Ann Shen is perfectly framed by her creations in her booth at Wondercon.
However, this booth holds just a fraction of the work forming the path Ann has spent the past several years paving for herself. Ann is immediately kind and warm: I’m greeted like an old friend even though we’ve only met in person once – a year ago at this convention. I quickly apologize to her husband for stealing Ann when he’s in the middle of eating lunch, but he gladly takes over the booth while Ann and I go find a spot to chat.
As we walk through the Anaheim Convention Center to find a quiet spot in the lobby, Ann mentions that she never sees this part of Wondercon since exhibitors load in through the back, and she generally doesn’t get the chance to stray far from her booth. She’s willing to sit on the floor with me until a couple stools open up, which is something this interviewer very much appreciates: seating space at conventions comes at a premium. Ann has been showing at conventions for the past seven or eight years, so she knows the drill. She also remembers a time when there wasn’t any kind of feminine presence at cons:
“I remember going to [San Diego] Comic-Con in 2006 when I was still in college down there and it was so casual you could just go up and buy a ticket on Sunday. And I think I remember wanting to buy stuff and I couldn’t find anything. I just got sketch books from Chris Sanders because he drew mermaids, but that was it. There was nothing girly or…anything I would want to get. So I’d be like, ‘I guess I’m just here to look at stuff.’
I think that in recent years I’ve definitely seen a rise in like – especially in the comic con area – a lot of people have more geared towards a female audience. And I think that people are starting to understand that most of the buying power is with women either in their households or just in general.
While Ann’s been a steady presence at cons and craft fairs for years, she’s recently scaled back on her convention presence:
You know Wondercon is now my only show I think – starting this year. In the beginning, I used to do seven or eight a year for a couple years and then kind of fine tuned to which ones were most worth the time. And then just narrowed it down even more to one. They’re a lot of work. It’s a lot of time outside developing for them. It’s really fun when we [We being Ann and her husband Ryan Shaw – a storyboard artist on Bob’s Burgers] do them – just – it’s hard. And I think it’s a great thing for a lot of artists to start with. It gives them a deadline and a place they have to show up & have accountability. So that’s how I started doing them when I was working full time as a designer but wanted to make more artwork of my own.
COMBINING WRITING AND ART
Don’t for a second believe that Ann scaling back on cons means she isn’t keeping busy. Her first book – Bad Girls Throughout History – seems to be popping up everywhere and has spawned an entire sub-genre of books about historical figures. Her second – Legendary Ladies – is out April 3rd and covers fifty different goddesses. As an artist and author, Ann is combining two life-long passions. Ann went to college twice: the first time for writing and the second for art.
I think I always loved art but I didn’t see how I could make it into a career. My parents were very discouraging of it because they didn’t see how I could make it into a career. But I always loved writing too – I loved reading. I actually wrote a lot of little novels that I would write on my mom’s typewriter. And then I would make copies, bind them, and pass them out to my friends to read in middle school.
When I went to art school I knew it was going to be all-consuming…so I focused completely on art and didn’t write anything more than an email for years. Then when the opportunity came to pitch this book… it was hard to get back into writing mode because I didn’t really have a personal voice anymore of how I wanted to write a nonfiction book. I wanted it to feel like personal essay in a way where it’s like – it’s nonfiction but I want it to sound like your best friend’s telling you about this stuff.
Anyone who’s read Ann’s first book knows that she’s succeeded on that front: the essays accompanying each Bad Girl are informative, fun, and highlight what makes each woman such a badass. There’s an early work of Ann’s that I wish we could read: “I think high school when the internet came about I discovered what fan fiction was and I wrote – this is hilarious but I wrote Hanson fan fiction because I loved Hanson and that’s how I got my start in writing. Very proud.”
While Ann’s first physical books may have been hand-bound copies of Babysitter’s-Club-style novels she’d written for her friends, there’s something different about holding your first published book in your hands.
Oh my god it was like…it was so surreal. When I got the first advance copy…it’s like my first baby! You know it doesn’t look exactly what you think it’s gonna look like – just like a baby probably – but it looks even better. You’re like this is even better because it’s real and it was just so exciting. I think I carried it around the house all day everywhere even though I was by myself.
LEGENDARY LADIES
From Chronicle Books
When Chronicle Books bought the idea forBad Girls Throughout History, they also optioned a second book, which would become Legendary Ladies. Ann reveals that it was actually her editor who mentioned that she already draws a lot of mermaids, fairies, and the like, so why not do a book on mythological women? Ann was on board, but quickly realized she wanted more focus than that: she wanted to work with goddesses.
I have a personal interest in this new age wellness stuff: everyone’s getting crystals, getting a tarot deck, tapping into this divine feminine energy. So I was just really inspired by that. I felt like that was the next step. Because now all these historical books about women are coming out which is great. And I don’t want to keep doing the same thing. So I was like what’s the next step for me?
And also I was developing and writing the book around the time the 2016 election happened and I think I was reeling with…and probably a lot of people who enjoyed my first book were reeling with ‘wow what happened? How did we get here?’ so I wanted to kind of explore that in a historical context. Because mythology and goddesses really tell us a lot about cultures and how cultures develop and what’s valuable to cultures. And so I just wanted to be like how did we get here? Like for how long have women been second class? And I found out with these goddesses that they actually haven’t.
