Charles Vess
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Charles Vess (born 1951) is an American fantasy artist and comic-book illustrator who has specialized in the illustration of myths and fairy tales. He has won several awards.
Vess was born in 1951 in Lynchburg, Virginia and began drawing comic art as a child. He graduated with a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1974. His first professional position was as a commercial animator for Candy Apple Productions in Richmond, Virginia which he held for approximately two years.
In 1976 he moved to New York City and became a freelance illustrator. He contributed illustrations to publications including Heavy Metal, Klutz Press (now an imprint of Scholastic Press), and National Lampoon. One notable publication from this early period was The Horns of Elfland (ISBN 0-915822-25-3) published by Archival Press in 1977, which Vess wrote and illustrated.
From 1980-82 Charles Vess worked as an Art Instructor at the Parsons School of Design in New York City. Also during that period his work appeared in one of the first major museum exhibitions of science fiction and fantasy art, held at the New Britain Museum of American Art in 1980.
By the late eighties Vess had found a niche in the world of fantasy comic art with publications such as The Raven Banner: A Tale of Asgard written by Alan Zelenetz and published by Marvel Comics in 1985, The Book of Night, published by Dark Horse Comics in 1987, and The Warriors Three Saga, Marvel Fanfare #34-37,1987-88. His success was also mainstream though, as evidenced by his illustration of Spider-Man: Spirits of the Earth (a 1990 graphic novel from Marvel) and a ten issue run (#129-139) as illustrator of The Swamp Thing by DC Comics in 1993.
In 1989 Charles Vess began one of his best-known collaborations to date, with writer Neil Gaiman. He illustrated “The Land of Summer's Twilight”, one of the four episodes in the original The Books of Magic mini-series. Vess also worked on three issues of Gaiman’s critically acclaimed Sandman series. Sandman #19 (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) is a meta-fictional adaptation of Shakespeare's play. In 1991, that issue won the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story, the first and only comic book to hold the honor, as award organizers subsequently amended the rules to specifically exclude comics. Vess contributed eight drawings for a prose-based inset that appeared in Sandman #62 (“The Kindly Ones: 6”) and illustrated the final issue of the series, Sandman #75 (“The Tempest”).
In 1991 he illustrated the official comic-book adaptation of Steven Spielberg’s Hook.
Starting in 1989 with “The Art of Fantasy and Science Fiction” at the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington, Delaware, a series of gallery exhibitions have featured Vess’ artwork. The gallery show “Storyteller” appeared in 1992 at Frameworks Gallery in Bristol, Virginia. The following year he showed work under the title “The Mythic Garden” at the Open Air Birch Garden in Devon, England and also “The Magic” at Repartee Gallery in Park City, Utah.
In 1994, after moving to southwestern Virginia, a local museum there asked Vess to organize a show which became “The DreamWeavers”: a travelling exhibition of 15 fantasy artists from a variety of fields including children's book illustrators Jerry Pinkney, Dennis Nolan, Gennady Spirin, Ruth Sanderson and David Wisnieski; comic book illustrators Michael Kaluta and Vess himself; science fiction/fantasy book jacket artists Dawn Wilson and James Gurney; commercial book illustrators Scott Gustavson, Brian Froud, Alan Lee and Alicia Austin, and fine artist Terri Windling. The show ran from Fall 1994 through Summer, 1995.
Since that time Vess’ work has appeared in gallery showings and museum exhibitions including:
- “The Tempest” Spring 1996. Four Color Images Gallery, N.Y.C.
- “Stardust” Spring - Summer 1998 Cartoon Art Museum, San Francisco, Ca.
- “Good Goddess Arts Exhibition”, Johnson City, TN and Abingdon, VA, March 1998, ‘99, and 2000.
- “Into the Light,” Comic Art Symposium, Avilles, Spain, Fall 2000.
- “Fantasy, Visionaries of the Fantastic” Torino, Italy, Spring 2002.
- “A Circle of Cats,” 153W Bookstore & Gallery, Abingdon VA, Summer 2003
- “Ancient Spirit, Modern Voice,” (Co-curator and participating artist) The DeFoor Centre, Atlanta , GA , Spring 2004.
Beginning in 1995 Vess self-published a biannual series of comics entitled The Book of Ballads and Sagas through his Green Man Press. In this series Vess illustrated adaptations of traditional Scottish and English Ballads written by a variety of contributors, including Emma Bull, Charles de Lint, Neil Gaiman, Sharyn McCrumb, Jeff Smith, and Jane Yolen. Issues 1-4 were collected and published as Ballads in 1997. The work was reprinted as a hardback by Tor in 2004 with additional material, including an introduction by Terri Windling.
Between 1997 and 1998 the collaboration between Vess and Gaiman continued in the four-part series Stardust, a prose novella to which Vess contributed 175 paintings. The series was collected and published in trade paperback form by DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint. Stardust won an Alex Award from the American Library Association, the Mythopoeic Award and Vess was given the 1999 World Fantasy Award for Best Artist for his work on the series.
Vess has twice won the Will Eisner Comics Industry Award. In 1997 he was named Best Penciler/Inker for his work on Sandman #75 and The Book of Ballads and Sagas. In 2002 he was honored as Best Painter for his work on Jeff Smith’s Rose (ISBN 1-888963-10-7, ISBN 1-888963-11-5).
Probably his most productive collaboration is with longtime friend and writer Charles de Lint. The pair have worked together on at least half a dozen publications including Seven Wild Sisters (Subterranean Press) and related projects A Circle of Cats (Viking, 2003) and Medicine Road (Subterranean Press, 2005) along with others mentioned above. Along with de Lint, Gaiman, Windling, and other writers and artists interested in myth and folklore, Vess and his wife Karen Shaffer are members of the Endicott Studio.
Charles Vess currently resides in Abingdon, Virginia.
[edit] Awards
- The Ink Pot Award: For excellence in comic art, 1990.
- World Fantasy Award: Best short story, 1991.
- Comic Creators' Guild: 1993 Best Cover (Dark Horse Presents #75).
- Silver Award (Comics Industry) 1995, Spectrum Annual of Imaginative Art.
- Will Eisner Comics Industry Award: Best Penciler/Inker 1996 for The Book of Ballads and Sagas and Sandman #75.
- World Fantasy Award: Best Artist, 1999.
