Illustrator Jensine Eckwall is our guest artist for the January 2016 issue. Her beautiful watercolour illustrations, which manage to be simultaneously delicate and vibrant, illuminate moments in eleven of our texts in the Fiction, Nonfiction, and Drama sections. I interview her about her practice, her experience contributing to Asymptote, and her upcoming projects.
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Berny Tan: You’ve illustrated magazine articles, books, zines, and so on, in addition to the eleven texts in our January 2016 issue. Could you describe your process of conceiving and executing pieces based on existing texts?
Jensine Eckwall: If I can, when I receive a text to illustrate, I like to read the whole thing and pick out favorite phrases or words that are particularly evocative of the text’s theme for me. Then, in the corner of the paper I’m sketching on, I write those words out, as well as other phrases to which I’ve drawn mental connections. That’s often the seed for images, and I extrapolate from there. For commercial projects, I send a series of sketches to the client for approval. For non-commercial projects, I usually run the initial ideas by a friend or the publisher, if there is one.
BT: I especially loved your illustrations for ‘Siren Song’ and ‘Flights.’ Which text did you most enjoy reading, and which image did you most enjoy creating?
JE: I absolutely loved all the stories, and learned something different from every one of them. I was personally really inspired by ‘Selections from the St. Katharinental Sister Book’—I love medieval aesthetics and so many things about these selections, from women memorializing each other to the fantastical-meets-pedestrian nature of the miracles described. I liked my image for ‘Siren Song’ as well—the visuals in the story were so strong and unsettling, and I always enjoy getting the chance to draw Ghostly Figures.
BT: Two of your most massive undertakings are children’s books—the recently published The Goblin’s Puzzle and the upcoming Almost a Full Moon. What drew you to these projects?
JE: I was very privileged to be offered these projects, both of which have a bit of fantasy to them. The Goblin’s Puzzle recalls the tradition of wry and dry humor in children’s storytelling, and Almost a Full Moon is more lyrical and soft. I’m still not too experienced working with longer narratives, but I love it so much and want to do more in the future!
BT: You’ve made a few comics over the years. What kind of stories do you enjoy telling with this medium?
JE: Comics were so important to me growing up, and they were what initially got me into drawing. I like to make short comics that tell either personal stories or fictionalized versions of experiences/ideas on which I’ve been ruminating. Sometimes I like to use animal or animal-like characters, as they make better vectors for telling certain stories. I have a two-part mini-comic that will be released at this year’s MoCCA Arts Festival—one story, “Peppy,” is about a sick dachshund and the other, “Make a Friend of Lonely,” illustrates a poem written by up-and-coming comics author Chris Jones.
BT: Could you tell me more about your new series of work, Remember Who Loves You?
JE: I haven’t made any “personal” or “fine art” illustrations in a long time, and Remember Who Loves You is an attempt to return to that. Its loose theme is the intersection of mental illness and sexuality. Some of the pieces will be displayed at a three-person show at Helikon Gallery in Denver, Colorado this summer.
BT: Lastly, who are the artists that have most influenced you and your work?
JE: The musician Neko Case is really important to me, in terms of narrative aesthetic. The work of Marcel Dzama and the series A Play of Selves by Cindy Sherman have also stuck with me. I take a lot from the Golden Age of children’s book illustration (late 19th to early 20th century). I also keep a blog with content I like to refer to for inspiration—fashion, old maps, nature photos, songs I like, etc.
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Jensine Eckwall is an illustrator based in Brooklyn, New York. After graduating from the School of Visual Arts in 2013, she has worked for clients such as The New York Times, New York University, The Boston Globe, Viacom, and others. She has painted several book covers for children and young adults set to release in 2016 from Knopf and Simon & Schuster. Her first picture book Almost a Full Moon, written by musician Hawksley Workman, will be available September 2016. Her website can be found here.
Berny Tan is Asymptote’s Guest Artist Liaison. An artist, curator, and writer, she graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York with a BFA (Hons) in Visual & Critical Studies. Berny was born and raised in Singapore, and currently works as Assistant Curator for OH! Open House, a non-profit that explores Singapore’s cultural geography through art. Her website can be found here.
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