Norma Miller: The Passing of a Legend

Norma Miller
December 2, 1919 – May 5, 2019

It is with sadness I heard today, May 5th, of the passing of a legend and my friend Norma Miller at age 99. I first met Norma when I started learning Lindy Hop in the mid 1990s, along with Lindy Hop pioneer Frankie Manning, a fellow member of the Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers troupe that wowed the world in the early 1940s and appeared in the famous dance scene of the film Helzapoppin’. Norma, knownas the Queen of Swing, was a source of seemingly unlimited energy, humor and enthusiasm! In her ’90s she still danced, taught, performed and inspired thousands of dancers around the world, most recently in San Francisco. Her life story is quite amazing and worth reading about. I created this collage portrait on the occasion of her for her 91st birthday in 2010. It was presented to her at a swing event in San Francisco organized by Burnie Gibson. You can see her reaction on first seeing the portrait in the video below.

She will be greatly missed. Her positive spirit and energy will last forever…

If you’re interested to see other related artworks, please visit my portraits of Frankie, Chazz and Dawn, plus my Happy Feet, Happy Paint performance video. I used the creation of this collage portrait of Norma as a case study in my video tutorial series titled Collage Portrait of Norma Miller on PaintboxTV.