Anne Elizabeth Moore connected me with Jacinta Bunnell earlier this year, and I’m so glad she did! She makes awesome feminist and queer coloring books for kids and adults of all ages. I truly wish that they had been around when I was a kid. Since this Summer, I’ve been helping her out with some website and social media projects and getting to know her work really well. Last month, she released a new coloring book in Spanish, and I wanted to share it here.
We recently did a long distance studio visit, (I’m in New Mexico and Jacinta is in Hudson Valley, New York). You can read my interview with Jacinta about her books and practice below. Included are some photos that I took of her coloring books, and some photos Jacinta sent me of her artwork and studio. You can find the rest of her work at jacintabunnell.com and all of her books at queerbookcommittee.com.
Rebecca Mir Grady: You mentioned that you have a residency this fall that's at a library or a collection of kids books?
Jacinta Bunnell: I will be in residency for a week at the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center. They have the largest collection of children’s books with LGBTQ content I have ever personally seen. I have a long professional relationship with Adrian Shanker, the Founder and Executive Director, who I met at a youth organizers conference in the early 2000s when he was a student activist. When the new girls will be boys will be girls will be… was released, he invited me to show the images from the book in the art gallery at the Center. While there for the opening, I was amazed by their vast children’s library and proposed a residency so I could study the books. The Center was able to secure funding and I am looking forward to teaching some workshops while there, spending my days reading children’s books, and working on my second kid’s book.
RMG: Can you tell me a bit about how you got started making art?
JB: I was always a crafty kid. My favorite thing to do was create new bubble letter fonts and make sings for my bedroom door with my name. My dad and my Aunt Bobbi were self-taught artists who nurtured a certain artistic side of me, but I didn't have any formal training or even consider that I could take an art class in high school.
I took one drawing class in college because I tried to take a class with every known queer teacher at Bucknell, where I got a degree in Philosophy and religion. I spent a lot of time thinking about and working on social change while in college and knew that I wanted to do some sort of community organizing work when I graduated. Art was never on the table.
When I graduated, I was a volunteer coordinator at a soup kitchen for a year and then got a job at Planned Parenthood, working as a health educator and case manager. While there in the 90s, I started an LGBTQ teen discussion group and one of the activities I led was making zines about our personal stories. In some ways, those zines were the predecessor to what I am doing now.
Jacinta Bunnell’s collage art, courtesy of the artist.
RMG: Have you always made collage style paintings? Has there been an evolution in your style over the years? What are you working on right now?
JB: The first real painting I ever made was in the early 2000s and began as a collage that I painted an image over. I was living with my partner Michael, who is a trained visual artist and illustrator. I was intrigued by what he and so many artists living in the Hudson Valley were doing. I asked them for art lessons. Out of necessity after a head trauma, which left me with blinding headaches when I read or wrote for a year and a half, I began painting because it didn’t give me a headache, and gave me something to do so I didn’t go mad not being able to read and write. I discovered that I loved it. My first works were so simple, but everyone around me was so supportive. I had some shows at local cafes and I sold the work. I kept going because it gave me such peace to make art. It is one of the only times when the swirl of worries and to-do lists in my head stop. Currently, I just finished designing two album covers for children’s musicians and am hand-painting a pair of pants for one of them to wear on tour. Working for oneself can be so uncertain some days because you don’t always know where the next job is coming from, but it is such a fun adventure.
RMG: You also make books, coloring books. How long have you been making those? Some of them are collaborations, can you tell me about how you started making those?
