Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, December 14, 2024: John Cuneo, an American illustrator (#2177)

Saturday, December 14, 2024

Artist of the Day, December 14, 2024: John Cuneo, an American illustrator (#2177)

John Cuneo (1957) is an American illustrator whose work has appeared in publications, including The New Yorker, Esquire, Sports Illustrated and The Atlantic Monthly. His ink and watercolor drawings have been described as covering everything from politics to sex.

Cuneo grew up in Westfield, New Jersey. His father worked as a manager at a plant nursery and his mother as a house wife. He was the oldest of three boys. He and his two brothers worked at the nursery with his father and take home produce to sell at a stand on their front lawn. At the age of 14, he learned to draw from a neighbor, Adelaide Johnson.

Cuneo attended Roosevelt Jr. High, followed by Westfield High School until his junior year, when his family moved to Florida. Once in Florida, Cuneo would graduate from Lely High School in Naples, Florida, in 1975 and go on to attend Florida State University for one year, followed by Colorado Institute of Art for an additional year.

At Colorado Institute for Art, Cuneo learned graphic design business skills, including paste-ups with wax, making storyboards, and rendering typefaces. Bill Kastan, a local illustrator as well as an instructor at the school, befriended Cuneo and provided him with a drawing table in his studio and helped him put together a portfolio.

In 1977, while in Denver, Cuneo joined a group of freelance illustrators headed by Joe Malone going under the name of No Coast Graphics, where he did freelance illustrations for The Denver Post as well as Westword. It was also in Denver where Cuneo met his wife Jan Larson.

Cuneo moved from Denver to San Francisco in 1986, and it was there that he decided to devote himself entirely to work in editorial illustration. His first published work for a major magazine appeared in Sierra Magazine, under the art direction of Martha Geering. In 1993, Cuneo returned to Denver and remained there for eight years. After his return to Denver, Cuneo began receiving assignments from Entertainment Weekly.

In 2001, Cuneo and his wife moved to Woodstock, New York. Soon after, John Korpics, design director at Esquire, brought in Cuneo in 2002 to publish a series of comics called Damned Good Advice, which ran until 2003, and to illustrate the magazine's sex advice column, which ran until 2014. Work on the sex column for Esquire led to two silver awards for Cuneo from the Society of Illustrators.

In 2010, Cuneo joined Golf Digest at the Masters Tournament to draw on location and record his impressions of the event. He is a regular contributor to Golf Digest.

In 2004, Steven Guarnaccia, who was head of the illustration department at Parsons, recommended Cuneo's sketchbooks to Fantagraphics. Editor Eric Reynolds got in touch to discuss compiling some of the sketchbook work into a book. Robert Festino, who Cuneo had worked with at Entertainment Weekly, put together a dummy of a book during his off-hours at the Entertainment Weekly offices. The mockup was sent to Fantagraphics and co-publisher Kim Thompson went ahead with plans to publish nEuROTIC. The cover illustration chosen for the book had previously won a gold medal from the Society of Illustrators, and the book was released in 2007, designed and art directed by Robert Festino.

Ten years after nEuROTIC, Gary Groth, publisher at Fantagraphics, suggested a sequel to Cuneo. While nEuRoTIC had been drawn almost entirely using a Rapidograph, the pieces in the new collection for Not Waving But Drawing were created using a Uni-ball roller pen or a Micron pen. The book was released in 2017.

Fantagraphics published Cuneo's third collection of sketchbook drawings in 2021. Coping Skills was described by New Yorker art editor Françoise Mouly as "scabrous and depraved" in nature.

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