ABOUT

Classes/Workshops

Several studios in the building offer classes and workshops: 

• Abrazos Press/Annie Silverman (printmaking) 

• The Fiber Lab/Jodi Colella (mixed media fiber techniques) 

• Katherine Downey Miller (painting)

• Three Ring Binders/Amy Lapidow (hand book binding)

Open Studios

Miller Street has hosted biennial OPEN STUDIO Weekends since 1996, which begins with a Friday evening “After Dark” event of live music, art, and tasty refreshments.  The building is open throughout the weekend for visitors to experience this exciting milieu. 

History

The building at 11 Miller Street was built in 1881 by Miller Brothers & Co. as a coffin factory, suitably located off Beacon Street along the Fitchburg Railway line of the Boston and Maine Railroad (1837).  It was built at a time of significant and stimulating industrial growth in this part of Somerville.  Other nearby industries included a bleachery, dyeworks, glass works, millwork, a bronze smeltery, brass tube works, architectural hardware, and two ice companies.

More than 100 years later, the factory building was transformed into a multi-use space with Cuisine Chez Vous (a catering company), a small Biotech firm, and a few artists’ studios.  The pioneering artists at that time were painter/printmaker, Peggy Badenhausen, and sculptor, Nancy Webb.  The building was further renovated in 2011 to add more studio spaces on the third floor with the departure of the Biotech firm.  In 2021, further renovations on the first floor added Hallie’s Garden, a florist and floral design studio formerly of Huron Village in Cambridge and several large artist studio work spaces.

Former Artists at Miller Street

Karen Aqua - (1954-2011) Internationally recognized and acclaimed animator Karen Aqua’s legacy lives on through her wonderful award-winning films and artwork. Over 100 of Karen’s color pastel drawings have been lovingly framed and 9 are on display at Miller Street.  Much of her work reflected her interest in symbols, mythology, and prehistoric and tribal cultures, and included elements of rhythm, dance, and music. Learn more at karenaqua.com

Peggy Badenhausen - Peggy is one of the original artists of Miller Street Studios who trailblazed the first open studios in 1996 with 15 artists including The Three Ring Binders (Amy Lapidow), Jeannie Redmond, and Kata Hull. After almost 30 years at Miller Street, Peggy returned full time to her Ipswich studio in 2023. She is a painter and printmaker and more recently has been combining her photographs with her monotypes. Although her work is non-representational, current collages reference women’s clothing patterns, landscape, the real and the imaginary. Her work focuses on color and the relationship between geometric structure and the unpredictable.

She has shown work in various galleries and museums in and around Boston, Massachusetts, and is included in numerous corporate and museum collections, as well as in private collections in the United States, Canada, Italy, France and Great Britain. Learn more at www.peggybadenhausen.net

Vicki Citron - For many years, Vicki had her Citronmusic Studio at Miller Street.  Ms. Citron, an avid chamber music player, has taught for over 40 years in after-school music programs, community music schools, and a private Suzuki studio. She is past president of the statewide association of MA Suzuki teachers and families. As the founding Director of Musica Franklin, she is deeply committed to music and social justice. 

Janeann Dill - Janeann is currently working remotely from Miller Street after receiving a statewide, all media, 2023 Mass Arts Individual Recovery Grant. She is a concept-based and research-driven artist, faculty-mentor in higher education, a humanist, painter, author-scholar, and filmmaker. Her work has been primarily exhibited, collected, and acknowledged internationally by museums in Paris , New York, Italy, and Great Britain’s Oxford University Gallery. Earning her MFA at California Institute of the Arts, Janeann was awarded her Doktor der Philosophie at the European Graduate School and Interdisciplinary Institute in Switzerland. Dr. Dill’s dissertation is entitled “Philosophy of Experimental Animation: A Neo-Aesthetic Discipline.” Learn more at www.janeanndill-artist.com

Linda Lichtman - (1941-2021) was an internationally-recognized practitioner of the art of stained and flat glass, primarily for large architectural installations. Her studio contains her archives and will be a future home to aspiring glass artists who are recipients of the Linda Lichtman Fellowship.

Nick Sullivan - studied illustration at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and began working as a freelance illustrator in 2011, doing work for Cross Pens, Zink Imaging, and local periodicals. His art comes from a love of portraiture, caricature, nature, and nostalgia. Nick works primarily from digitally collaged references, hacking together material both found and photographed himself. He left Miller Street in 2023. See instagram @nicksullivanstudio.

Nancy Webb - (1926-2012) was an artistic powerhouse and one of the first artists to occupy a studio at Miller Street.  While Webb created iconic modernist sculptures, she also expressed the sensual and the ephemeral in works figuring the natural world, brimming with both symbolic and earthy meanings.  Webb described her work in 2010 as about “earth, death, with a little bit of eroticism in between.”  Her bronze tiles and bas reliefs of grasshoppers, toads, alewife, snakes, butterflies, earwigs and more have been trod upon by thousands of commuters in Boston’s subway, at the Alewife Station.  Webb’s works can be found in many collections including the Boston Public Library, the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation and the Provincetown Art Association and Museum.

Nyia Yannatos - creates works out of natural and found materials, paper and cardboard. After more than 22 years at Miller Street, she moved out of her studio in 2023. Learn more at www.nyiayannatos.com and instagram: @nyiayannatos.