We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Joe Botsch a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Joe, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I had graduated art school and thrown myself into some self directed illustration work, hoping to make it big before I had to get a real job. I dabbled in some comics that I posted online and sold at conventions, got little pieces of one-off work here and there, but I was pretty unfocused. I’d get attached to an idea, pursue it for a while, then it would lose it’s luster and I would give up on it and move onto something new. After some years it started feeling like this was a cycle I was never going to get out of and I came to the slow realization that illustration had lost it’s joy for me.

I decided to loosen up and try something else so I pursued my secondary passion in music, and started a band. I wasn’t a particularly good guitarist and didn’t think of myself as a good singer, but I thought to myself, “nobody really expects me to suddenly succeed as a musician, so why not just have fun with it and see what happens.” The band became a project that’s come to mean the world to me, a true passion where I can enjoy the freedom of song writing and telling a story that takes place over a few minutes of music, not dozens of pages of drawing and inking and coloring, and where I can get the immediate feedback of an audience instead of sending things off into the internet hoping people see it.

The interesting and unintended consequence is that illustration found it’s way back to me–to promote the band I started making our own show posters, t-shirts, pins, and social media content, and from there other bands in the area that we worked with started asking me to do the same for them. This has lead to some consistent work making art for people in my community and for events that I’m thrilled to promote, all because I let go for a little while and trusted that my skills and drive would get me somewhere if I let them take the wheel.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m an illustrator and designer in Somerville, Massachusetts. My work is most frequently implemented to promote local events, for band posters and album covers, and I’m at my most happy when I can implement a horror twist. I’m a big fan of ink, I love heavy ink work and enjoy that feeling of sculpting-with-light that you get from ink work. I’m also the front man of a band called Your Friends in Hell, and my art has become synonymous with our brand and become something that I’ve proudly applied to other bands in our little rock scene. I particularly like working with horror elements, and love when a single illustration can really tell a whole story. I’m most employed for my striking poster imagery but I’m also passionate about character design and storytelling.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

I’m frequently asked by well-intended family friends and old acquaintances whether I get paid a lot for my work, and I’m sent opportunities that are very tangentially related to the kind of work I do but that might be financially lucrative. Though I always appreciate people having a vested interest in my career, I think a lot of people don’t realize that the drive to create is about so much more than financials. I’ve never been rich and I’m not going to pretend I’m a fancy artist in a Manhattan loft or something… I’ve worked all kinds of dirty jobs in my life. But that passion to make stuff has been present even after ten hour shifts and six day weeks, and whether I’m riding high or sailing low at the moment, it will always be there. I’ve had people ask the day after my band plays a little dive bar if there was any money in it, and I guess I just want people to know that making money should be the thing you do to support your goals in life, not the other way around. I make money on some jobs so that I can support myself to do the other stuff I love–if it makes some money that’s great, but it’s the drive to make art that connects with other people that really matters to me. To me, why we create is nothing less than asking why we live, why we get out of bed in the morning.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I think I found that after art school everyone who I graduated with got really nervous that they would be the only one to not succeed–they seemed to fear that, statistically, only one or two of us would ever survive as artists and make it big. So there were a few years there was art was a very solitary thing for me, something I did in private and occasionally posted out to the whole wide world, hoping someone would notice it. What I learned eventually was that community is very important to both your motivation, and success as an artist. I had remembered having classes in school where a few of us would really compete to bring in the best homework assignment and win the highest praise of the day, but the competition was friendly. We were learning from each other, challenging each other. Now, I delight in seeing what other artists I work with are up to, having a community of creatives around me, and giving myself the friendly, internal challenge to keep up and do better.

I believe that a rising tide raises all ships–stick with your artist friends, encourage each other, challenge each other. Though you should promote your work on social media and in the world, treat it like you’re making stuff just to impress those people in your own community. The passion will translate to the rest of the people who see it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://JoeBotsch.com
• Instagram: @donotreadcomics
• Other: Spotify: Your Friends in Hell

Image Credits

Photos by Red Eyed Photos