Victor Kerlow was born, raised, and educated in New York City and continues to live there, drawing full time. He has made illustrations for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Random House, IFC, and Redbucket Films. His work has been recognized by the Society of Illustrators. Kerlow also edits and contributes to Gutter, a comics anthology published by TV Books.

What initially drew you to the language of comics? How would you characterize your particular approach to the form?

VK: Aside from the normal amount of comics any ten-year-old would read, I had access to a huge collection of comics that my mom had. I remember reading Charles Burns, Lynda Barry, Gary Panter, Robert Crumb and Mark Beyer, and all their comics had a pretty significant impact on me at the time, and definitely influenced my own drawing in the future. In high school, I found my dad’s old copy of Tomi Ungerer’s Underground Sketchbook and that really made me think about how drawings can tell a story without words. I didn’t really make traditional, paneled comics until college though, when I met a friend who reintroduced me to a lot of classic comics that I had looked at before, but never really studied carefully enough, like George Herriman, E.C. Segar, and Windsor McCay. Anyways, we started a comic magazine with some other friends, called Gutter, and I think I drew my first comic for the first issue. The more I drew comics, the more I realized the huge scope of possibilities they allow. I was never really interested in making any sort of large-scale artwork in school, and I think that comics filled that space nicely. There are so many ways to make comics, to tell stories with drawings, and the ways to connect different images together really resonated for me. It’s probably the closest I will ever get to writing poetry.

What inspired you to do a piece on homelessness?

VK: Growing up here in New York City, I did a lot of drawings of the city, and drawing homeless people was part of the cityscape. Each neighborhood has a few people who stay in that area and you talk with them when you’re walking to the bus to go to school or hanging out in the neighborhood after work. They are always interesting looking people, and once you speak with them, you realize they are usually bursting with great stories, even if they aren’t all true. Recently, I’m not sure if I’m seeing more homeless people around the places I grew up, but there's definitely not any less, and I know the economic problems going on right now aren’t helping that situation.

Does your personal experience growing up in New York City often figure into your illustrations?

VK: Definitely. Any time I get a job that gives me an excuse to go outside and walk around the city, I’m always really psyched. One of the first illustrations I did for The New Yorker was about Willet’s Point, in Queens, and going up there to take reference photos for the drawings was a great part of the job. I think that everyone loves to explore New York, and learning about new places that are only a subway ride away is always exciting. I also did some work for the NY times recently and ended up having to draw a lot of basketball players. That was a perfect opportunity to go down to The Cage on West 4th Street, and draw for the afternoon. During high school and college, I was always very into drawing reportage type assignments, to capture a lot of the places I hang out. A few years ago I worked on a project documenting all the different factories in the Meatpacking District, which was a great experience, talking with all the guys who work in those places. The city has endless drawing possibilities, and incorporating them into my work is always a fun thing to do.

I’m curious about where the “visual culture” of your work originates—where do you turn for visual inspiration?

VK: Probably the same places most people find inspiration—movies, art, comics, etc. I grew up watching a lot, a lot, of movies, and although I love them, making comics is the closest I think I want to get to actually making a movie. For me, the similarity between the two is one of the reasons I like making comics so much. New York of course is a limitless inspiration for my work, and the majority of my family lives in Mexico City, so that is another city environment that influences a lot of my drawings as well. William Steig and James McMullan are also both pretty inspiring artists as far as illustration goes. I have this one Charles Burns spread I cut out of a New Yorker when I was eight, and that drawing has been pretty important to me over the years. More recently, I learned about the work of Yoshiharu Tsuge, whose comic “Screw-Style” is pretty spectacular. If I could impact other people the way his comics do, I would be a happy guy.

Tell me a little about the comics anthology that you work on—have you always been interested in disseminating the work of other artists along with your own?

VK: Yeah, well for me, comics were a later interest, and there are just so many incredible people working in the field that I was blown away once I started looking around at everything. As small as Gutter is, in the bigger scheme of comics, it is still a great feeling to compile such an incredible collection of work. It’s basically like making my dream-comic, exactly something I would want to spend my own money on.

Your work appears in some very mainstream publications, like the New Yorker, as well as more marginal art-world contexts: do you have two distinct bodies of work, or is it more of a cohesive endeavor?

VK: The fact that I can do my drawings for all different types of projects is a great thing. There isn’t really anything I would rather do all day than draw, and I am very grateful to the people that help make that possible. The way I approach any drawing is basically the same, but of course a comic I draw on the bus, in my drawing book, isn’t necessarily going to look the same as an illustration for a magazine. I experiment with materials occasionally, but can only deviate so far from the ways I like to draw.

What are you working on next?

VK: Oh man, I just have this never-ending list of work that I need to complete. I finished a drawing for The New York Times today, which was a lot of fun, so that just got crossed off. At the top of the list now is some other illustration work, a comic that takes place along the F-line, and a few zines I want to finish up—one about summer in New York, and another called “Big Empty Space,” a collection of more personal drawings. Actually, I should probably be working on one of those things right now...

What are the issues facing us today that you’re most interested in, concerned about, or motivated by as an artist? What should we be paying attention to?

VK: Everyone’s probably got enough to worry about already; I’m not going to try and stress them out even more.