Jill Orlov

About the Artist

As a formally trained architect, Jill Orlov sculpts real and imaginary spaces into miniature tableaus incorporating found objects, heavily researched and often with historic backstories, made of steel, brass, and sterling silver using welding and silver soldering techniques. Her inspirations range from recreations of archetypal interior spaces such as within literature and film to historic and justice related issues that keep repeating and continue to influence society today. Group shows include The National Building Museum exhibit Small Stories, the American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM), New York Studio School, Fuller Craft Museum, School 33 and Towson University’s Center for the Arts Gallery in which she was the keynote speaker. Solo exhibits include galleries in the Hudson River Valley; the Museum of Miniatures in Tucson, Arizona; and the Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower in Baltimore. Her work has been written about in MarthaStewart.com, Baltimore Style Magazine, JMore Magazine, and Voyages Baltimore. She has been asked to give an Artist’s Talk and Workshop and exhibit in early 2025 at the Central Branch of Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library. The talk will be held in the Poe Room. One custom commission included redesigning and fabricating 62 miniature framed album awards for music producer, benny blanco. Rather than have the Recording Industry Association of America make the standard full-scale gold and platinum album awards, blanco thought it would be fun and subversive to have them made in miniature. Music superstars such as Halsey, Ed Sheeran, and DJ Khalid each own one of her meticulously crafted tiny framed album awards, complete with attached magnifying glass. An international pharmaceutical company commissioned Ms. Orlov to create a complex two-sided sculptural model and streetscape. It draws on imagery and metaphors based on life before and after taking a migraine preventation drug. The entire process was filmed and distributed within the company. Orlov is the recipient of the 2023 Municipal Art Society of Baltimore City Travel Grant; 2022 Independent Artist from the Creative Baltimore Fund; 2021 Maryland State Arts Council Independent Art Regional Award, and 2020 Best in Show Biennial Members Exhibition Fuller Craft Museum.

Artist's Statement

Curiosity “evokes the care one takes for what exists and could exist; a readiness to find strange and singular what surrounds us” – Michel Foucault. To understand the vast world around me, I fragment the cacophony in my mind; I reorder, create metaphors, contrast similarities, and then distill my thoughts into miniature, incredibly precise visions. My sculptural practice is a culmination of my architectural background, designing with tiny maquettes, and my embrace of working with welded steel, soldered brass and silver, all offset by repurposed vintage curiosities and architectural salvage whose back stories help layer engrossing narratives. The interstitial space between beauty and darkness is where I find my art practice. I distort reality by creating miniature, yet multidimensional, worlds subtly storied under the weight of culturally and socially fraught issues of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Drawing inspiration from literature, classic cinema, iconic tableaus of pop culture, or just striking imagery tumbling out of the 24-hour news cycle, my assemblages of metal and collected fragments tell layered stories. Small worlds illuminating big issues: adolescent alienation, authoritarianism, governmental corruption, inequities, and inequalities hardwired into much of modern American society. An article about becoming penpals with isolated prisoners planted a seed in me many years ago. This led to reading about an incarcerated artist using found objects to create a miniature Airstream, his dream of the outside world, I felt an immediate kinship and knew I needed to explore this connection with these hidden away people. A shared sense of isolation inspired me to reach out to seven currently incarcerated artists, most locked away since their teens, decades into a life sentence. Currently, I am reimagining the Neo-Classical and Late Baroque gallery in the Walters Art Museum, in miniature. Challenging traditional hierarchies, these incarcerated artists have been invited to reinterpret the Euro-centric works. The Walters, father and son railroad tycoons, curated their collection to reflect Gilded Age ideals of Beauty and Truth, obscuring the era's societal issues. Art can be large and grand, but viewing a miniature is a solitary, even intimate experience, drawing parallels of confinement while looking closely at the injustices of mass incarceration through an unconventional lens. Working in tandem over long distances, is to break through the walls, so to speak, and sharing in the humanity of being artists, together. Literary elements incorporated into my sculptures become textural, visual messages. Incarcerated artists have embraced clandestine messaging, out of necessity and extreme limitations. These silenced voices, complex and nuanced, should be heard and archived. Beyond assumptions about their incarceration, true or unsubstantiated, life experiences reveal a larger picture. Our deep fascination and curiosity with crime and criminals goes back centuries. Sharing space with these artists, and their often-overlooked perspectives, accentuates the benefits of prevention and rehabilitation contradicting our acceptance of and reliance on excessive punishment.