Marcellus Hall, an illustrator, artist, and musician, recently wrote to tell me that his new children’s book, Everyone Sleeps (Penguin), is being released this month and will make its debut in his home state of Minnesota. I caught up with him last week and here is what he wrote:

Q: You live in New York, but where are you from originally? As an artist, what are some of your favorite things about living and working here?

A: I was born in Great Bluff MN, but town records were lost in a flood so my birth year is uncertain. Later we moved to Minneapolis where I attended elementary school and high school. For me New York is an unending, unfolding kaleidoscopic cinematic three-dimensional novel.

Q: How and when did you first become interested in art and illustration?

A: When and how my initial interest in art came to pass for me is a mystery. My earliest memory is of a drawing I did in kindergarten with a green crayon of a race car. Both the teacher and the kindergarteners singled me out for having done something extraordinary. 

Q: Tells us about your art/design background. Where did you study? What was your experience there like?

A: I took summer art classes as  a youth in Minnesota and made drawings for the high school newspaper and yearbook. I also was hired by my uncles for small illustration jobs. After two years at a Catholic boy’s liberal arts college (in a place called Collegeville, MN) I transferred to the Rhode Island School of Design to major in illustration. 

A page from Everyone Sleeps.

Q: What was your first assignment?

A: Aside from the illustrations I did for my uncles as a high school student – and for which I was paid – my first assignment upon graduation from RISD was for the Providence Journal. It was an illustration for an article about restaurants. In doing it I strove to be the next George Grosz. 

Q: What is your favorite part of the creative process? 

A: As an art student I never imagined that I would later say this (because at the time my favorite part was the execution), but for me now the best part of the illustration process is the brainstorming and sketching part. I love applying goache and watercolor paint freely to sketches on cheap paper when nothing is at stake. The results are often unselfconscious and gesturally beautiful. The trick is to preserve some of these qualities in the final art. 

Q: Who and what are some of your strongest influences?

A: Franz Masereel, George Grosz, Marlon Brando, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, James Dean, Jack Kerouac, Robert Johnson, John Lennon, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Miller, Stuart Davis, John Singer Sargent, Ernst Kirchner, Ernest Hemingway, Woody Allen, Allen Ginsberg, Marcel Proust, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Philip Roth, Arnold Roth, James Joyce, Leo Tolstoy, Woody Guthrie, M. Sasek, Robert McCloskey, Alice Neel, Thomas Hardy, Hardie Gramatky, D. H. Lawrence, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Miguel Cervantes, Hank Williams, George Jones, Lefty Frizzel, Katherine Keener, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Cheryl Tiegs, Gong Li, Johnny Cash, Robert DeNiro, Rita Hayworth, Cindy Crawford, Bob Dylan, Paulina Porizkova, Geoff Dyer, Walt Whitman, Christy Turlington, Conor Oberst, Ron Sexsmith, Kitagawa Utamaro, Townes Van Zandt, Nick Cave, Jimmie Rodgers, Maybelle Carter, Mark E. Smith, Robert Crumb, Peter Tosh, Francois Truffaut, Vittorio De Sica, Marshall Bruce Mathers, Prince Rogers Nelson, Marc Chagall, Ronald Searle, Al Hirschfeld, Walt Disney, Syd Hoff, Sue Coe, H. A. Rey, Ralph Steadman, Saul Steinberg, Ben Shahn, Rockwell Kent, Pieter Bruegel, Johann Sebastian Bach, William Blake, Honore Daumier, Thomas Wolfe, Harvey Kurtzman, Utagawa Hiroshige, Miguel Covarrubias, Raymond Pettibon, Randy Newman, and Kristin Scott Thomas.

As a bonus, here is a list of non-influences:

J. R. R. Tolkien, Isaac Asimov, Salvador Dali, Frank Frazetta, Tex Avery, Bob Wills, Yes, ELP, Phil Ochs, Mariah Carey, Kanye West, Taylor Swift, Matt Damon, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Frederic Chopin, Billie Holiday, Patsy Cline, Miles Davis, Peter Paul Rubens, Stan Lee, later Michael Jackson, Vladimir Nabakov, Jules Verne, Joan Baez, H. G. Wells, BB King, Albert King, Albert Collins, Johnny Winter, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Hank Williams Jr, Albert King, Supertramp, Louis Armstrong, Cole Porter, Arcade Fire, Belle & Sebastian, Pete Seeger, C. S. Lewis, Jimi Hendrix solos, Janis Joplin, Boston (the band), Boston (the city), Sylvester Stallone, Leroy Neiman, Whitney Houston, Steele Pulse, Third World (the band), Beyoncé, Rihanna, Steely Dan, Jay Leno, Ayn Rand, Frank Stella, Frederic Remington, late Elvis Presley, Garth Brooks, Brooks & Dunn, The Grateful Dead, Phish, The Carpenters, David Gates, Bread (the band), Manga, Nintendo, the WWF, the NRA, August Renoir, Burt Bacarach, and Stan Getz …

Q: What was the last art exhibition you saw and what did you take away from it?