Photo by Ryan Shaw
For some that may be hard to believe. It’s felt for a long time that women are treated as second class, and we could all use some serious goddess power and inspiration to lift us out of those feelings.
I think because of the political climate, it reached a tipping point. We had obviously thought it’d be a different type of tipping point, but actually I think it was a great awakening for a lot of people. That…women just have to do so much more. And the nice thing about having all these historical female books is that all of these women were just humans like us who did things in their own short lives like we all can. We have the power to do it.
I think it was so fascinating to learn so much about different cultures’ different approaches to goddesses… [Goddesses’] stories will often tell what was important to cultures or how they worshiped and how they saw women.
So that was the angle I decided to take with it so people can make it more personal too. Besides telling you the mythology and history of these goddesses I also include a little callout like, ‘call on this goddess when you need help with a broken heart or when you need help with your studies’ – things like that.
Ann mentions that putting this second book together felt a lot more creative and whimsical.
The first one was a lot harder because I felt like I had to be super respectful of the facts of each person’s history and if I couldn’t find at least a couple sources that stated things I just wouldn’t include that fact. So with mythology I wanted to be respectful of people who practice it as their religion but it’s definitely not a religious text. I still cite my sources in the back but it was a lot more whimsical and I could kind of shape the narratives based on what were the most common narratives that I found. I could be a little more artful with it and have a little more freedom in writing. So it was more fun – a little more creative and more like writing fairy tales.
ARTIST FANDOMS
Since we were at Wondercon, we had to talk fandoms. Ann’s primary fandom is Harry Potter, she’s a Gryffindor, and Harry Potter also made her a Belieber.
I love Harry Potter. It’s my thing. Like when it opened at Universal we went three days in a row when it was in soft opening – my husband was on hiatus. I saw Justin Bieber there. It was weird! But amazing and I became a Belieber I think. [Q: Just from seeing him?] Yeah! It was weird…I don’t know what happened to me. But god it was amazing when it opened. Every day I was like I don’t want to leave. [I ask what house Bieber is in: “Slytherin. Definitely.”]
So that’s my main one. I really love Wonder Woman. I really like Sailor Moon but I only watch like the first couple seasons. The early stuff before it gets really dramatic and a little too much for me. I like it when it’s light and fluffy and a monster of the week still.
And then for me it’s a lot of the vintage Disney stuff too. A lot of my fandoms are the 50’s animators: obviously Mary Blair and Freddy Moore and that stuff. Like I collect those statues that they made of like the centaurettes and stuff like that.
Photo by Ryan Shaw
This love of vintage Disney is what led Ann to Wonderground Gallery at Downtown Disney. She was an artist-in-residence there for a month last year and she’ll be returning again this year with three new pieces and another residency. It’s clear this means a lot to Ann, who primarily paints in gouache because of the influence of Mary Blair and those in her ilk.
It was one of my career goals to be in there. They opened in 2012 and I remember seeing it and thinking oh my gosh this is what I want to do! There hadn’t been anything like that before where Disney had artists do their own style, you know? So it was really wonderful to see them celebrating pop art in that way.
And then last year was my first year as the artist-in-residence where I got to do Disney licensed pieces and paint live there. And then I’m doing it again this year in April. So I’m really excited. I’m really excited about the pieces I did so hopefully it’ll do really well and I get to keep doing it for a while.
During the publication of her first book, Ann was inspired by the Dolly Parton quote, “If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.” I ask her if she has an updated favorite quote of the moment.
I have several. A lot of them are The Rock. Who I love. His “Always be the hardest worker in the room” and also the “It’s nice to be important but it’s more important to be nice.”
I really love those. Those two I think really resonate with me right now too as my work starts to get more – umm be able to support itself and my career and my work gets a little bit bigger I think it’s important for me to remember to stay grounded and focused on the work and continue to do the things that made me get these opportunities to begin with instead of freak out that they’re not coming at the time that I want them to. And I think it’s just important to be a real person and a good person and that’s hard too because I met a lot of people who are not. I think to just maintain the joy for the work and joy for the people that connect with it and that’s all that really matters. Don’t worry about the critics and don’t worry about what other people are doing.
You’d think with the publication of a second book, someone might want to relax for a minute, but not only is Ann here at Wondercon, she’s currently working on a companion journal to Legendary Ladies due out next spring, she’s returning to Wonderground Gallery at Downtown Disney as their artist-in-residence this month, and as she envisions the future she sees young adult fiction, illustrated children’s books, a television show – you name it.
I want to make work that people connect to, that makes people feel less alone, make people feel inspired, and just make people happy. And it’s so nice that the book is purely doing that without me. It’s not just me showing up to every convention with every book like it used to be. People can actually have their own connection with it and their own meaning with it and that is so powerful I think. Than like anything I could have ever imagined or hoped for that my work would have.
My final question – as with any interview – is “do you have any final thoughts or anything you’d like to add?”
I love that I quoted The Rock. He’s one of my fandoms: it’s true. I admire him a lot.
So there you have it, folks. The Rock is a fandom, and Ann Shen is the best.
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