We recently connected with Karen Boyhen and have shared our conversation below.

Karen, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you take vacations? Why or why not?

Yes. I look to vacations as not only a time to rest but a time to gather inspiration. I keep a daily sketchbook to help pass the time waiting in airports and diners, and as a diary of people met and places visited. Beyond drawing, I set an intention of something creative I want to focus on. I accompanied my boyfriend, pianist Ricky Nye to Europe last year. I very much wanted to gather color inspiration. One of the exhibitions that made the biggest impact on me was “Basquiat X Warhol Painting Four Hands” at the Louis Vuitton Foundation.

Karen, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I bring art, creativity, and illustration to your projects — working to help you communicate with your audience in an authentic and impactful way.

A graduate of Central Connecticut State University with a degree in graphic design, I was a scholar athlete in track and field. Working in co-op job placements helped to validate my career direction. Through this experience I established connections in the design community. Being close to NYC after graduating college, I took night classes in editorial illustration at the School of Visual Arts — which was instrumental in helping me find my artistic voice. I held jobs and freelanced at many different companies in CT and NY including design firms and strategic marketing companies, and worked as a graphic designer within marketing teams in corporations.

Moving to Cincinnati, I initially worked as an art director in the marketing department of a publishing company.
I enjoyed working within a creative team, especially with copywriters. In this role I was fortunate to have the agency to design using different printing processes for direct mail and media kits. This including embossing, foil stamping, specialty folds and die cuts to help sell advertising in magazines the company published. I worked closely with commercial printers in choosing the best papers for the project and acquiring printing estimates. After 4.5 years in this role, I took the opportunity to spend some precious time with my son before he entered school.

I then experienced great serendipity by being introduced to the arts non-profit, Visionaries + Voices (V+V). V+V provides creative, professional, and educational opportunities to more than 125 visual artists with disabilities. I held different positions in the organization for over 14 years, my favorite being in the role of creative director. My job included working together with my creative co-workers to promote exhibitions and events and designing merchandise featuring the artist’s work. With the products we paid licensing fees to studio artists. I ventured off early in 2023 for other opportunities, spend more time making art and to build new creative partnerships. As it turns out, sometimes working on your own is a lonely way to go, so presently I am back in the studio a couple of days a week at this tremendous organization in order to be with my artist friends making art in this wellspring of creativity and innovation.

My capabilities include proficiency in Adobe Creative Cloud, Microsoft Office, vast experience designing, implementing and overseeing many aspects of creative development, superb creative concepting skills, excellent communication and project management skills.

Services offered:

• Editorial illustration for magazines and books
• Hand-drawn staff portraits that bring a cohesive look for an annual report, website or other collateral.
• Illustration for branding — perfect if you need images to build a unique identity to launch a business or redesign an existing one. • I can provide your designer with a set of illustrations to use as a toolbox to design with.
• Illustrated maps and infographics
• Merchandise design — custom designed T-shirts? Bags? Hats? Stationery? Holiday Cards? Wrapping Paper? YES!

I hope this encourages you to reach out to me and help you with your next project!

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

During Covid lockdown on a dark January morning, I heard the news that the 17-year Brood X cicadas were coming in spring to Cincinnati and many other locations. That news gave me hope that somehow we would crawl out of our isolation just as these interesting bugs were destined to crawl up and out of their long sleep!

So I got to work and made 17 cicada illustrations, one for each of the 17 years they were sequestered underground. After developing the line of cicada shirts, I figured out how to copyright them, and then named my company “Geez Louise Tees” (Geez Louise was my roller derby name), built a website and learned how to build the on-line store using the Squarespace platform. (FYI now I host my store on karenboyhen.com)

I leaned on the fact that I knew people would get very excited in anticipation of the arrival of a cicadas. I asked my artist friends if they would model a tee in exchange for a t-shirt, and they did NOT disappoint! I used these playful photos to design promotions that I placed on Facebook and Google ads. When I started posting the t-shirt ads I was delighted to have SO MANY shares and sales! It was a perfect combination of timing and support from friends. Along the marketing journey and reaching out to media outlets, I was interviewed in a video by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation! You can see the video here: https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/1.6060122

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Drawing is the matrix.

My most authentic Ideas and the beginning of all of my projects start with drawing.

There is power in a sketchbook — put the pen to paper and get the ordinary, initial ideas out of the way, and keep on working and drawing to get to the good stuff.

I believe in the practice of daily drawing it is a path to mindfulness and gives you access to your imagination.

Besides a way to gather my thoughts and sort out concepts, I use my sketchbook to collect drawings. Some are complete as black and white final art, or they may be transformed into what comes next. Some of the places my drawings may lead include: paintings or color illustrations, paper mache sculptures, needle punch yarn “paintings”, dioramas, and animations.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.karenboyhen.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karen.boyhen/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/karen.boyhen
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-boyhen-585a826/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@karenboyhen

Image Credits

Karen Portrait with scissors — photo by Kellie Coleman (She spells her first name with an “ie” instead of a “y”)

Info on other photos if needed for captions, please add ©Karen Boyhen 2024 to images you use —

1. Drawings for the Fox and Hen in Denver, Colorado
2. Illustration of Clover Grill, New Orleans, LA
3. Pasta surface design pattern collection
4. Egg carton label illustrated for Marie’s Free Range eggs, Dale, Texas
5. Characters drawn for A5 Steakhouse for use on menu and website, Denver, CO
6. Infographic / map / timeline highlighting Fresh To Morrow Farm, Morrow, OH for Alan Wight, Cincinnati, OH
7. Cicada t-shirts, photo by Robyn Winkler
8. Vaccination, Karen Boyhen.