CLEVELAND — Artwork from around northeast Ohio is being gathered to be released in an annual magazine issue, and one woman is tasked with bringing it together.
What You Need To Know
- Sequoia Bostick is a curator for the 2022 Cleveland Scene Comics Issue
- Bostick said the role was passed down to her over the years
- She said that she tried to include work from a variety of local artists
Sequoia Bostick is making a name for herself within the art community.
“Sequoia likes art,” she said. “Sequoia likes all of it.”
Bostick is an illustrator who’s recently been tapped to curate the 2022 Comics Issue for Cleveland Scene magazine.
“The Cleveland Scene Comic[s] Issue is just something, I think, that started like 10 years ago,” Bostick said. “It’s just like a fun opportunity to kind of break up the news cycle in Cleveland Scene with some fun like local creative work.”
It’s an honor Bostick said she wanted to extend to others.
“A lot of what I have been doing lately is also including a lot of new artists, a lot of up and coming artists,” she said. “So, they’re still in school and so they are able to get that same opportunity, a lot sooner than I did, so that they can, like, get their stuff published.”
Bostick added that welcoming the next generation of artists to the industry is important to her.
She is one of the creators behind Vagabond Comics, an independently published comic collection that features work from a variety of up-and-coming artists.
“We just wanted to create something that invited people to create, because a lot of what we found when we graduated from college was like, ‘what do we do now?’” Bostick said.
In addition to curating the 10th annual edition of the scene’s comics issue, Bostick has also illustrated two picture books. She said she enjoys drawing characters that aren’t typically featured in books.
“I always like to include people of color, because it’s not something that I did get to see a lot of when I was a kid,” she said. “So, just kind of normalizing like Black characters living everyday life and, you know, going on in the same adventures as anyone else would.”
As she continues to leave her print on the art world, Bostick said it’s her goal to continue helping others find their place too.
“Like, I love working with younger artists just to kind of give them the lay of the land, so they don’t have to find out the same way I did,” she said. “I am surprised, like, people don’t talk about it as much as they should. So what I’m teaching, it’s always like come on, this is everything that you need to know and then there’s going to be some curveballs, no matter what.”
