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Just regular folk: R.A. Miller at 100
East Hall artist called his creations junk; art world begs to differ
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One of the large pieces of folk art in the R.A. Miller display at the Quinlan Visual Arts Center. - photo by Tom Reed
Reuben Aaron Miller, better known as R.A., was a simple man. He was born in the East Hall County Rabbittown community in 1912, the youngest of eight siblings. When he left school at age 12 to work in a cotton mill, no one expected him to become a world renowned artist whose influence would spill across generations and the globe. “‘Don’t know how I come to do it,’” documentarian Bryan Dodd remembers Miller saying during an interview. “‘Reckon God wanted me to do it.’” Miller died in 2006.