Cover artist Mina Miki of Providence calls her baby blanket her longest friend. “His name is Blankie, but now he looks less like a blanket and more like a piece of tangled silk,” she says. That’s because it’s been with her since the day she was born. “It’s a version of myself as a very little kid, who still lives and exists in me. It feels like a piece of my soul outside my body,” she adds.
There is a whimsicality to Miki’s art. She works in watercolor, colored pencil, and gouache which, she explains, “Is a type of paint that behaves more like a watercolor than an acrylic.” Her favorite piece is an untitled painting of a little girl whose hair is being blown back by the wind, with tiny rainbow-colored horses running around her head.
“When I was little,” the illustrator and writer recalls, “I had a stable of infinite horses in my mind.”
Miki was born in California and, when she was eleven years old, moved with her family to Singapore. “I’d always had some sort of creative impulse. Whenever I told my Mom I was bored, she’d say, ‘OK. Why don’t you go draw?’ I always enjoyed the time drawing by myself,” she relates.
“There was never a question that art was what I wanted to do with my life,” Miki emphasizes, citing her Mom’s encouragement.
After graduating from the American International School in Singapore, Miki attended Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in PVD, from which she earned her BFA in Illustration in 2025.
“There were so many instructors at RISD who inspired me,” she says, particularly citing Kelly Murphy, Andrea Dezsö, April Jones Prince, and Susan Mallory Sherman, of the Illustration Department.
“They encouraged me to nourish the writing component of my artwork along with the illustration component,” the artist explains.
For her Picture and Word class, Miki had to write, illustrate, and bind a children’s book. She titled it Kajsa’s Song. “I’ve always had an impulse to write, whether children’s fiction, prose, or poetry,” she said, adding, “I spent a lot of time at RISD taking writing classes.”
A member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, Miki went to its recent conference in New York City. “It was a crazy weekend of networking, workshops and talks.” In addition, she and some friends have formed a critique group to keep each other motivated to create. “I’m lucky to have friends who push me.”
Miki’s time in Singapore influences her art. She is particularly inspired by the dichotomy of dense rainforest and glittering cityscape. Now, she works in vibrant and maximalist colors, similar to the Peranakan tilework found in this island city-state in Southeast Asia.
The lush palette of Singapore made its way onto the cover of Motif’s Spring Guide, along with Miki’s whimsicality. Above an explosion of spring colors, three children are flying on a Rhode Island Red, a robin, and a harbor seal with wings. The state flower, the violet, is carried in the robin’s claws. There are a few flying fish, too.
“It’s an ode to the state animals and plants of Rhode Island, and the feeling of shifting from winter into spring,” she says, adding that she had a lot of fun creating the cover.
Miki always has a sketchbook on her as she goes about PVD, whether to Coffee Exchange on Wickenden Street, which she calls the epitome of a coffee shop, or to the Providence Athenaeum on Benefit Street, where she’ll browse the children’s book section. She uses Moleskine soft covers with unlined pages. She has a small one that fits in her bag, and a larger one that fits in her backpack.
“I sketch in pencil, mostly, to get my ideas down without critiquing myself too harshly,” she chuckles.
Her taste in books runs from children’s author Sophie Blackall’s Farmhouse to New Weird author Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation. “My taste is really varied… from sweetness and tender things, to stuff that’s just weird,” she details. She also likes things that are frightening, such as Ari Aster’s horror flicks Midsommar and Hereditary.
The illustrator and writer loves living in PVD. “You’re one step removed from a million amazing things at all times,” she comments.
Miki especially appreciates the friendliness of the people and the artists of PVD. “There are so many working artists here who are warm and welcoming to newcomers like me in their artistic community,” she says.
Some of the themes running through Miki’s colorful artwork are humor, playful oddity, and the grief and joy of growing up.
“The central thread is revisiting childhood, through an adult’s eyes,” she concludes.
–John Picinich
Miki’s illustrations and books and sketches can be viewed on her website byminamiki.com