November Artist of the Month Stephanie Vecellio, interviewed by Tori Weston
Please tell us about your background and how you came to Somerville.
A New England girl at heart, I grew up in Connecticut and then studied illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence, RI. During my senior year at RISD, I had an internship at a children’s book publisher in Davis Square. It was a formative time for me, escaping campus for that one day a week and imagining what my adult life could look like. I fell in love with Somerville then—it was the first place I thought to move to when I was able. That was seven years ago now and I still love this city and the arts community it fosters.
At what age did your creative journey begin?
My parents would certainly say it was when I insisted on having the 64-color pack of Crayola crayons in my kindergarten class! And it’s true, I always loved making art from a very young age and knew I wanted to be an artist. But then I wanted to be a writer, and then I wanted to work with animals. I went back and forth between those things until I settled on being an illustrator who also writes who also owns a very cute dog.
Who or what inspires your work?
I’m most inspired by closely observing the things around me—the way the sun hits a corner of a house at 3pm on an autumn afternoon, the color of the moss on this one tree on a path I walk every day, how people I’m surrounded by live their daily life. I like to capture these small moments of magic. They help me fully experience a time and a place, and in that way, drawing becomes a sensory experience. I can look at a drawing I did a year ago and remember who I was with, or what the weather was like, or how I felt that day.
Illustration is all about storytelling, so then I try to see if I can add narrative to my life drawing practice. I’m currently working on a graphic memoir. It’s a travelogue story about a cross-country trip I took in 2019 while I was in the depths of a complicated health crisis, and how the trip helped me find the joy and strength within myself to discover my physical limits, and consciously push past them. There’s something really special about the vulnerability that comes from connecting with someone’s experience, and I’m deeply inspired by how that written story can be independent from but also symbiotic with the visual story.
As an illustrator, what is your favorite medium to work in?
Lately, markers. Most of my professional freelance work is digital, so when I get to do work for myself, I like to take a break from being on the computer. It’s fun to use the colors in a non-traditional way, where I’m n
ot necessarily looking at the color that something actually is, but more focusing on putting together the puzzle of the value structure from lights to darks. Plus, using bright colors to fill in lines I’ve drawn really satisfies my five-year-old inner child!
I also enjoy combining traditional pen line-work and colored pencil or charcoal textures with digital color, or using digital drawing to enhance a marker drawing.
How has COVID-19 affected your work?
I definitely became a lot more involved in community art during the pandemic. I’m very grateful to have been given the opportunity to create the posters for Artbeat and the Yart Sale and feel connected to the community I live in despite the circumstances. I was also a 2020 recipient of a Visual Arts Fellowship grant from the Somerville Arts Council. For my community benefit project, I worked with fellow grant recipient Kathryn Geismar on creating an exhibit for the Inside Out Gallery in Davis Square. We brought together a group of 24 artists for a giant game of Exquisite Corpse with the goal of bringing a dose of fun to Somerville artists who couldn’t access their studios.
I’ve found that idea of creating fun to be a big theme for me during this time as well, asking myself questions like, what brings me joy to draw? What would my middle school-self think is cool? What feelings do I need to process today and what subject would help me explore that? It’s made me want to seek comfort in the images I make and I hope that resonates with people who view my work as well.
How does one find your work?
My work can be seen on my website at
www.stephanievecellio.com
Instagram at @stepinhoney.
I also have some prints for sale on Society6.
Stephanie Vecellio, November Artist of the Month
