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June 20, 2008
Living in Fantasyland
Graphic artist Apis Teicher is finding success.
DAVE GORDON
Who could have imagined that Jews and vampires could get along with each other, let alone have a relationship? But in the story Benny Comes Home, such a scenario sets the scene.
With a liberal sprinkling of Yiddish and Yiddishisms, the story written by Esther Friesner begins with a Brooklyn family dinner to welcome home Benny, who has just returned from serving overseas in the 1950s. Benny arrives accompanied by his romantic partner, who saves Benny's family from a band of anti-Semites. It turns out that the partner is a non-Jewish, male vampire. Though Bubbe might not approve of the couple, Buffy (the vampire slayer) certainly might.
Found in Baen's Universe, a compilation of stories of various authors, Benny Comes Home is the most recent of Vancouver local Apis Teicher's artistic accomplishments. Her illustrations were a perfect match for Friesner's words.
Teicher has been putting her ideas on canvas ever since she was a toddler. She began illustrating at age five, drawing a Martian invasion of the earth on three of her bedroom walls.
From alien invasions to vampires at the Shabbat table, Teicher has the ability to share her creativity with others through artistic renditions of her wild imagination. Her first comic book, Warriors, was about ordinary people with strange powers.
"I only began to take it seriously my last year of high school. We needed to do a grad project, sort of like a thesis, and mine was illustrating a comic book of my own creation from start to finish," she said.
She began to look for schools while she was doing her business degree in Colombia and ended up coming to Canada to study 3-D animation at the Vancouver Film School.
After film school, she tried to find work in the animation industry, but at that time most of the local art houses were focused on sports or special effects for film and television, none of which was of interest to her.
"Eventually, I decided to go a different route," she said. Teicher spent three years in Japan, teaching English for the Japanese government's Japan exchange and teaching program (JET). "I think being in Japan just gave me the time to devote to improving my craft and getting my art out there," she said.
While in Japan, Teicher began to show in the fantasy and science fiction convention circuits, something she continues to do to this day. There, she also began her webcomics (Internet illustrating), Blatah and Nocturnia. Her professional work culminated in her book, Shadowspires: The Art and Illustration Work of Apis Teicher. It is what she describes as "a mix of fantasy, art nouveau and comic art," and what the 33-year-old sees as the first of many publications.
"The book covers what I consider to be my best work up to that point and it was largely geared to fans of either of my comics, who had been clamoring for a while for a collection of my pinups, and some of the back stories that I couldn't include in the comics themselves."
Until recently, most of the work Teicher did was private art commissions, for people who had seen her art via online galleries or other venues. Most of her art prints are limited editions. Online orders have come from as far away as South America and Israel.
A side project that developed out of her illustrations has been the creation of a line of fully pose-able dolls, a combination of the fantasy designs and illustrations she has done and her love of Japanese culture. The dolls are completely customizable.
Teicher's website is www.uneide.com/art/.
Dave Gordon is a freelance writer. His website is davegordonwrites.com.
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