Laurance Miller established the photography program at St. Petersburg Jr. College where he taught photography and art classes for thirteen years before joining the art faculty at Pinellas County Center for the Arts, a college preparatory program for artistically gifted students. While there, he taught art classes for eighteen years, establishing the photography program and teaching Advanced Placement Studio Drawing classes, welded steel sculpture, etc. He has also been a visiting instructor at Hillsborough Community College, Eckerd College, the University of South Florida and Florida Gulf Coast Art Center.
His education includes a BA in Visual Art / Sculpture from the Univ. of South Florida, Periscope Photography School/USN Submarine Service and an MFA in Visual Art / Photography from the Univ. of South Florida. He studied Architecture and photography at the Univ. of Hawaii, participated in Advanced Photography Workshops at UCLA with Robert Heinecken and others and a “Beyond the Zone System” Workshop with Phil Davis. He assisted Lee Friedlander with the printing of “Photographs of Flowers” for Grahpicstudio and printed images for Robert Morris for a sculpture project at Graphicstudio.
He has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards including two Career Development Grants from Pinellas County Arts Council, two Arts for a Complete Education: Teacher Incentive Grants for Public Sculpture from the Florida Department of Education and was selected as Artist in Residence for the City of Clearwater, Florida.
His photographs and sculptures have been shown in both solo and group exhibitions including, “Through the Pinhole” a Photography Exhibition at the Drawing Studio, Tucson, AZ, “From the Classroom to the Studio” at The Arts Center, St. Petersburg, FL, “Tactile Visionaries” through Florida Craftsmen, Inc. Tampa, FL, “Undercurrent / Overview” at the Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL, “All Florida Spring Juried Show” (Best of Show) at The Arts Center, St. Petersburg, FL, , “Uncommon Ground” through the Pinellas County Arts Council, The Florida National at Fla. State University; “Combined Talents”, a Solo Exhibition through the Florida Center for Contemporary Art, Tampa, FL, “Tampa Bay Invitational” through the University of South Florida Museum of Art, a Solo Photography Exhibition at the Florida Gulf Coast Art Center, Invitational Sculpture Exhibition at the Trend House Gallery, Tampa, FL, Invitational Exhibition at the Tampa Museum of Art, “Outrageous Art Exhibition” at Eckerd, College, St. Petersburg, FL, “Recent Acquisitions” at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, a Solo Exhibition at the Deland Museum of Art, Deland, FL, and the “Contemporary Photography Exhibition” at the U. of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska.
His work is in the permanent collections of The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, Nebraska, the University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, the Pinellas County Arts Council, Clearwater, FL, the City of Clearwater Florida and numerous private collections.