Brianna Miller is an illustration artist from Salem, Oregon who currently resides in Spokane, Washington; her artistic style focuses on layering, textures and relatable characters. Now publishing the first instalment of her work called ‘Jelly World‘, Brianna showcases her adapted nostalgic memories from the 80s and 90s onto paper, and into our homes.
This 29-year-old artist has developed her sketchbooks back from 2018 to now to create ‘Jelly World’ and you can see first-hand how her aesthetic evolved over the years. Brianna pulls specific recollections of cartoon characters, products, low budget movies, cult horror from her childhood and adolescence to create her sketchbooks. And for this artist, sketching is a tool for freely accessing memories and rendering layered visuals from the subconscious mind.
Her colourful illustrations are heavy with pop culture, nostalgic connections, bizarre original characters, and uncanny pastiche. She plays with these subjects to form a new story/character, Brianna describes it as constructing alter-egos. With the imagery of Beavis and Butt-Head in drag, Pennywise the clown in heels and fishnet tights, and wild Seven Dwarf parodies, the collection is a captivating look into Miller’s weirdly-whimsical inner life.
In addition to illustration, Brianna enjoys creating creatures like trolls and mushrooms, out of polymer clay. With both her 2D and 3D work she aims to achieve a tangible and dimensional effect. Overlapping layers of marker coloured pencil and pen, her goal is to focus on shared human experience’ echoing how memories and thoughts are layered and abstracted.
‘Jelly World’ is a 164 full-colour page book published via Burn Barrel Press and comes inside a fluorescent pink PVC dust jacket with a velcro enclosure, also including two custom stickers by Brianna.
We sit down with Brianna and her weirdly captivating mind to discuss the inner workings of ‘Jelly World’, her journey into art and how she was able to make this body of work a success.
What was your journey like into the artistic world?
I graduated in 2014, I studied graphic design but I always illustrated during my studies in my spare time, in class, everywhere. I contemplated switching subjects while at school but even my thesis involved illustrations and I learnt loads of beneficial methods from graphic design, which I use all the time. I always felt more comfortable with illustration, it’s been something that I gravitate towards more than anything else in the world.
How are you finding being an artist at the moment in the USA?
I feel like the pandemic caused me to hunker down more, get more commission work, that is how I was able to pay bills during the height of everything. My sketchbook illustrations turned into commission pieces; where I get people to send me some prompts then a list of things they want to be included in the drawing.
I did have a graphic design job before everything and left that position to focus on my illustration full time. During those jobs, I was keeping a sketchbook and developed my style.
I have 30 sketchbooks right now that have been worked on over the last 4 years, this is now the time to focus on my art.
So, have you wanted to be an artist since you were little?
Yes but maybe not always consciously, but I have always felt comfortable doing and creating illustrations.
You don’t realise when you are curating young that others are not drawing all the time… well I didn’t. The art classes allowed me to meet like-minded people, so, lots of my friends are artists – It’s a cute community. But it has defo been an inherent thing that I have gravitated towards.
Do you stick to any process of rules when creating?
My sketchbooks have pushed me to not think so narrowly about what I wanna draw or how I wanna draw it.
During school and art classes, everyone homed in on different styles which I struggled with, as I like to draw so many different things in different ways. With my sketchbooks, I will jump from a cartoon to a detailed portrait and layer these elements and that style developed on its own. I like not to be limited and be free with my work.
Your illustrations in ‘Jelly World’ are heavily referenced to 80s, 90s and early 2000s pop culture, who are your favourite characters in that space and why?
Hmmm, so for the 80s references I like low budget films and especially cover art – I also like doing older characters from cartoons programmes. I love nostalgia, because of the shared consciousness we all have with those characters. These characters raised us and are important to us in every aspect.
What are your favourite elements of the book?
When I was talking to Burn Barrel Press, we were talking about including my very early sketchbook work and I liked the idea of the book reading as a progression, so you can see how my style evolved. From me doing singular compositions to layering – you can see this throughout the book.
I am partial to the later pages but it is so important we included the earlier ones too.
You have some sexualised and LGBTQ+ focused art (Beavis and Butt-Head in drag, Pennywise the clown in heels and fishnet tights) included, why is this?
I haven’t contemplated why those ideas came to mind, but for example, Hank Hill who is southern and very masculine, I enjoy playing with the idea of maybe he wants to dress up as a woman today. Playing with ideas of alter-egos, I like this idea visually. It’s kinda like coming up with my own stories off the back of these.
The Pennywise is one of the last spreads, which plays with characters from Rocky Horror and mashing that together.
Would you say ‘Jelly World’ is one of your biggest achievements?
100%. When I posted a video of my sketchbooks on Instagram, Burn Barrel Press reached out to help me make it happen. I didn’t think it was possible at first, it was great understanding it’s a tangible thing.
How would you like your art to develop even more over the next couple of years?
I would like to keep using my sketchbook as a tool to work on larger scale drawings. This is something that I want to expand on this year, I am so appreciative of everyone who reaches out about commissions etc so I want to keep focusing on things like that.
