Interview: Meg Frank

Congratulations to Meg Frank, Hugo nominee for Best Fan Artist!


Creating jewelry, paintings, and everything in between, Frank's immersive artwork communicates feelings that can't be expressed in words. With a varied portfolio, their work spans nature inspired watercolors, abstract paintings that make galaxies and nebulae look close enough to touch, and functional, wearable jewelry, and many pieces that fall in between, such as the cover art for Journey Planet 45 - The Matrix.   Frank works on many projects within SFF fandom and publishing, including volunteering at many a convention, and curating the fiction in Fireside's forthcoming anthology Hope in This Timeline.

In 2019,  Frank did a series of pieces inspired by This is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. In 2019 they also discovered alcohol inks for painting, and the artwork became a brighter, more fun, and sometimes glittery place.   A fan of glitter, fantastic hair and even more fantastic outfits, you can follow Frank on twitter (and see tons of their artwork and other great photos!) at @peripateticmeg.

Frank was kind enough to chat with me about their inspirations,  going on an art creation binge after reading This is How You Lose the Time War, growing up surrounded by genre and the star strewn skies of the Midwest, creating art that speaks volumes without a word, and more.  In spite of what they say, I am still convinced that Frank's studio spaces look like a glorious swirling galaxy, or perhaps maybe a magician's secret room.

Let's get to the the interview!


NOAF: What media do you typically work in? How did you first get started working with these materials?

Meg Frank: I've never met a medium that I didn't like, but you'll most often find me working with paints and jewelry. I started really focusing on painting as a hobby in 2014 while I was living abroad and sort of couldn't stop. Watercolors were first, then oils, inks (with brushes then pens) and most recently alcohol inks with resin and other inclusions.

Jewelry came a few years later - in 2017 my partner Sara Eileen, an extremely talented multi-media artist who made the porcelain for To The Moon and Back, took me bead shopping and I was hooked. I'd been playing with very basic wire flowers before then and silk was a revelation in terms of speed - knotting pearls is incredibly meditative work for me. I took a wire class from Elise Matthesen in 2018, whom I grew up watching making the most fabulous things, and I have to say it's an incredible honor to be nominated with them. I've always loved jewelry, it's a shiny, somewhat daily deliberation on how to present ones self. I feel terribly lucky to be able to work with Hillary Monahan and Becky Chambers of The Peculiarity Shop. They are both fantastic artists and Hillary is a boss with Etsy which allows me to focus on juggling so many mediums.

NOAF: How would you describe your art style?

MF: I would describe my art style as colorful. I go in a lot of different directions in terms of styles and mediums to express different attitudes, but my use of color is pretty consistent. Also, it has been noted on several occasions that a significant amount of my art includes glitter.

NOAF: What led you to create art that speaks to science fiction and fantasy fans?

MF: I think being raised by science fiction and fantasy fans probably did most of the trick. As a kid I was surrounded by (but not actually paying close attention to) media like Star Wars and Star Trek and Rocky Horror. I watched The Return of the King nab eleven Oscars when I was thirteen years old, and the Marvel reboot (Iron Man, 2008) came out the year before I graduated high school. Much of the media that in decades past would have been considered weird or dorky built just as much of my understanding of beauty as Annie Leibovitz’s photos or John Singer Sargent’s portraits.

Journey Planet 45 - The Matrix

NOAF: Do you have a piece or grouping of pieces in your Hugo voter packet that is especially meaningful to you? Can you tell us the story behind it?

MF: A number of the pieces that I made last year were very much influenced by This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal el-Mohtar and Max Gladstone which is on the ballot this year and I cannot recommend enough. A very good friend smuggled me an ARC in March of 2019 and my brain was absolutely consumed. At 2’x4’ It Only Stings A Little is the largest wire piece I have ever done by a considerable margin - most of my previous work was necklace size, and it came tumbling out of my brain in about a week. Dark Blue, Dark Blue; My Careful Cardinal; The Garden Grows; and The Last Bloom are all nods to that story. There are many, many more.

Also, Be Still My Heart is me trying really, really hard to impress my partners and as I've been told it worked, I'm rather fond of it.

"It Only Stings A Little"

NOAF: What are your inspirations for your artwork?

MF: I would say that most of my work, the work that I love the most, comes from trying to express feelings that I just don't have words for. I can't say it, but I've got to say it somehow, and it turns out that I can get a lot of it out in color. Any time I'm overwhelmed with feelings (hey 2020!) I go looking for a paintbrush or silk.

I'm deeply interested in creating art that explores 'home' and all of the beautifully different and complicated ways home is built.

NOAF: Many of your paintings have these incredibly lush, velvety black edges that bleed into the abstract colors. Can you tell us a little about how you get this beautiful effect?

MF: I wish I had a more exciting for the how part of the this question beyond "I pour a lot of ink on the edge of the canvas and the floor," but that’s mostly it! Merging the colors is done by tilting the frames and boards I paint on as well as blowing through straws and several other pretty basic but silly to observe techniques. The why is more compelling to me - I grew up watching the stars in rural Minnesota and other parts of the Midwest with dark skies and that feeling of immersion is deeply comforting to me.

NOAF: You paint, you do beadwork, you do metal jewerly, I've got to ask, what does your studio/workspace look like? (My imagination is telling me your studio looks like a glorious swirling galaxy, but that can't be true, can it?)

MF: Due to the adventure that is living in New York I’'ve actually just split my workspaces so I'm no longer doing as much of my work at home. I keep most of my beadwork in the city, but I've moved a significant portion of my painting supplies to a place upstate where I have more room to work and don't have to worry as much about spilling permanent materials on the floor.

