Jill Orlov is Making Big Waves in Miniature Art

When Jill Orlov was a University of Virginia student, a friend randomly asked one day if she’d accompany her to the architectural school. Not for any academic purpose. Her friend hoped to set up a guy she knew in the architecture program with their suitemate.

“So, she’s talking to him about fixing him up with our girlfriend, and meanwhile I’m fascinated by these meticulously built models and miniature fragments of buildings,” Orlov recalls. “I am in heaven.”

She soon switched her major to architecture. It just turned out, many years later, it wasn’t architecture that was calling. It was those meticulous miniature models.

Orlov worked as a “real architect” at small firms for a decade. Then she left that job and moved on to a property conditions company where she spent nearly another 10 years inspecting the structure of buildings and their various systems—electrical, plumbing, heating and air, et al. “Both were kind of soul-sucking jobs,” she admits.

Finally, after years of casting about for a creative outlet, a Maryland Institute College of Art welding class provided a needed spark.

“I had taken glassblowing, pottery, woodworking classes, furniture making, I tried everything,” she says. “None of them were something I wanted to stay with, like when you fall in love with a certain art. It wasn’t until I took welding that that happened.”

Specifically, that certain art became metal sculpture. Very small metal sculpture. Now based out of Hampden’s Mill Centre—their next open studio tour is April 11—Orlov builds tiny spaces, both real and imaginary, often incorporating cinematic or literary backstories. Her materials are found objects made of steel, brass, and sterling silver and she employs classic welding and silver soldering techniques.

Her solo exhibition at the Museum of Miniatures in Tucson, Arizona—“Borrowed Time/Borrowed Books”—reinterpreted libraries, yes, actual libraries, from the classic films Wings of Desire, Fahrenheit 451, All the President’s Men, The Time Machine, and The Breakfast Club—plus a memorable episode from The Twilight Zone, “Time Enough at Last.” She has also reimagined Julia Child’s TV kitchen, The Brady Bunch’s living room and staircase, and Archie and Edith’s sitting room from All in the Family.

“The museum invited me to put together an exhibit, and I started thinking of things that meant a lot to me,” recalls Orlov amid the blowtorches, gas tanks, ban saw, and drill press in her first-floor studio. “I’ve always loved the texture of books. To me, in making those library spaces and the tiny books, there was something both visual, that was related to the films, and literary.”

Other pieces have been shown at The National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.—as part of a group exhibition titled “Small Stories”—as well as the American Visionary Art Museum, the New York Studio School, the Fuller Craft Museum, Towson University’s Center for the Arts Gallery, and School 33 and the Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower.

In December, she was also one of 70 artists working in miniature from around the world profiled for the fine art hardcover, “L’art du minuscule,” from the esteemed French publisher, Gallimard. One current project is a collaboration with several incarcerated artists who she has connected with in recent years. Another is a work commissioned by painter Michael Owen, who created Baltimore’s ubiquitous L-O-V-E murals several years ago. He has since moved to California and asked Orlov to recreate his old Highlandtown studio here.

Her most memorable commission, however, came via Benny Blanco, the 11-time Grammy Award-nominated music producer, who might be best known as Selena Gomez’s husband. Rather than have the Recording Industry Association of America present the standard, full-scale gold and platinum album awards in recognition of his work, Blanco thought it would be fun and subversive to have them made in miniature and give them to his collaborators. Now, superstars such as Halsey, Ed Sheeran, and DJ Khalid each own one of her tiny, framed album awards—small enough to present in an ALTOIDS tin—complete with attached magnifying glass for reading the inscription.

“We are so used to being the scale against which we measure everything else,” Orlov says. “I like playing with confusion of that scale.”

That Orlov loved making dollhouses as a girl is not surprising. And often there is a sense of nostalgia or whimsy with miniatures. Her metal sculptures are a bit edgier, however, glancing backward through a more dystopian lens. They also possess an interactive dimension, inevitably inviting greater scrutiny from the viewer.

“Because I use found objects, I like when people look at things and they have to push their minds to think, ‘Where did that object come from?’” Orlov says with a hint of a mischievousness. “The objects look familiar, but they’re used differently, and that becomes another way to engage people. I think people like that puzzle.”