Lisel Ashlock
Conversation with an Illustrator: Lisel Ashlock
As a teacher in the Midwest I am not terribly familiar with the particulars involved in making a life in a 700 square foot apartment that costs the same as I am paid per month. How do you find work? Get an apartment? Where do you live? I was interested in hearing about the mythical life of how an artist lives in New York and manages to survive.
I met up with Lisel at her go-to restaurant in the East Village which featured some seriously tasty Moroccan food. This was her favorite hang out when she first moved to the city from California. Everyone has their own personal Cheers in their neighborhood. I think New York is as townie as anywhere, you just have less travel time to leave "town" and it's on bike or the subway. Lisel said she was working in San Francisco as a junior designer at Sephora after completing her degree at California College of the Arts. As a junior designer a person is in charge of maintaining things like emails, ad placements and other graphic needs of a company. After some time in that position her boss in New York was going on maternity leave so she was asked to come to New York and fill in her position. And she stayed.
This is where I'll insert a bit of advice from the trenches. Don't move to New York without a job or a trust fund. Unless you plan to share a 2 bedroom apartment with five guys in Bushwick, it's unlikely that you'll have enough spare ching to survive very long. Next bit of advice: find a cheap place to live and stay there until you can network your way into someone else's lease. It will save you the hassle and money of a broker. If the place is rent controlled and you know of people who have lived there it is even better. Okay, back on task.
After some time as an art director at Sephora, Lisel was getting a lot of freelance work. She found herself struggling to maintain her day job and produce her artwork. This is a good problem to have as an artist but it is also a somewhat terrifying reality. Do you quit your day job- with the benefits and steady cash flow, and go for it? It's no rumor that the life of an artist is fickle and their livelihood doesn't necessarily depend on them simply working hard and doing well at what they do. She decided to take the leap as a freelance illustrator.
Since who you know is 80% of getting by and getting connected in the city (for everything- jobs, places to live, services , etc.) and she was craving an artistic community in which to produce work, Lisel started her MFA at The School of Visual Arts. She was hoping to have some constructive dialog and critiques and more of a network. She says she didn't find that in Grad School as much as in Undergrad aside from one class and when it came to the end of her program. She was hoping to get into illustrating book covers and got a mentor for her last semester work at Penguin. He was largely influential and helpful in the progression of her work. She and I both agree that a little constructive criticism really helps a person grow.
While in Grad School she found a part time job on Craigslist. The ad said something about "Do you like kids? Making art?" and was for an assistant at a children's arts and crafts center in TriBeCa. She took the job. I should mention that this isn't any dowdy child care center rec program. This is a chi-chi place for parents (or nannies) and children to connect over art, created by Jon Stewart's wife in a beautiful neighborhood. Moomah primarily serves the children of local celebrities and other of New York's finest. Of course this had me on a "what celebrities do you see?" tangent given that I saw Neil Patrick Harris at a basement Japanese restaurant in midtown the night before. Their client list is more exclusive than Doogie Howser. She mentioned Naomi Watts, Natalie Portman, Maggie Gyllanthal, Jason Bateman, Sophia Coppola, Christy Turlington, Gwenyth Paltrow, the Weinberg's (of Superbad), and even Madonna's kid's birthday was hosted there. Lisel is the creative brain of a two woman business and she loves the partnership. She has flexibility for her freelance illustrations which is good because next month a book called Turn Right at Maccu Piccu with her illustration on the cover will be hitting the shelves!
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