Art & Life with Iris Jong

Today we’d like to introduce you to Iris Jong.

Iris, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
I’ve drawn since I was a child, I remember winning a Mother’s Day art competition when I was 5, for an oil pastel scribble of a drawing I made. For a long time, I took art classes recreationally, learning to duplicate masterworks in watercolor, charcoal, and oil, and I’d sketch people and characters for fun.

But it wasn’t until graduating from college and meeting one of my current best friends, a professional illustrator, that I started creating original, polished illustration work. I started dedicating 60+ hours a month to practicing illustration, and I’ve been keeping to this goal for about five years now. I didn’t ever think I could be a serious illustrator, but I recently completed my first big commission for the ACLU. These days, I do a variety of stuff: nonfiction essays, short stories, illustrations, and comics.

I also got together with Angie Wang, Jen Wang, and Jake Mumm to found Comic Arts LA (www.comicartsla.com), an indie comics festival for Los Angeles, bringing together illustrators, comics artists, and animators to share their work and interact with readers. It’s in its fourth year running and we’re excited to be expanding into a new space this year.

Can you give our readers some background on your art?
I’m still finding my grounding as an artist, but I have inchoate ideas around how I’d like to channel my art eventually. I do draw illustrations, mostly for practice, or for social impact organizations like Free Radicals (a science/social justice blog) or API Queer Women Transgender Community.

What I’m most interested in are comics as a form of visual communication. Narrative and characterization matter more to me than beauty and polish, although I like a clean aesthetic, too. I’ve created a good amount of fancomics and fanart, and I’ve especially loved creating humorous fancomics for canonically serious works.

My goals are to inspire delight or pleasure with ingenuity (for instance, making people laugh with a dumb comic, or provoking intense feelings with a good story) and to enlighten with shared insight.

In your view, what is the biggest issue artists have to deal with?
It’s obviously hard to be an independent artist, making the exact work you want while achieving economic stability/security. Working for a corporate client, the animation industry, etc. are all valid choices, but it seems like freedom + financial stability are necessary trade-offs.

What’s more interesting for me to think about is to what extent pursuing art professionally is selfish, especially considering how many practical needs people have, with the unequal distribution of housing, food, and other resources. I have a background in business strategy, data analytics, and project management… all of which can be put to good use in the nonprofit world (which is what I do now, actually). I’d quite like to do art/writing full-time, but that’s a hard choice to make when I know I have skills that many organizations need.

So the question is: what is the value and impact of more art in the world when people are lacking in basic necessities?

What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
I post mostly on my website.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.irisjong.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ipjong/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ipjong

Image Credit:
Christina Guo, Sketch & Run

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