For the cover of Motif’s Student Guide issue, illustrator Kai Gietzen drew a “monstrous crumpled up ball of notebook paper,” which, he says, “Represents all of the trials one encounters throughout the school year.”. Standing before the big ball is a figure wearing a backpack and holding a pencil as a sword.
“I was looking for something that would express that feeling of going back to school without being specific to any one school or area of Providence,” he explains.
And what better than paper and pencil? They’re found in every school, and they figured prominently in Gietzen’s own artistic journey.
Born and raised in Milwaukee, WI, Gietzen doodled in notebooks during his middle school years. He’d first gotten interested in art when he saw the concept drawings for the Lord of the Rings movies done by book illustrators John Howe and Alan Lee.
“The worlds these fantasy artists created hooked me,” Gietzen says.
When he was a sophomore in high school, his dad encouraged him to pursue art. “He said it was something I was good at,” the illustrator recalls. And to prove the point, his dad showed a notebook planner full of his doodles to an art teacher, who said the student should definitely start taking art classes.
“I had great teachers who were passionate about art, like Jess Mohagen and Jeff Zimpel,” he says of high school. And among the excellent professors at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), from which he graduated in 2022 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration, he cites book illustrator JooHee Yoon as particularly inspirational, especially for her “bold colors and shapes.”
Gietzen loves the work of French illustrator Yann Kebbi. “He does big sprawling drawings of architectural subjects and very humorous characters using colored pencils. His artwork is loose, crude, and still really beautiful,” he comments.
Describing his art as narrative and conceptual illustrations, Gietzen says his favorite pieces are screen prints of a blue dog and of a green frog, which he displayed at a RISD craft sale. “I wanted to do something graphic and simplistic, using just two colors, and abstract their bodies into really twisting shapes,” he explains, adding, “I really like how they came out.”
Through a friend’s mom, Gietzen was put in touch with an author who was looking for an illustrator. He landed the gig for Boxer Baby Battles Bedtime! by Mia Wenjen. “It was a good experience to have, coming out of RISD. I learned how that long process goes,” he says.
Gietzen then created a 56-page book titled Wayfinder via Risograph printing, which uses spot ink colors to add an extra dimension and texture to the work. “The machine looks like an office copier, and prints one color at a time,” he explains. Gietzen is drawn to the physicality of traditional printing methods. “The colors are a lot brighter and more vibrant than digital work,” he says.
After living in PVD for seven years, including his time at RISD, Gietzen has moved back to Milwaukee with his partner, Jinghong Chen, the cut paper artist who created the cover for Motif’s 2024 Fall Guide. “It’s time for a change of scenery, and we’re thinking about moving to New York City [later] in the fall,” he says.
One of his goals is to do more commissioned projects. Another is to keep adding to his portfolio of illustrative artwork. To relax, Gietzen enjoys rock climbing, surfing, and sometimes just biking around.
He’s been creating a bunch of sketchbook drawings lately to, as he puts it, “Go back to my roots of doodling in my notebook.”
And for Gietzen, the most satisfying thing is “to work a project out from the concept to the final printing.”
–John Picinich
Gietzen’s illustrations and sketchbook doodlings can be viewed at his websitekaigietzen.com.