DREI FRAGEN with Artist Tess McCarthy

Artist Tess McCarthy shares her artistic wisdom.

Each Wednesday, I ask a different artist the same three questions.

This week's featured artist is

Tess McCarthy

, She’s been a driving force in the global zine project we’ve been working on with

Kevin Chung

. Tess is a zine librarian, multi-multimedia artist, poet, podcaster, and all-round creative powerhouse with endless heart.

1. What first sparked your interest in creating art?

My older half-brother drew a dragon with colored ball pens, and that was the impetus for me to begin at “art.” I was 6.

I didn't know what exactly mine to create—and that is why I create multimedia art. It’s a chance to do everything.

For the most part, I do illustration, fontography, iconography, comics, paint in acrylics/mixed media, video/animation, some collage, and miniature sculpture.

First it was drawing. Then copying.

I began drawing and writing comics seriously since age 11. I stopped.

Other people were painting in my 20s so I decided to paint like the rest of them. I stopped.

Then, I did animation. I got on to stop-motion. It was a clear path from comics. But we know there are no clear paths.

I stopped doing stop motion because I didn't have the digital skills.

2. What are your regrets?

The only regret I have is stopping. But even here, I realize I needed to at various points in my life to create other things.

Time has been my only ally in creation.

I can explain:

Over time, I have written poetry on an almost daily basis from 2011 to 2022. Around 2022, when I stopped producing almost daily, I realized I amassed 787 poems.

With this perspective? I hired a friend to help me compile them. She popped it on a spreadsheet and even then, the catalog of 787 poems marinated.

Around 2024, I revisited the catalog of my morning poems, which I now call The Primary Catalog. Some were written in the afternoon, but the bulk in the morning hours.

How did I know this beyond file metadata and memory? I time stamped them.

Eventually, it led me to create The MorningPoems Podcast—it was an opportunity to re-distribute my work under a new platform. While Meta still has usage rights to publish my work, the re-distributed work gets edited and refined.

The discipline of writing every day helps me in my comics, illustration, and painting too.

3. What wisdom would you offer someone beginning their art career, or exploring art for the first time at any stage in life?

These I’ll answer separately—

For new artists:

• My nephew started exhibiting in group shows after he was painting for 4 years. He was selling work he did in the garage. I always encourage him. Here’s how I’d re-frame my advice to him—that I’d say to others too:

  1. Get support right away. I recommend getting plugged into a collective. That’s a community of artists who have space in a spot to only do art. It’s hard getting in sometimes, but it’s worth it.

  2. Take classes. Get technical training or support. Take one of each: a drawing class, a seminar in watercolors, a workshop in oils, and a weekend acrylic class. Why not? Drawing is the foundation—the skeletons of your work. The mediums are the flesh.

     1. When you belong to a collective, there is always someone around to lend another eye: take the feedback, but don’t let it devour you. Grow from it.

  3. Save your work. Photograph & document your work.

  4. Promote your work—it doesn’t have to be social media, but put yourself out there.

  5. Write (and for the remainder of your career) your artist’s statement & bio. Have it on your website.

     1. You must know who you are, what motivates you, and what you’re committed to producing so that you connect with the right people.

For the curious:

• At any stage, begin. See above.

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Art by Tess McCarthy.

Check out the wonderful

Tess McCarthy

on Substack.

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