An Interview with Illustrator Matt Kish

I first encountered Matt Kish’s art in Powell’s City of Books in Portland, Oregon, where a display featured his then-newly-released book, Moby-Dick in Pictures. Being an avid Moby-Dick fan, I purchased the hardback immediately. More recently, when I worked as an editorial intern for Tin House Books, I learned that he was illustrating another book for them, with the same principle behind it—an image corresponding to every single page of the original work. That book is Heart of Darkness, just released this month. Being a student of book publishing, I became intrigued by this unusual approach to the illustration of classics, and knew I had to investigate further. What follows is our telephone discussion in March, 2013 about the artist’s process, how it differed from book to book, and what it takes to complete a project of this magnitude.

—Kylie Byrd

THE BELIEVER: Not to fan-girl out or anything, but Moby-Dick is my favorite novel, so I definitely own a copy of Moby-Dick in Pictures, and I really like your artistic sensibilities.

MATT KISH: It’s really strange how it all happened, I never intended for it to be a book in the first place. I started doing it just for myself and I put it online, on that blog, mostly so my friends and family—who were out of state—could see it.

BLVR: So, did you approach Tin House with the project and pitch it to them?

MK: No…It’s a strange story. I think I have a tendency to stretch it out too much. I had started doing the art just for myself; it was a personal obsession. And I would put it online immediately, right away with page one. My friends and family all knew that I was pretty passionate about art, and I wanted some accountability. I had made a big deal out of the fact that I was going to do one illustration per day, per page, and I knew that if I started missing a few days they would call me on it. They would send me an email, or my mother would call me and sort of yell at me to get back to work. I started in August of 2009, and sometime, I think in February 2010—this was about five or six months into the project—some guy from Brooklyn emailed me and asked me if I wanted to give this presentation about it. And it sounds all official, but it was a lecture in a bar, called Pete’s Candy Store and it was part of this thing that this guy was running, called O.C.D. He said it...