Miller Captures Forgotten Laguna
“Lunch at the Senior Center, Laguna,” Dec. 25, 1997, Douglas Miller. That was the old senior center at Legion Hall, and I bought Doug’s painting because it was such an atypical view of Laguna, something from real life. The balding head in the foreground, the clutter of chairs and people facing all different directions. The inkling that perhaps the food was not all that delicious, but still, all had come together for this social ritual.
Jason Blalock’s film, “Sawdust and Sand,” shown at the Art Museum just before Christmas warmly depicts Miller’s insight into the soul of Laguna Beach. Doug told how he wanted to capture images that represent fleeting moments in time–the naïve enthusiasm of the early years of the Sawdust, those summer beach smiles of children who are now adults with their own kids. He waits for the second after someone is posing with their most beautiful photogenic look. “I want to catch that moment when their true self is showing,” he explained.
He saw the vulnerability of things that to us looked like they would always be there—the alley sign for the Forest Market, for example. (Now it’s no longer even a market, it’s the trendy 230 Forest Restaurant. Only the wood front doors remain.) He knew when no one else did that some day these poignant references to another era, another feeling, would not be here any more. His photographs bring those memories and feelings back.
He has taken over 750,000 photographs since 1967 and has an archive of 350,000 black and whites housed in bins of proof sheets. The photographs are accompanied by notebooks in which he has recorded time, names and place, mostly in Laguna. Without the notes, he says, the photographs are meaningless. The complete documentation is what makes them valuable in his eyes. The same with the 12,000 paintings he has created by painting every day since 1994. Along with his signature, each one has a date, subject matter and a reference number on the back. Mine is 574-97. He also tracks the buyers of each of the 10,000 paintings he has sold. Most of these are 6 x 8 inch canvasses, but then there are the large birthday paintings with names and birthdates for thousands of people painted carefully within colorful patterns. At a distance it looks like a textured fabric, but up close we see another method of his documentation of life. It’s like a joyful cemetery with no ending dates.
He is continually striving to find ways to grab and keep what is inexorably transitioning into something else.
Then there’s his music. We find him and his violin—with “Moon Police” (Sasha Evans, Grace Freeman and Brent Samson) at the South Laguna Community Garden Park event at The Ranch, in front of the Presbyterian Church on Hospitality Night, and playing carols at the Congregational Church. He’s not only recording Laguna but he’s a vital and inspiring part of this community he loves.
How do we make life meaningful? How do we capture what we so treasure? Miller seems to have found so many ways.
Blalock’s artistry has subtly presented Doug, Laguna and our shared dilemma so that we are not only appreciative, but inspired. As Herb Rabe commented on a Facebook post, “There are only a few truly remarkable experiences in life. The tribute to Doug Miller, a special person, was one of those nights. It is Laguna!
Landscape architect Ann Christoph is a former city council member.
