colorado, to focus on timber frame design.
At the time, Miller doubted that a town as little as Nashville could provide enough work to support the fledgling architect.
Fifty years later, at age 77, Miller remains as busy as ever, and people who’ ve benefited from his designs say his impact on the community’ s architecture can hardly be overstated, as he has designed anything from public spaces in the center of town to homes that appear to have grown straight out of the county’ s natural beauty.
“ His footprint is all over the town,” said Lyn Letsinger- Miller, president of the Brown County Art Gallery and Museum, the expansion of which Miller designed.
Miller said his career choice and his approach to designing structures have their origins in the arts and sciences to which he was exposed while growing up in Brown County.
As a child, in the 1940s and 1950s, he often peeked over the shoulder of Brown County art colony members, which included his grandfather on his mother’ s side, Dale Bessire.
Miller sat recently in his studio in downtown Nashville and recalled that when he ventured from his childhood home on North Jefferson Street to stroll to Greasy Creek to look for little turtles and snakes, he often walked through the gardens / studios of Brown County
42 Our Brown County • May / June 2022