JB: I have been creating coloring books since 2001. When I was a childcare provider and health educator, so much of the children’s media I came across was heteronormative and sexist, so I combined forces with another creative friend, Irit Reinheimer (also a childcare provider at the time) to write the first book, girls will be boys will be girls wll be.... We initially made it for our friends and community, but found that it had a wider appeal than we had originally envisioned. I loved the process of creating the first book so much, that I just kept going. I had the idea for the second one, Girls Are Not Chicks, but I didn’t have great graphic design skills, so I invited my friend Julie Novak to collaborate with me on that one. When I had the idea for the third book, Sometimes the Spoon Runs Away With Another Spoon, I had the whole concept laid out and written but wanted some illustrations that really popped. I met Nat Kusinitz at a craft fair at Bard College where he was tabling some of his original drawings. I absolutely fell in love with his style and asked if he would collaborate on this book with me. ForThe Big Gay Alphabet, I enlisted Leela Corman, who I had met at a writing workshop with Lynda Barry.
RMG: Do you make any other kinds of books? I.e. zines, artist books, etc.
JB: I was first introduced to zines in 1995 by my friend Rodica Weitzman who showed me some Riot Grrrl and radical self-care zines. I had agreed to facilitate a zine-making workshop for young people with her, so I had to figure out very quickly what they were all about! I immediately felt connected to this form of expression, having spent many hours making my own hand-drawn books as a child. It seems like such an obvious next step to me now, to photocopy your art and/or writing and pass it out to your friends, but it was such a revolutionary concept to me when I first heard about it! Now, when I teach zine-making workshops in schools or youth shelters, or just mention the idea of using a photocopier to a young artist/writer in order to replicate their work, I see the same light bulb go off above their head. I love introducing people to their neighborhood photocopier. It brings instant joy. It’s one of my favorite “tools”. I find great value in the process of creating something handmade. It activates an important part of our brains and hearts.
Zines prove to me time and time again that our work does not need to be validated by publishers in order to make a difference in people’s lives or be wildly loved. Zines give people belief in their own ideas; when you see someone else, maybe someone who isn’t scholarly, who has put things down on paper for others to read, you can possibly imagine yourself doing the same thing. You can still get my zines at Quimby’s in Chicago and Brooklyn, a place that has been a stronghold in the zine community forever.
RMG: You just released the Spanish version of one of your first books Las niñas pueden ser reyes - congrats, that's so exciting! How did the translation project come about? Do you think any of your other coloring books will also get translations?
JB: In 2009, I received an email from an educator in Nicaragua named Fernanda Siles who offered to translate Girls Are Not Chicks into Spanish after buying it at a conference. I could not have been more thrilled! But the translated document sat on my computer for nine years before my publisher was ready to turn it into a book. I would love if any of my other books got translated into ANY language. I currently have a translation of girls will be boys will be girls will be… in Russian sitting on my computer that a Vassar student did for me after I taught a workshop there.
RMG: Do you have any book projects in the works? Do you think you'll ever make a kid's story book, after all the coloring books?
JB: I just signed a contract on my first children’s story book! I wrote it in 2009 and kept revising it over and over for the last decade. I would show it to folks to get feedback, shorten it, etc. I found the work of Crystal Vielula at Bluestockings Bookstore. She self-publishes these fantastic coloring books featuring animals in fashionable outfits. I was obsessed! I asked her to collaborate on this book and I am really happy with how it is turning out.
RMG: What does a normal day in the studio look like for you? Do you have favorite tools or even music or podcasts that you like to have in the studio with you?
JB: There is no normal. Many days I don’t even make it into the studio because I have side hustles that pay the bills, such as doing home organizing for people. When I am in the studio, I listen to a lot of podcasts: The Daily, 1619, The Anthropocene Reviewed, Two Dope Queens, 99% Invisible, Code Switch, and StoryCorps are some of my favorites. I have a large antique bookshelf that my mom bought at an auction for me when I was a teenager. It is filled with books I cut up for collage. I usually feel the need to tidy up my space before beginning a project for the day.
RMG: Are there places/things that you look to for inspiration for your work?
JB: My guilty pleasure is design and home decor magazines. I love the colors, fabrics, and design ideas.
Jacinta Bunnell in her studio, image courtesy of the artist.
Jacinta Bunnell’s studio, image courtesy of the artist.
Thanks so much Jacinta! Check out the rest of her work at jacintabunnell.com and all of her books at queerbookcommittee.com.