Very now and again I get really excited by a vdov.net project (the letter E brought to you by Carson Ellis herself). This is definitely one of them. One of my favorite categories here is our Interviews section, which, in my humble opinion, has some real gems. Professional illustrator and all around excellent artist Carson Ellis agreed to do an interview for vdov.net a while ago. In the intervening time she gave birth to Henry “Hank” Meloy with her college sweetheart Colin Meloy of Decemberists fame, naturally moving my interview to the back burner. My eye was first caught by Ellis’ work for the cover art of the Decemberists’ album Castaways and Cutouts and I liked it enough that I hired Ellis to make a watercolor which she titled “Faster Maria.” She remains one of my favorite artists and from the interview it sounds like we will be seeing some fun new projects. I am also supremely jealous of little Hank Meloy, who with his parents will probably have the sweetest baby room and best bedtime stories.

Can you give us some basic background? Where did you go to school? Are you “classically trained” in art? Where are you from? Was art your first calling? When did you decide that art was what you wanted to do?

I was born in Vancouver, B.C. to parents, I recently found out, that were living on a salmon fishing boat until the last month of my mother’s pregnancy. I grew up in suburban New York and I went to college at the University of Montana in Missoula. I wouldn’t say I got a “classical” training there, though. It was a pretty crappy school but I loved living in Missoula and I earned a BFA in painting there, for what it’s worth.

When I was a little kid I wanted to grow up to be either an artist or a “naturalist” (a word I learned from my grandma that I think is pretty much an antiquated way of saying “wildlife biologist”). So yes, I guess art was my first calling - or one of two.

Your style is very distinctive. It is simple and elegant. How did you develop into it? How did you choose your mediums over any of the hundreds of others?

Thanks! I don’t know how I developed into a style. I guess by drawing all the time, constantly assimilating images and motifs and other ways of drawing that have been eye-catching and beautiful to me.

As for mediums, I was mostly an oil painter when I graduated from college but I never really liked to paint as much as I liked to draw. When I moved to Portland, my boyfriend Colin and I started collaborating on illustrated stories and I suddenly found myself drawing all of the time again - less and less interested in painting and more excited about illustration. I was mostly drawing in pencil then or sometimes sharpie or those cheap rollerball pens and I knew that everything I was doing looked amateurish because I hadn’t found the right medium. Then Colin typed something like “How to draw comic books” into a search engine and figured out that a lot of illustrators used actual ink with brushes and nib pens. So I went to an art supply store and bought some ink and a handful of nibs to experiment with and settled on one that I loved so much that it’s the only one I use to this day. Eventually I started working in color too - drawing with brown ink instead of black to lower the contrast and using the same limited palette of water colors that I had always used to paint with oils.

I was originally captivated by your work when I found out that you were the artist who did the cover designs for The Decemberist’s albums. Vdov.net loves the Decemberists and have been following them even from the days of Tarkio. How did you get involved with the band? How did you get involved with the other bands you have made illustrations for?

Colin sings and writes the songs for the Decemberists. We were roommates in college years before we were sweethearts and I used to make flyers for Tarkio. When I moved to Portland, the Decemberists were just playing their first shows and Colin put me right to work making flyers and website illustrations and album art.

I think the only other bands I’ve made art for have been The Vanessa Morrison Band and Weezer. Vanessa Morrison is another friend from college and I don’t know how I got involved with Weezer. They have an art director who emailed me through my website. She probably saw the Decemberists records.

You use a lot of Russian symbols, writing, and themes in your art. What lead you to that theme?

I’m just drawn to Russia - culturally, historically, symbolically and I guess sentimentally because a bunch of my great-grandparents were Russian. I love Russian literature and painting and I love the emotional association we have with it as a setting - especially siberia or rural Russia of the 19th century. It’s so bleak and difficult and sort of backwards but also really fiery and intellectual. I use a lot of cyrillic in drawings and paintings because I’m a calligraphy nerd and writing cursive cyrillic is so much fun - it’s so pretty. I don’t know that I’ve been using as much Russian imagery lately but 3 or 4 years ago Colin and I went over there and rode the trans-siberian railway from Moscow to Irkutsk and back and when I got home Russia was all I could think about for a year.

Your art also seems to be loaded with scenes and symbols that are hard to immediately place. Where do you get your inspiration? How do you choose your themes?

I like to start with kind of a loaded setting, like a prison or a racetrack or a shantytown, and let the drawing unfold from there. My inspiration comes from everywhere imaginable.

I heard that you are having a baby very soon (congratulations) and was wondering how you thought your art would affect the child and the converse… how your child will affect your art? What are your hopes/fears about it?

Ha ha. I took so long getting around to answering these questions that I had my baby in the meantime! So I can answer definitively: For a couple of weeks after Hank was born I couldn’t draw - it was just impossible to find the time to do it - but as soon as I had a spare half hour at night I started drawing again. And with more energy than I had in a really long time. I’m afraid making art had become sort of rote - it was like my grind - but once I needed to juggle desperately to make time for it, I rediscovered how much I love it. So he’s had a great effect on my art.

I’m not sure my art has had any effect on him yet. I’ve started doing some work as a children’s book illustrator and, when I was a kid, it would have been my dream come true to be raised by an illustrator. I actually remember thinking about an illustrator that visited my elementary school, “Oh my god! I wish he was my dad!” But Hank will grow up with a musician and an illustrator and, in true kid fashion, he’ll probably spend his childhood wishing his parents were marine biologists.

It is probably hard to play favorites but… do you have an artwork or more than one that you consider your favorite.

Of the last show of watercolors I had, these were my favorites:

(see the original)

(see the original)

Was there any peice that was a lot of fun to make? One that was especially difficult?

Both of those above were fun to make. The panoramic album art for “Her Majesty the Decemberists” was difficult. It took 50 hours or something.

Finally, are you working on anything currently? Involved in any projects? Where can the curious appreciator go to see your work?

I’ve just finished illustrating a kids’ novel for Little, Brown called “The Mysterious Benedict Society”. Right now I’m working on the album art for the new Decemberists record, out in October. And Colin and I are writing and illustrating a picture book for Harper Collins, so I’ll be working on that through the fall and winter. Aside from my woefully out-of-date website you can always find new work at Motel, the gallery that represents me in Portland. Here’s the link to my page on their website.