JEN BARTEL

Jen Bartel went to the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York City. She graduated with a BFA in illustration, but if you had asked her classmates which of them was most likely to make it after college, then “absolutely none of them would have named me,” she says.

Jen describes herself as a mediocre student. She did okay, but never stood out. She thinks this is a pretty common experience: the kid who’s the best artist in their high school goes to art school and ends up a smaller fish in a much bigger pond. But she always had “absolute stubbornness and grit.” She never gave up, never lost sight of her ambition to be a professional artist.

The artist was born in Los Angeles, but spent most of her childhood in Seoul, Korea. She attended an international school and had what she calls a mixed cultural upbringing that would influence her