Making It

MEET THREE ILLUSTRATORS KEEPING THEIR WILDLY CREATIVE SPIRITS ALIVE BY BEING IN THE RIGHT PLACE (NORTHERN MICHIGAN) AT THE RIGHT TIME (RIGHT NOW).

- Molly Korroch

EM RANDALL

“Grateful feels like such a small word,” says Em Randall, a Traverse City-based artist. We’re sitting at a lime green table outside of BLK MRKT, a coffee shop in TC’s Warehouse District. On the wall across from us, there’s a large mural featuring a woman’s face in black and white. Her cheeks are two bright red circles. The painting is one of Em’s.

Last year, she showed her work at 13 different art shows and markets. This year, it’s down to two. While she’s still hustling to build her business, her work has developed a more mature tone. The time and energy she once put into making, displaying and tediously transporting her work from show to show are now focused on larger custom projects like the mural at Warehouse MRKT or a brand redesign for Pleasanton Bakery.

“All that fighting. All that waiting patiently for people to care. It just slowly started happening. I feel like sometimes I’m an imposter and people are going to say ‘We’re sick of you!’ ” she laughs. While it may seem like it from the outside, her path to established artistdom was not a straight line.

Originally from Bear Lake, Em and her husband lived in Seattle and Olympia, Washington for five years before making the move back to Traverse City in 2016. While out West, she created her first company called Happy Grey Skies. She made whimsical plush creatures and dolls such as a piece of buttered toast with a face and a grinning rain cloud. The business resonated with her Washington audience but unfortunately fell flat in Traverse City.

“That was a big shock for me,” she says. “I gave up everything to do this for a living, thinking it was so successful, but then I came here and it was a hard halt.”