Casey Roonan: Illustrator, Cartoonist

Hello, I’m Casey Roonan and I’m excited to meet you! In my experience, I’ve found that art isn’t just a great way to say something, but also to explore. Because when you put something down on paper, you aren’t just speaking to a potential audience, you’re also in a big way, speaking to yourself.

In my first year at art school, I took a comics class that really encouraged me to speak from my own experience, and led me to, for one assignment, write about my high school senior prom. Which you know, in short, was basically just like, I was nervous, I made out with my date during a slow dance.  Then for the the duration of the after party, didn’t even speak or even go near her at all, to the point that I don’t think we even spoke when I left.

All of this is totally unspectacular, and even the comic, as I wrote it at the time, a lot of this back story was just into that, but it still felt like I was laying myself bare.  So I was really surprised and validated when I found out that other people related to my story. It allowed me to see what in my own experience is universal.  So in many ways, I think you can learn just as much from your peers or your classmates as you can from your teachers.  I’m also very much looking forward to seeing what you guys have to teach me.