The artist-roster test: two names the record seats here, one famous near-miss dispelled

the county art record, the society's published collections and the town book's credits, swept whole

The roster is short, and every line of it was earned: the test swept the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center's Indiana Artists index, the county and regional art record, the society's collections as published, and the credits of the town's own books. It seats two artists on this ground, each at record size. Randall James Clark is the roster's standing figure: the Beacher of Michigan City, in its South Shore Arts exhibit notice of 30 January 2014, identifies him as "owner of r j clark studio/gallery in New Carlisle," an artist and educator of more than forty years' work, "most recently at Indiana University-South Bend as gallery director," and "primarily a sculptor, his body of work includes bronze, terra cotta, alabaster, gypsum and leather" — Clark appears in that notice as juror of a regional exhibit, choosing its Best in Show and media awards, which is the working definition of a seated artist: a studio and gallery on this ground, a university gallery directorship behind him, and a region that asks him to judge. No fuller biography — no birth, training or exhibition list — stands in the record reached, and his dates stand as a named gap (GAP-DIGB-41-2a), settler the artist's own gallery record and the IU South Bend Raclin School of the Arts publications, which carry a gallery director Randall Clark guiding student installations as early as the school's 2011 annual. John D. Miller is the roster's second name, at credit size and no larger: he is the illustrator of the town's own book, New Carlisle: The Story of Our Town, 1835–1955 by Marguerite McCord Watt and Kathlyn V. Wade (LaPorte, 1956), whose drawings stand in the banked set as the volume's illustrations. Tested for a standing beyond that credit — in the Indiana Artists index, the county art record and the web record — Miller returns nothing further: no exhibition, no medium, no dates. He prints as what the record proves, an illustrator OF the town book, seated by his credit and by nothing else; enlarging him would be invention. The sweep's third return is a dispelled lead, printed so no later pass seats it: the Indiana Artists index carries "Shaffer, Elizabeth Dodds — New Carlisle — painter," sourced to the Indianapolis Star Magazine of 3 May 1970; the artist's own record places her in New Castle, Indiana — her husband built her penthouse studio in 1956 atop his contracting business there, she founded the Art Association of Henry County in 1965, and her fullest contemporary profile, in Kappa Kappa Gamma's Key of spring 1971, tells the whole career from the New Castle studio. The index's "New Carlisle" is the name-similarity trap this build has met before (Chapman's own printer set "New Castle" for New Carlisle in the schools passage), and Shaffer is Henry County's artist, not this town's. Beyond Clark and Miller's credit, the roster is empty at full search strength — no painter, sculptor, printmaker or photographer of an earlier generation is seated here in any record reached — and the emptiness, with its two proved exceptions and its one proved false lead, is the finding.

Sources:

1. The Beacher (Michigan City), 30 January 2014, South Shore Arts exhibit notice — Randall James Clark, juror; owner of r j clark studio/gallery in New Carlisle; artist and educator of 40+ years; gallery director at Indiana University South Bend; sculptor in bronze, terra cotta, alabaster, gypsum and leather. Read first-hand in the paper's own PDF.
2. Ernestine M. Raclin School of the Arts, IU South Bend, Aspire 2011 — gallery director Randall Clark guiding a student installation; corroboration at annual-publication strength.
3. Watt & Wade, New Carlisle: The Story of Our Town, 1835–1955 (LaPorte, 1956), illustrations by John D. Miller — as cataloged in this build's Sources leg, read in part through a carrier; searches for a further Miller record, November 2026, negative.
4. Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center, Indiana Artists index — the Shaffer entry as indexed ("New Carlisle," ISM, 3 May 1970), tested and dispelled against: Art Association of Henry County, "About Us" (Elizabeth Dodds Shaffer, founder, 1965; the New Castle Art Center); The Key of Kappa Kappa Gamma, Vol. 88 No. 1, spring 1971, "Spotlight on Kappa artists" (the New Castle penthouse studio, 1956; the career whole).