{"id":7960,"date":"2022-10-21T11:14:41","date_gmt":"2022-10-21T15:14:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/?p=7960"},"modified":"2023-01-04T08:58:47","modified_gmt":"2023-01-04T13:58:47","slug":"every-picture-tells-a-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/issues\/fall-2022\/every-picture-tells-a-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Every Picture Tells a Story"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

New England Yards, 2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jessica Brilli \u201900 paints from old Kodachrome slides. She is drawn to mid-century suburban American scenes, bringing them to life with unique color palettes. Brilli, who earned a B.F.A. in painting at äçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾, has shown her work in group and solo exhibitions across the United States and abroad, but her latest exhibition space, book covers, is bringing her work to a broad new audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are many places a painter might display their work\u2014museums, galleries, private collections. One that might not come as quickly to mind is the cover of a book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2020, Jessica Brilli\u2019s painting, \u201cNight Swimming,\u201d was used in the design of the book cover for Rumaan Alam\u2019s bestseller, Leave the World Behind<\/em>. The success of the novel, which was a finalist for the prestigious National Book Award, has drawn even more attention to the work of Brilli \u201900.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, how does a painter\u2019s work land on the cover of a critically acclaimed bestseller?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of my work is online,\u201d Brilli says. \u201cAnd from there, a couple of publishers have reached out to ask me if they could use my work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One person who found her work online and reached out was Allison Saltzman, a senior art director at HarperCollins in New York City. Saltzman discovered Brilli\u2019s work on an art blog, The Jealous Curator<\/em>, in 2012. When Saltzman was tasked to work on the cover for Charles Simic\u2019s 2019 collection of poetry, Come Closer and Listen<\/em>, she turned to Brilli and a working relationship was formed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Book<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe book is, like, 90 percent realistic; then there\u2019s this little bit where you\u2019re like, \u2018Did that just happen? Is this really happening?\u2019\u201d Saltzman explains. \u201cJessica\u2019s painting worked perfectly because it straddles the line of real and surreal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brilli, originally from Long Island, N.Y., currently living in Quincy, Mass., looks to the past to inspire her work. Many of her paintings feature homes, buildings, cars, and scenes from the mid-20th century. The prolific Brilli captures the sleek lines and design of this period in her paintings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to put a finger on why I like the era so much,\u201d Brilli says. \u201cI think it\u2019s the simplicity of the design and the elegance of things. The cars back then were almost like sculptures.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The source material for her paintings is another art form, photography. Brilli had been using family photographs for years before she hit a upon the idea of buying slides that people were selling online. When she buys the slides, she owns the rights and can use them as subjects for her paintings, like \u201cNight Swimming.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI’m inspired by the good photography, mostly. Kodachrome slides, things like that,\u201d Brilli says.\u201cI gravitate toward pools as a subject. I found some really awesome photos that were night shots at this pool in Oklahoma, so I decided to purchase the slides.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brilli is represented by Skidmore Contemporary Art in Santa Monica, California and by Jessica Hagen Fine Art and Design in Newport, R.I., and recently had her own exhibition, \u201cOn the Brink\u201d at Walker-Cunningham Fine Art in St. Louis, Missouri. Her next exhibit just may be on the shelf in a bookstore near you. \u2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014John Canale<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

View more of Brilli’s artwork at jbrilli.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* Editor’s note: This story includes changes made after print publication at the subject’s request.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jessica Brilli, ’00 has shown her work in group and solo exhibitions across the United States and abroad, but her latest exhibition space, book covers, is bringing her work to a broad new audience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":8330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[308],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fall-2022","architecture-niche"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7960"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8465,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7960\/revisions\/8465"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}