Santiago Cohen : The perfect cultural blend

COHEN

SANTIAGO

Born in Mexico, Santiago has a BA in Communications Design from Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, and MS from Pratt Institute also in Communication Design. He has worked as an Illustrator for major newspapers and magazines in the U.S. and he designed 24 animated episodes of "Troubles the Cat" for The Cartoon Network and CTN (Children's Television Network). He designed and animated short films for children which aired on HBO (two of the programs won an Emmy and a Peabody award), and designed openers for the French TF! Over the last 10 years he's created close to 20 children's books for editorial companies like Marshall Cavendish, Viking, GP Putnam, Zanner-Bloser, Houghton Mifflin, Warner, Golden Books, Zondervon, Chronicle, Blue Apple books and Skypony. Santiago also designed the first logo for Comedy Central and a film for the Poison Control

As a fine artist Santiago has individual and collective art shows in galleries in New York and Mexico. He received a grant from the Xeric Foundation to self publish his graphic novel "The Fifth Name".

When did you first think about art as something you wanted to do? Were you encouraged or discouraged by family, friends, teachers, mentors?

My father was a good artist and I tried to copy some of his cartoons when I was a kid, and couldn’t draw as well as he did; that frustrated me and I wanted to learn how to draw as well as he did, so I practiced a lot. Later on I became a photographer, but eventually I switched to art for good. My family was very supportive but they worried that I couldn’t make a living as an artist, that’s why I became a graphic designer and illustrator. I have a really good mentor who has supported me all my adult life, R. O. Blechman, who is a first rate cartoonist and animator. When I lost my father I took him as a father

" One influence was living near a wooded area where

my friends and I could play “Army” and swing on vines." "

figure and he has given me confidence in my approach to everything creative that I do.

What kind of kid were you? Where did you grow up? What were your influences?

I was always a very curious kid opening old radios to see how they worked and learning how to fix them back together, not always successfully. I loved music and found all sorts of ways to create simple sound systems to hear them better. Music elevated my thoughts and ideas to higher levels. I always wrote diaries, or expressed my feelings with cassette recorders. I was born in Mexico and this country is highly visual. The handcrafts, churches, markets are all filled with weird, surreal images.

The first artists that l loved were Van Gogh and Vermeer. But I was an avid comic reader, because in Mexico there was almost no children’s literature in that time that I knew about. So to me stories always were attached to visuals. We would spend a long time in Cuernavaca, where my grandmother had a house. In Cuernavaca my mother would take us to the

movies to see triple features in the afternoon, which was easier for everybody not to get bored. We saw Mexican movies from their golden age, old American action movies, comedies, and romance, everything except horror movies, my mother didn’t like them. I had a period when I loved them. My other influence was of course the Mexican muralists and the Posada woodcuts.

Your style is very unique. Did you work on developing a style or is that what naturally came out of you?

I began in my twenties to publish a comic strip in one of the Mexican Newspapers trying to be unique and very bold with a group of cartoonists that were incredibly talented. I just wanted to be more talented than them, but the same with my father, they were better writers and illustrators, but the difference made me unique in comparison, and that gave me an “edge”. I understood that in order to get the attention I had to be daring, and not always trying to please the viewer...at the end I had to please myself.

You work in a few different areas like children’s books, animation, magazine illustration. How did that happen?

When I came to New York in the eighties I showed Pratt a portfolio of 50 comic strips that I published in Mexico, and the person who interviewed me for acceptance to the master’s program, Ethan Manasse, showed my work to his agent Michelle who was an illustrators rep. She asked if I wanted to be represented in New York? "What's illustration?" I was a cartoonist, and in Mexico illustration was only a word but nobody was doing it. She became my rep and I did Christmas cards for the MOMA, illustrations for different magazines, and I learned what illustration was. Later on I worked with Art Spiegelman and Francois Moully assisting them for Raw magazine and moved to work at the Ink Tank Studio under R.O. Blechman where I helped with the animation. I aso did animations for HBO and had a series of animation with my design, "Troubles the Cat". When that finished I started doing children’s books with Harriet Zeifert. I did five books with her company Blue Apple Books, including the cow book. I also created a graphic novel, "The Fifth Name", based on a story by Stephan Zweig, and won a grant from the Xeric Foundation. I just spent 5 years working on "Angelitos" with writer Ilan Stavans. Most of my work lately are ideas I have. I work on them until I find a way of publishing. I am working on a book of my life called "ExVida" that features 1150 paintings.

How has the advent of the computer affected your work? Do you work traditionally and digitally?

I am old enough that I lived the transition between handmade everything to digital. When I started I did all my illustrations with acrylic paint on watercolor paper, and it was very difficult when the art directors had a change of mind or the editors changed the ideas, to correct the concepts. Most of the times I had to re-do the illustrations. I have hundreds of illustrations that I made in that period for all sorts of magazines and newspapers. Most of those got damaged by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, because my studio was in the basement of my house in Hoboken, and they all got wet. All my friends came to the rescue and helped my wife Ethel and me to dry them in the backyard and the house with lasagna layers of bed sheets, towels and paper towels. I still have them, but they're not in great shape. When the computers started in the nineties I was one of the first illustrators to embrace it. I would do the line by hand and color in Photoshop. The results were similar and they were faster to finish, and correct. I worked with Nicolas Blechman doing op-ed pieces for the NYT, and sometimes the computer allowed me to turn in illustrations in matter of hours. I still do a combo of both, with my books and animations. I love working on both media, by hand and digital.

I’m fascinated by the animated work and how you got into working with Cartoon Network and HBO?

It was when I worked at the Ink Tank studio with R.O.

Blechman. I worked there until they closed sometime in the early 2000s, it was a great opportunity for me to work in the best animation studio in New York with an incredible group of talented artists.

Does living on the East coast give you a certain edge to your work?

I think when I started New York City was a very rough place and everything was “punkish”, everybody wanted to be edgy and unique. When the computer started it was more homogenized because there is only one Photoshop, and everybody ended up doing similar work. I don’t think the East coast has an edge now...it is more universal. Illustrators from Mexico can do as good work as in India, or Kansas.

What’s does your process entail? Start to finish. Can you give us a short step-by-step?

If I do illustrations I concentrate on the story and then with an open mind like an actor who has to portray a character. I have to show the essence of what I have to tell with images and then I sketch a lot until I find the optimal solution. For books if I write a children’s book I try first titles with the ideas I have and with that I write the story. Sometimes with images first, design of the characters, and improvise on the narrative. For my paintings I try to create a series to connect one to the other in a direct or indirect way. But never one painting at the time, always series of images connected one to the other.

What do you do to promote yourself and get more work?

I use social media, send direct postcards to art directors or galleries, enter all the contests I can, I am starting to use mail chimp with a targeted list of art directors, but not over do it because people hate spam. But my best promotion is your work shown out there in published media, or my website.

What’s the future hold for Santiago?

My future is to show more in galleries, keep painting, writing graphic novels, work abroad and in my studio and the sky is the limit. I've been doing work in Jersey City for the "day of the dead" parade. I love creating giant puppets and working with my community.