People in Providence 04.16 – Carl

Finding Solace in Cats

Carl | Downtown Providence

I’m good, it’s a nice day and I’m just enjoying the weather and selling my cat pictures… I’m an illustrator, I sometimes work for a magazine, I’m an editorial illustrator, this is something I do for fun and for money. They’re ballpoint pen drawings, pictures of cats: I started doing them when I was in the hospital. I noticed that a lot of nurses have cats.

I used to draw pictures of chairs for some reason. I like chairs, I did a show of chairs at AS220, now I’m doing cats. I’m gonna have a show in the fall at AS220. It’s just basically gonna be people on motorcycles.

AS220 is like a big studio, it has a really big press. They have entertainment, they have housing, they have classes: etching classes, screen printing classes, photography classes. And they have bands playing, it’s around the corner on Empire Street, so I’ll be having the show in the autumn.

Originally, I’m from New York City, I went to Parsons school of design and I studied in Paris.

I used to work for Rolling Stone magazine and New Yorker, the progressive magazine I worked for a long time, Baffler magazine. But for now, Cats. Cats it is.

I moved to Connecticut from New York and I had a child there and my daughter’s mother and I separated amicably. I didn’t really like Connecticut too much and I went to RISD summer school when I was in high school.

They have a summer school for high school students and I remembered I liked the city so I just came here and I’ve been living here ever since. My daughter is interesting because I had the daughter in Connecticut and she grew up and went to school in Troy, New York and now she lives in Brooklyn, which is funny.

I left Brooklyn to Connecticut and she had a daughter and she moved to Brooklyn. So she’s doing really well. But I like Providence. Providence is very nice. I don’t see myself moving back to New York.

 

Annie Deng is a student studying Literary Arts and Biochemistry at Brown University, looking to explore the Providence community and share the diverse perspectives and experiences she encounters along the way. In her free time, she enjoys doing photography and volunteering at the zoo.

 

Priyanka Kumar is a visual artist and studying at RISD.  Her work explores themes of gender and self-identity through folklore and mythology.  Kumar is researching the intersection of photography and printmaking.