Today we’d like to introduce you to Laura Fisk.
Laura, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
I’m an illustrator and printmaker. I have a small household goods business mainly focusing on silly food characters, known as the funny foods. I’m also a freelance illustrator working on various projects. I always liked to draw as a kid and wanted to grow up and be a cartoonist. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be some type of artist but I didn’t know that there really were different disciplines in art until I was in my 20’s and fully realized that I was an illustrator and learned about commercial art.
While I spent awhile doing a bunch of other things such as working in the non-creative wing of advertising, I made my way back to art full-time around nine years ago and happy I found my way back. In high school and college, I worked in an art rubber stamp store that truly formed how I make my work and a little craft helped me find my lifelong love for printmaking.
Can you give our readers some background on your art?
I usually describe my work as silly, goofy, and funny. It’s purposely so! I love to make people laugh through my work, and love incorporating humor and lightheartedness into my work. I hope that in a time where there’s lots of heaviness in the world that people can escape for a moment and laugh about some silly foods. The way I work is I start out sketching on paper and then I take my images onto my iPad pro and finish my drawing there.
While I’m drawing on a digital surface it’s still by hand. I like the mix of working both traditionally and digitally. My dishtowels are all screenprinted by a local screenprinter. I used to do all my printing myself but so happy to work with someone local to take that on instead of me! Overall it fills me with joy to see joy reflected in the face of a customer or client.
In your view, what is the biggest issue artists have to deal with?
One thing my artist friends and I discuss a bunch is valuing our work and the underpaying and undervaluing of work. This applies to charging fair rates for products and illustration/design work. The internet has opened up the world so much giving so many more artists a voice that wouldn’t have had one before which is great! I certainly have benefitted from this.
But, we all need to value our work as valid and important and try to stay away from free projects (unless it’s really important to you) and underpaid projects. When you’re first starting out, it’s so tempting to take every job that comes your way or to compromise your costs – I definitely fell for this. It’s hard to find a balance but important to stand up for yourself and your abilities.
What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
Locally in Houston you can find my tea towels at Space Montrose, a wonderful shop in Houston. Or, you can see my work on my site at fiskandfern.com for my products, or if you’re interested in my illustration work you can go to illustrationfisk.com. I’m pretty active on Instagram too, my handle is @fiskandfern.
Contact Info:
- Website: fiskandfern.com
- Email: laura@fiskandfern.com
- Instagram: fiskandfern
- Twitter: fiskandfern
- Other: illustrationfisk.com
Image Credit:
Meg Mulloy for headshot.
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