#kevinjaystanton

Explorers (excerpt) - Kevin Jay Stanton. 2015

Artist Spotlight #26 features the magical Kevin Jay Stanton (kevinjaystanton)! Kevin is a freelance illustrator who likes flowers, RPGs, and comics. 

Ladies of Literature: Volume 2 Character: Lirael from Lirael by Garth Nix

Favorite childhood book: “As a small kid, I had a small set of original/unabridged fairy tales I would read over and over again. As a teen, the Old Kingdom trilogy and American Gods.”

Favorite work song: “I don't have one favorite, but I tend to buy a new song when starting the final phase of a project and listen to it on repeat until the project is finished. Most recently, Estelle's ‘Conqueror.’”

Fictional character you feel on a spiritual level: “Kamala Khan as Ms. Marvel. I like to think I'd be that excited if I were a superhero too.”

What are you working on right now: “Co-curating the 1001 Knights Anthology, co-curating Burl&Fur (a zine about bara), working out the details of a comic for Bee & Puppycat, pitching an original comic, putting together work for my first solo show, working on a trio of lasercut Shakespeare posters, and starting a new print run (to hopefully become a series) with Gallery Nucleus. I think that's it (for now).”

I would say that’s a fair assessment! 

As it happens, I’ve always been a fan of classic literature. I grew up reading fairytales and plays and novels and my parents called me “Sir Lawrence” (Olivier) because I had a flair for the dramatic (I’m a wretched, horrible actor though). When I was a junior in highschool I petitioned to be in a seniors-only AP Literature class, which I took simultaneously with the Honors 11 English class. We read a lot of the moodier Shakespeare (like Othello and King Lear, whereas a lot of English classes tended to be Romeo & Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream). And I took a Shakespeare class in college where we had to perform for the class (which was terrifying). Our final was memorizing a monologue (another thing I’m bad at) - my professor told me I didn’t get a lot of it verbatim, but I used a lot of synonyms so he knew I at least really understood the meaning of it.

I was approached by Sterling after I graduated from Pratt, and initially I was going to do a series of classic book covers for them (a project I believe was eventually given to the extraordinary Jessica Hische, and rightfully so). My editor loved cut-paper and Shakespeare though, so we discussed doing the project that became the Signature Shakespeare series. It had the potential to be 14 books in all, 7 pairs of plays. It was a perfect fusion of my loves too, and honestly one of the best projects I’ve ever had to pleasure to work on. I’d be lying if I said that the cancellation of the series wasn’t soul-crushing; I still feel the sting of it. 

So yes, I’m doing my best to pick up where the series left off. For my sanity, and because I’m a crazy person, and because I want to get back to a place where I’m having arguments with a Shakespeare professor about whether “… And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp” means a shooting star or an eclipse (I was right - it’s a solar eclipse).

I've been having the same trouble the past day or so - I dunno what's going on! The multi-image posts I'd been making kept deleting random images for some reason.