Darren Miller spent much of his life forming a belief system and honing skills that prepared him to be the sculptor he is today. Christian Scientist, table saw builder, entrepreneur and artist, Miller has drawn upon his many life experiences to create the curving lines of the metal pieces that must, as he says, each have their own essence.

Miller grew up in Springfield, in a home where both parents were well acquainted with the arts. His mother enjoyed using her hands for crafts projects, and his father wrote big band tunes and ballads.

"I wasn't particularly exposed to the arts that way, though," said Miller. "I would say that my own interest in the arts started with one interesting aspect of the way I grew up, in an environment of dematerialization-removing art from actually being an object and moving it towards being a concept or idea."

Miller was also raised as a Christian Scientist. As he observed the world, he always looked for the spiritual aspect of a person, object or even a moment of time.

"These ideas caused me from early on to examine the way I looked at the world," he said. "My friends have been people who question reality, the way things are."

As young as 8-years-of-age, Miller began talking with his friends about the value systems.

"I can remember talking with a friend about religion, and right off the bat we began having conversations about what being a Christian Scientist was all about and what his purposes were as well, as a Catholic. All religions have that same basic concept, all of the ramifications of spirituality, hope, faith, love, innocence, wisdom."

It was in an eighth-grade art class that Miller had his "ah-ha" moment. After working on nothing more than a simple papier mache teddy bear, he discovered he enjoyed the creative process so much that he wanted to do it in some form for his life's work.

"Something about the whole process was incredibly intriguing to me," he said. "I went on to dabble in writing and read a book a week for about 10 years. Shortly after college, I began to fill books with pen and ink drawings. Today, I can see in them the formative process, for that purpose is being fulfilled now, with the lines of the pen represented accurately in scale or appearance in the steel that I produce my work with now."

Despite his passion for creating art, Miller says that when he grew up, he didn't envision making a living at it. He went to Principia College in Elsah, Illinois, a liberal arts school for Christian Scientists, where he began his education to be a history teacher. As one who loved to interpret the facts and communicate the philosophy behind them, Miller loved the idea of being a teacher. But then, as he said, life happened to him, and he was never able to complete his education.

"My dad had a manufacturing business that burned to the ground, so I dropped out of college to rebuild that business," he said. "We pulled everything we could out of the ashes and needed to buy a few new pieces of equipment. My brother Terry worked with me for about a year, and then he had to move on."

It took about 10 years during the 1980's and into the 1990's to rebuild the company, which manufactured table saws for the hobby industry. In the midst of it all, another catastrophic fire took place in which the roof of the building was burned, and the two years it took to replace it slowed the entire process.

"I still make table saws, actually," he said. "And no, I don't enjoy it."

But he doesn't resent the experience itself.

"I did resent the fact that I was not more assertive about accomplishing my goals, but I don't resent that time," he said. "It had a huge impact on my capacity now to produce things. I really did rebuild a business out of the ashes without a lot of help…. I developed an intimate knowledge of tooling and machine tools, and it was a great benefit to become so familiar with what went into making them."

Once the business was back on its feet, thanks to his sister Fede's encouragement, Miller began using his skills and knowledge to try to make a living as a sculptor.

"She saw my drawings and ideas and capacity to create things," said Miller.

So, in 2003, he began with a few small-scale pieces that he sold through The Apple Barn Orchard Store in Chatham. When most of those pieces sold, he continued to send the store his Prairie Ornamentals, as he calls his wrought-iron abstract creations, including plant stands, wall hangings, sculptures and furniture. Happily, all of those subsequent pieces have sold.

In 2004, a relationship brought about a move to Decatur, where he now creates commissioned work and pieces for juried fine arts shows. He has found Decatur to be incredibly supportive of the arts, thanks to Gallery 510 and the Decatur Area Arts Council.

Today, along with The Apple Barn, Miller's work appears at Decatur's Backyards A Bloomin', Betty and Bob's Flower Shop, The Garden Path, Novel Ideas and his own store, Divine Designs, as well as at locations in Clinton, Springfield, Peoria and Salisbury.

"In six years, my business has grown to the point where it's how I make most of my money. My skills with every piece continue to improve, and my goal is to never let up the effort to improve, to constantly be moving forward," he said. "My background in manufacturing played a huge role in my abilities to create this work, but I can always improve. The realization of presenting an object now more closely matches what's in my head, but the ability to make metal objects look like the drawings I've produced is not a simple thing."

For Miller, his art continues to be not only about translating a drawing into a three-dimensional work of art, but about ensuring that each sculpture makes a unique statement.

"From the beginning, my motive was to create objects with their own essence, and the more I do, the more I realize…that there's a lot to say," he said. "It's about creating an object that is complete and has its own presence without representing anything."