Prague illustrator Ken Nash: “I miss the old gnarly hospodas with the tobacco-stained walls"

Anyone familiar with the Prague arts scene will have heard the name Ken Nash. The illustrator, musician, and author has been a fixture on the city’s café circuit since the early ’90s. His drawings have appeared on the pages of both Czech and international publications and his Instagram account IamKenNash currently showcases a daily sketch as part of his work with the Prague Urban Sketchers collective.

We recently caught up with Ken who will release his second collection of short fiction, Life Raft (Equus Press, 2019) this December, to talk about how living in Prague has impacted his creative process as well as the multitude of changes that have taken place in the Czech capital — for better or worse — from the 1990s up until now.

Give us the condensed version of your ‘how I became an expat’ narrative. 

I was born in Massachusetts but grew up mostly in Michigan, just outside Detroit. I worked as a copywriter and producer for a few years in Chicago before my first foray into Prague. I lived here from ’92 to ’94. I did illustrations and a weekly cartoon for the Prague Post at that time.

I loved being an illustrator much more than a copywriter and decided to switch professions. I went back to the US, in part, to afford a good graphics computer and teach myself computer illustration and graphic design.

What was Prague like back in those days for those of us who weren’t here?

How has the city changed?

Some of the superficial changes seem the most obvious changes. Prague was not at all a coffee town when I returned in 2001. Except for the cukrárny, most places didn’t have takeaway coffee. Now there are coffee shops seemingly everywhere.

Like your dog! How has being a pet owner changed your experience of the city?

Have you always lived in the same neighborhood? How has it changed? 

You are a writer, artist, and musician. Talk a bit about your current projects in all of those areas.

My second story collection, Life Raft, will be published in December. I’ve been focused on getting that ready for publication and neglecting the music. But I plan to record a new album within the next several months. Commercial illustration and animation work mainly pays the bills. I do do drawing for pleasure, mostly through Prague Urban Sketchers and the Prague Drawing Group, which organizes life drawing sessions. 

How did you come to drawing and sketching and who are your artistic inspirations? 

When I first came to Prague in 1992 I was trying to figure out what I would do to support myself. The Prague Post advertised that they were looking for an illustrator, so I created a portfolio of work within a few days and arranged to meet with the art director. He hired me on the spot to create an illustration for an article on the composer Jakub Jan Ryba. He also liked my cartoons of Prague city life and offered me a weekly cartoon spot. That experience caused me to switch from being a copywriter to being an illustrator.

Where is your favorite spot for drawing in Prague?

How has living in Prague influenced your artistry — and how has it challenged it? 

My art mostly deals with people, but Prague got me thinking more about environment. Not just buildings, but objects and architectural details. Some of that interest came out of doing the Prague Post cartoons. I would sketch buildings and locations to use as a reference for cartoons. (We didn’t have Google street view back then.) Those reference sketches began to take on more significance for me and I started to draw them in more detail. I started seeing objects and buildings as having the same sort of expressiveness as faces and bodies. 

Let’s change course and talk about your book. What’s it about?

Name some important career milestones.

I had some cartoons exhibited in the Boston Museum of Science. That was kind of strange and wonderful because I don’t normally show work in museums and galleries. In the early ’90s my book of Prague cartoons (Prague on 13 Beers a Day) would regularly outsell Havel’s books at The Globe. (More of a fun fact than a career milestone.) Random House published some of my Prague sketchbook illustrations with Myla Goldberg’s essays on Prague, Time’s Magpie. For a few years, I had postcards of my Guatemalan cartoons selling in shops all over Guatemala. 

Is Prague a good city for creatives? 

Some of your sketches have a cool mixed-media effect. How did that come about?

I have boxes of old books, maps and scraps of paper I’ve collected over the years that I incorporate into my drawings. Some of it comes from antikvariáty and some from trash bins or off the street. If I find something interesting at the location where I’m sketching I’ll incorporate that into the drawing by pasting it onto the sketchbook page. 

I’m sure it’s an impossible question but do you have a personal favorite sketch?

I haven’t drawn my favorite sketch yet. But I will one day. 

To see more of Ken’s work follow him on Instagram or visit www.kennash.com.