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“Crown Jewels” by Crystal Miller (American) - Mixed media on canvas / 2023 - Discover the Promise: Impact, Legacy & Perspective, Cleveland City Hall (Ohio) #WomenInArt #Afrofuturism #BlackArt #CrystalMiller #MixedMedia #art #artText #BlueskyArt #MixedMediaArt #WomanArtist #WomensArt #WomanArtist
Created in 2023 as African American artist Crystal Miller completed her BFA at the Cleveland Institute of Art, “Crown Jewels” crystallizes her Afrofuturist practice of imagining Black life forward through materials associated with beauty, craft, and communal celebration. Elevating glitter, beads, and rhinestones to the status of paint, she reframes “glamour” as a technology of survival and self-definition. The title asserts sovereignty because jewels are not merely worn; they emanate from the self. This portrait-scale mixed-media canvas layers beadwork, glitter, rhinestones, and foam over painted forms to stage a luminous crown near the work’s center. A dark-skinned figure emerges from a pink surface like low relief, edges catching light as textures sparkle and scatter. Points of the crown radiate above the brow as patterned strips, sequins, and faceted marks travel across hair and garment, suggesting braids, textiles, and jewelry without fixing a single tradition. Saturated fields and crisp outlines hold the composition steady, while reflective accents like full jeweled lips invite eye-level drift. The surface is tactile and celebratory, yet grounded through adornment rendered as presence, protection, and self-possession. Miller has described dreaming of “a world that accepts me…protects the lives of Black people…where my Black sisters…feel empowered,” a vision that animates the work’s radiant surfaces and regal bearing. Installed as part of an exhibition at Cleveland City Hall, “Crown Jewels” functions as a civic proclamation that brilliance belongs in public space, and the aesthetics of adornment, often coded feminine, become instruments of memory, dignity, and futurity rooted in Black womanhood.
October 29, 2025 at 1:12 AM