Age: 23 • Lives and creates: Cleveland • Learned: BFA in painting and sculpture + expanded media from the Cleveland Institute of Art
Story by Amanda Koehn
Crystal Miller’s sparkling, bejeweled and large mixed-media creations – which can capture a viewer’s attention from across a gallery – are known for their polished details as much as their attention-grabbing brightness.
She’ll often start with a magazine fashion photo, from which she uses the Procreate digital illustration app to sketch what will become a painting that skillfully incorporates mixed-media details. Inspired by retro fashion, afrofuturism and drag, Miller typically chooses Black or brown models.
“Kind of my whole premise of my work is to create a world for Black and brown people that they can feel safe in and can express themselves in,” she tells Canvas. “A lot of my work is centered around afrofuturism. When I recreate those images, I’m thinking about very eccentric hairstyles. I’m thinking about how can I include afrocentricity into this – that could be amplifying the jewelry that they wear, amplifying their nails.”
Miller grew up in Sturgis, Mich., and she first learned creative skills from family. Her father, who is Black, would draw comics and action figures, while her mother’s side of the family is Amish and taught Miller more domestic art forms like sewing and crocheting. She says these early experiences taught her about the intimacy involved and value in taking your time to make something.
“I’ve always known from a young age that I was going to be doing something art related, and I’ve never thought about anything else,” she says.
She first earned her associate degree in design from Glen Oaks Community College in Michigan, which she entered through a dual enrollment program while in high school. She then matriculated to the Cleveland Institute of Art. After loving classes in painting and sculpture, she pursued both majors, she says.
During her college years she began talking with her teachers and peers about how her work could contribute to creating a safe place for Black and brown people, Miller says. It was during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement and seeing all the violence toward people of color, she thought, “God, I wish there was a place for us to just live freely without any violence or prejudice,” she says.
Those ideas led her to afrofuturism, an aesthetic movement focused on the intersection of the Black Diaspora culture and science and technology. But instead of honing in on sci-fi and tech, she draws inspiration from fashion and music.
Feminine clothes and accessories, extravagant nails and jewelry, music by artists like Janelle Monáe and Childish Gambino, and films like “Black Panther” contribute to Miller’s vision. Some artists she considers inspirations are Mickalene Thomas, also a mixed-media artist and painter; mixed-media artist Devan Shimoyama; and fiber artist Bisa Butler.
“A lot of the colors I use are very bright – they’re kind of like in your face,” Miller says. “I think a lot about the undertones of Black skin, so I take the undertones and then I exaggerate the undertones. So let’s say like for me, my undertones are very red and orange. So if I were to paint myself, I would probably use a variety of reds, kind of burgundy and then all the way up to an orange or a vibrant neon orange.”
Adding materials to her painted canvas is the “fun part,” she adds. With an arsenal of accents like rhinestones, glitter, tulle, foam to create hairstyles, ribbon and beyond, Miller says she likes to use feminine and in-your-face details. Her pieces are usually quite large, and seeing them up close, you get the idea that they would be gratifying to create. You may feel sensory satisfaction as power and glamour radiates from the subjects.
“I also work very intuitively, I think,” she says. “I still plan a lot of stuff, but when it comes to what materials to choose, it’s kind of just like how I’m feeling.”
While at CIA, Miller had a solo exhibition there, “We Belong in the Future,” which connected Black feminine beauty with afrofuturism. She received an Urgent Art Fund grant from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture, administered by SPACES, for that show, and also was part of several group shows at CIA.
However, Miller says she was challenged by the fast pace required to create work in college. She wanted to put her all into every piece, and struggled with burnout.
“I’m not good with having to work fast. I work very slow,” she says, adding having high expectations for her work is good because she knows she’s capable of meeting those standards, but can also be harmful for her mental health.
After graduating from CIA in May, she says she’s looking forward to making work she’s even more proud of. Some of her recent accomplishments include having her artwork on the cover of CAN Journal’s fall 2023 issue, a solo show titled “DRMWRLD” at Maria Neil Art Project in the Waterloo Arts District of Cleveland this fall, and more shows being planned into 2025 (with details to come).
She’s also been selling her work, which is exciting, she says. And pursuing artist residencies and searching for an art-related job to supplement her income, Miller is looking ahead.
“I’m also heavily working on a new body of work and I think it’s going to be so much better than the work I already have now,” she says. “I think it’s just more me. I think the work before is obviously me, but it’s even more me. It’s more amplified, it’s more feminine, it’s more eccentric, it’s more dramatic, and those are all the things that I want. I’m also going bigger.”
See more at @crymuseum.
“Crystal’s paintings can’t be photographed, not really, not in a way that shows them for what they are. You have to stand in front of them. She has an incredible instinct for what goes where and especially for how image and surface talk to one another. Her paintings are luxurious, indulgent, fantastical, escapist. … Everything in her work is transformed, glitter and rhinestones become more precious than diamonds. But most importantly they are beautiful. I always understand beauty as advocating for something. Beauty lures you in and holds you there. I think Plato was right, beauty is a kind of door to love.”
Lane Cooper, associate professor of painting, Cleveland Institute of Art
