Nina Schatzkamer Miller

Kiln Fired Glass

Olivette, MO

Nina Schatzkamer Miller makes brightly colored kiln-fired glass art. Sheets of glass are cut, shaped and fired in her home studio kiln and made into many different objects. Most of it is functional art such as platters, bowls and plates; some is wearable, like jewelry and hair accessories; other pieces are purely decorative or whimsical.

Miller grew up in Olivette, where she has returned in recent years. Following an early interest in music and art, playing all of the stringed instruments and taking art classes where she only wanted to create horses in every art form, she studied Romance Languages and graduated from Washington University. She worked in the computerized ticketing industry until she stepped away from the corporate world to raise her three sons.

Miller returned to art as both a hobby and as a way to volunteer at her sons’ schools. She sewed costumes, made classroom auction projects, often quilts, and then one special volunteer duty making birthday gifts for teachers each year presented the challenge of learning to make fused glass. She studied glass fusing at Glasshopper, Art Glass Array and Craft Alliance. As a quilter she’d been drawn to the puzzle of putting different colors and fabrics together and this translated well to glass. These days her quilt patterns are made of glass. One of those pieces was featured on KSDK-TV in a feature about a show in Chesterfield in November 2015.

She was the subject of a Belleville News Democrat story in August 2015 just prior to participating in a show there. She had two pieces accepted to an exhibit at Craft Alliance in the summer of 2014. Her work has been juried into many local and regional art shows in the past few years and she’s sold work in several local galleries. Select pieces are available online at Amazon Handmade, and additionally she sells work at shows and on commission. In 2017, her work was featured in the Knox Gallery of Fine Art in Richmond Heights. She was the subject of the Ladue News feature “Art and Soul” in June 2017. Presently you can find her glass at Fine Art of Missouri in Chesterfield Mall, Artisans in the Loop in University City, The Artist Shop in Jacoby Arts Center in Alton, IL or by appointment for commissions.

In addition to her work with glass, she’s the author of The Storytime Handbook, published in 2014, which followed her tenure as the Children’s Area Specialist at Borders Books in Creve Coeur. She’s published stories in the Chicken Soup for the Soul series of books and is now working on a novel.

Her current volunteer work is serving as Vice President of Development and Outreach on the board of directors of The Gateway Festival Orchestra, a professional symphony orchestra that performs free outdoor concerts in the summertime; an organization established in 1964 with her father as one its founders. The orchestra donors benefit from gifts of her glass each year.

Miller, who is married to Illinois Supreme Court Senior Attorney B. Stephen Miller, III, lives in Olivette. Their son Alexander is a lawyer who lives in Washington, D.C., and their other son Andrew is a medical school student in Ponce, Puerto Rico and, finally, Austin, who is student at Purdue University at West Lafayette, Indiana are the best things she ever created.