A: The last exhibition I saw was of Civil War photos at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The only thing I took away from that gruesome display, however, was that war is stupid. The other exhibition I saw recently was of John Singer Sargent’s watercolors at the Brooklyn Museum.  John Singer Sargent’s brushstrokes can be irritating in their flawlessness. But, like Paul McCartney’s melodies, they are uncontrived, deft, and joyful. The show was amazing. 

Q: Where did your idea for your new book originate? What was the most difficult part about getting from idea to finished art?

A: The title of my new children’s book Everyone Sleeps originated in the idea that no matter how intimidating another person is to you, you can take comfort in the idea that that person at one time or another during the day must lie down, be vulnerable, and catch some shut eye. I started by drawing various people sleeping and used the phrase “everyone sleeps” as a refrain. My editor Nancy Paulsen, who signed on to the project, encouraged me to have the characters be animals and to showcase the various ways in which animals sleep. The hardest part for me, and I don’t claim to have mastered it, was to create a story arc - one that flows, is suspenseful, and resolves itself.

Q: Have you ever had a creative block with a deadline looming? What do you do to get crackin’?

A: Sex (with another or with one’s self) can be helpful when you’re tense and need to relax.  It can also get creativity flowing.  A bicycle ride can also be helpful. 

Q: What are you listening to?

A: Often, when I work, I can’t listen to music with lyrics. Ironically, however, I do listen to WNYC talk radio when I work. If I’m in a serious and lofty state of mind, I will listen to opera or the kind of classical music that doesn’t sound like a mid-century melodramatic motion picture. Recently, I’ve been listening to Rayland Baxter, David Donero, Gerry Mitchell & Little Sparta, and Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks.

Q: What is your  favorite time of day to work?

A: My favorite time to work is when it is overcast and I’ve had my cereal and strong black tea. I might have already jumped rope and taken a shower. Or I might not. Either way, it is before 3pm. 

Q: What is the biggest mistake you ever made and what did you learn from it?

A: The biggest mistake I made, and one that I continue to make when I am not being vigilant and clear headed, is to be overly concerned about what people will think of the things I do. In love and in art it is important to be aware of your instinct and to let that be your guide. 

Q: What advice would you give to a young illustrator who is just beginning to get noticed?

A: If you are a young illustrator and you are getting noticed, keep doing what you are doing!

Marcellus will be in the Twin Cities and Wayzata this week for talks and book signings. Here’s the schedule:

Thursday, May 9, 10 am: The Bookcase of Wayzata. 824 East Lake St, Wayzata MN 952-473-8341.

Friday, May 10, 7 pm: The Red Balloon Bookshop. 891 Grand Ave, St Paul 651-224-8320. “Pajama storytime” for kids.

Marcellus Hall is an illustrator living in New York. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and Time, as well in American Illustration, the Society of Illustrators, and Communication Arts annuals. His first cover for The New Yorker was published in 2005. Hall has self-published books of drawings and writings, including Hard Luck Stories and Legends of the Infinite City.

Hall has also illustrated children’s books. They include Because You Are My Baby (Abrams 2008), City I Love (Abrams 2009), The Cow Loves Cookies (Simon & Schuster 2010),Because I Am Your Daddy (Abrams 2010), Full Moon and Star (Abrams 2011), Because I Am Your Teacher (Abrams 2012), and the self-penned Everyone Sleeps (Penguin 2013).Information. His Drawger blog is here.

As a musician Hall has made recordings with bands Railroad Jerk and White Hassle and has toured the United States, Europe, and Japan. Hall continues to make music under his own name. A solo album, The First Line, was recorded with accompanying musicians and released on Glacial Pace Recordings in 2011. His next album, Marcellus Hall & The Hostages, is funded through Kickstarter with a day and a half to go.