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Art, history led Millers to West Amana
Art gallery celebrates 25 years in historic church
Southeast Iowa Union offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
WEST AMANA — Michele Maring Miller Art Gallery celebrated its 25th anniversary in West Amana with an open house in December, though Michele Miller has been “capturing the beauty of the Amana Colonies for over 50 years,” according to the gallery’s brochure.
The gallery is located in a historic 1871 church building at 611 F St. in West Amana and is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday through Sunday and by appointment.
“If someone wants to [stop by], we will gladly unlock the door,” said Michele. The phone number is on the side of the building.
Miller sells prints and original works of art online as well, at maringmillergallery.com.
The artist
“We started here 25 years ago,” said Michele as she sat in front of an easel finishing a painting last week in her studio. She and David, her husband of 54 years, moved from Waterloo where they met while teaching. She taught art. He taught history.
Art and history brought them to the Amana Colonies.
Amana had been a family meeting place between Waterloo and Iowa City for Michele’s family, she said. In the 1970s she visited Amana to paint, staying in a local hotel.
“We came here constantly,” said David. When they attended art shows, Michele’s paintings of the Amana Colonies were their best sellers, he said.
They decided 25 years ago to spend their retirement there.
Both of Michele’s parents were artists, she said, and they encouraged her love of art by taking her to art shows and museums.
“They bought me books and supplies,” Michele says on her website. “They set up a studio for me in the basement. It was a wonderful place behind the warm furnace. It had a big overstuffed chair for reading and a drafting table fashioned from an old bed.”
Michele has, in the gallery, a mother-and-child portrait she painted when she was 13 or 14 years old while studying Picasso.
She has been painting professionally since the early 1970s.
Michele works mainly in watercolor but she also creates in oil, pastels and ink. She has three stations set up along one wall of the gallery, each in a different medium. She creates more than 100 paintings a year, “so I’m in here all year,” she said.
“I might work here all night,” said Michele, and because she lives there, she can work in her pajamas if she wants to.
Her painting accoutrements include an easel her father built for her when she was a teenager, a desk made of a trunk her grandparents brought with them from Germany and a paint box given to a friend by Iowa artist Grant Wood.
Michele keeps a sketchbook for each town in which she sketches and for different countries she and David have visited. She sketches at least 15 minutes a day to maintain her skills, she said.
“I don’t paint from photos,” said Michele. She does field painting and sometimes she paints from her sketches.
“Most of the ideas are in my head … or in my drawings,” Michele said. “And my head is just bursting.”
Michelle doesn’t have a favorite subject, she said. She paints flowers, people, landscapes and buildings. “I see them completed before I begin.”
She dreams about painting or cooking, said David. (”I’m passionate about cooking too,” said Michele.) Sometimes she describes a painting to David, but it doesn’t exist because she painted it in a dream.
The church
The Millers are preservationists and have been restoring the church that is their home for 25 years.
The last church service there was in 1972, said David.
A Cedar Rapids doctor bought the building and started to repair it, said Michele, before selling it to the Millers.
“And there were trees inside, and animals,” Michele said.
The church was built with sandstone from the area, said David. “They took their time. [They] made it look good.”
The ceiling is 12 feet high, 14 feet at its peak, and has 16-inch beams, said Michele
The building has 9,000 square feet on three levels. The gallery is 35 feet by 59 feet, David said.
“We bought this place because of the windows,” said Michele. The north windows have the best light for painting. “That is the light that never changes,” Michele said.
The couple lives in the caretaker’s apartment and the church offices. They have a sitting room at the back of the art gallery which still displayed a large, decorated Christmas tree in early January. The family opens Christmas presents there, said David.
On the back wall are paintings that are not for sale — favorites and award winners.
The gallery
Most of the artwork in the gallery was created by Michele, though it also sells photos taken by David. “I have two daughters that display here, and my granddaughters are welcome to show here,” said Michele.
David takes care of matting and framing and deals with the business side of the operation, said Michele. She just paints.
The couple also sells antiques at the gallery.
In 2010, the Millers bought a building in Amana next to the Ox Yoke Inn as a second gallery. That was busy location, said Michele, but during COVID, the couple had to sell it.
“Most of the people who come here are interested in art,” said Michele. The art museum in Chicago once took a busload of people to the gallery. That was the most they’ve ever sold in a 20-minute period, said David.
Though Michele eventually retired from teaching, she sees no reason to retire her creative talent. She’s going to paint as long as she lives, she said.