My beads are slowing creeping from my desk at home to adjacent counters and key bowls in a very lovely subtle sparkly way whereas my painting studio looks like there was a glitter explosion in a basement that is half library and half art supply store. There is work everywhere. Books and letters are tucked in around various projects and supplies. Possibly a significant amount of paint on the floor. Also, a hammock and a cat on a heating pad. It’s one of my favorite places in the entire world.

NOAF: Your studio spaces sound like heaven on earth! Meg, thank you so much for this wonderful interview!


POSTED BY: Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. She can be found on twitter, @redhead5318 , where she posts about books, food, and assorted nerdery.

Interview: Grace P. Fong

Congratulations to Grace P. Fong for her Hugo nomination for best fan artist!



Fong's artwork has  been featured in Strange Horizons, The Future Fire, Uncanny, and elsewhere. Her artwork showcases a flair for the dramatic, with characters often frozen in moments that get the viewer to immediately start a story in their heads, about what just happened, or about what might happen in the next few minutes. 

She's done fan art in her favorite worlds, including The Grishaverse, the Illuminae Files, The Young Elites, Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games, and many more.  Fong is the kind of artist that when she sees stories and characters she likes, she puts her own artistic spin on them, showing the character's personality in a whole different light, to the joy of fans.

Along with Rhiannon Rasmussen-Smith,  Fong is working on Bone Ink, a death positive short comic book, which will appear in Iron Circus's "You Died" anthology.  She been involved with video games and movies, such as The Croods, Kung Fu Panda 2, and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. You can learn more about Fong at her website GracePFong.com, or by following her on twitter at @fictograph.

Fong was kind enough to answer all sorts of questions I sent her way, everything from the dynamism and drama in her artwork, to how she goes about creating each piece (usually lots of drafting! and sometimes, none!), to Bone Ink, and more.

Let's get to the interview!

NOAF: What media do you typically work in? How did you first get started working with these materials?

G.P.F.: For black and white, I'm a big fan of pencils and inks. I like pencils because you can get a wide range of shades, and I like pens because you have to be really powerful with your strokes because you can't erase. For color - I prefer digital. I usually use Adobe Photoshop and Procreate for iPad. They're very difficult to start off with because there's so many tools and possibilities, but I like how you can do so much without paying a lot of money or using potentially toxic materials.

NOAF: How would you describe your art style?

G.P.F.: Haha, that's actually really hard. I guess I'd describe it as just - melodramatic? I like using groups of characters, lots of detail, and very contrasting lights and darks. Lately, I've been experimenting with flat versus deep space on the picture plane - how to use both lines and painting together in a unique way.

NOAF: What led you to create art that speaks to science fiction and fantasy fans?

G.P.F.: It's all because I'm a big fantasy fan myself! I started drawing as a child by copying my favorite cartoons on TV - Sonic the Hedgehog and Sailor Moon, specifically. But then I discovered Animorphs and Tamora Pierce and began to draw those characters, too! After some time in art school, I picked up reading again and began drawing stuff for newer books. It felt like coming home.

NOAF: Do you have a piece or grouping of pieces in your Hugo voter packet that is especially meaningful to you? Can you tell us the story behind it?

G.P.F.: Following the award's eligibility criteria for Fan Art, the pieces I've included are ones I've done for speculative fiction magazines in the past year. I hope for all of them that I've managed to make something that speaks to my clients' stories. However, something struck me when doing "Pleiades for A New Generation" - the accompanying story was very abstract, but audiences resonated with the image of being exposed and falling apart as a way of revealing our inner stardust, being something else grander on the inside. It was actually a much quicker piece than the rest and using less complicated materials that I'd normally use just for sketching. The special ones just kind of come out fully formed, no drafts necessary.

NOAF: I noticed a lot of your artwork involves two people who are interacting with each other, and I love this, because my mind immediately starts making up a story about them and wondering who they are and what they are all about. Do you know their story before you start drawing them? What influences your composition decisions, regarding their positions to one another?

G.P.F.: I always have the concept first. Sometimes it's a vague idea and sometimes it's very clear and specific. But as an artist, we have processes for drafting like thumbnails, color compositions, sketching, that help me arrive at a composition that reflects the narrative. I always tell myself that my multi-character pieces are "visualizing the space between two individuals" - like whether that space is close, far apart, tense, caring. And then I try to use lines, colors, and shapes that express that feeling.

NOAF: You mentioned on your website you have a forthcoming comic "Bone Ink", created with Rhiannon Rasmussen-Smith. What can you tell us about "Bone Ink"?

G.P.F.: "Bone Ink" will be a short, six-page, comic included in Iron Circus's YOU DIED anthology. It's about being death positive. Rhiannon and I have created a story about a girl who wants to turn her mother's ashes into a tattoo. I sketched the pages digitally but finished them in traditional media because I wanted to echo the themes of how creative work transforms as it passes through generations. For more information on death positivity, I recommend playing the video game A Mortician's Tale.

NOAF: Beyond illustrations, cover art, and other art work, you have also worked on games (FIFA19 and Call of Duty:Infinite Warfare) and movies (The Croods, Kung Fu Panda 2). How was your experiences doing artwork for games and movies different than doing artwork for book cover art, comics, and traditional illustrations?

G.P.F.: It's pretty different. Because I don't do art for games. I work full time as a programmer, haha.

NOAF: Thank you so much!

POSTED BY: Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. She can be found on twitter, @redhead5318 , where she posts about books, food, and assorted nerdery.