Trinity: Vampire
by Casey Cruz
November 4, 2023 thru January 4, 2024
MEET THE ARTIST
ARTIST STATEMENT
Casey Cruz was born in the small town of Bel Air, Maryland. With little to do,
and a big imagination, Casey’s fascination with art started very young. While she watched TV and movies, she would scribble the characters she enjoyed most onto envelopes with colored pencils. During elementary school, she would frequently buy the Nintendo drawing guides and follow the tutorials for drawing the characters. She made storybooks using herself and her friends as the heroes, and made Sonic fan comics with characters based on her classmates and teachers. She recalls always telling people she would be a cartoonist when she grew up.
Casey became an avid fan of anime and manga in her pre-teen years and drew characters almost daily. At age 12, she started to write her own manga script, which nine years later, be the basis for her college thesis project. In high school, she attended Passaic County Technical Institute in New Jersey where she studied Graphic Design for four years. This experience led her to use her design and illustration skills to pursue projects in webcomics and digital illustration.
Casey Cruz is a recent graduate of William Paterson University of New Jersey.
Her concentration was Drawing, Printmaking, and Painting. Drawing had always been an intuitive process for her, however, her interest in digital illustration and painting had intensified during her time in college.
Casey has had some special recognition in her short career. In 2017, she won a gold medal in the SkillsUSA National T-Shirt Design Competition. In 2020, her work was selected for the competitive Student Poster Competition at the SIGGRAPH International Conference. She also recently curated her first fine art exhibition in 2022 titled Now They See Us. This exhibition featured student works with a variety of mediums, emphasizing the importance of artistic diversity. To mark the conclusion of her senior year, she won the William Paterson Creative Excellence in Digital Art and Design Award. Currently residing in Morris County, New Jersey, Casey continues to create her comic series Trinity: Vampire on Webtoon with the intention of publishing the series into graphic novels. She also creates freelance graphics and illustrations and actively remains involved in her local artist network by showcasing her work in local galleries, conventions, and art fairs.
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I always knew I wanted to be a storyteller. When I was a child, I would write
and illustrate tales of myself and friends as superheroes overcoming villainous foes and using our powers for the greater good of mankind. As a young teenager, I began to see that life itself wasn’t always black and white. I wanted to be the hero of my own story and save those around me. On my last day of middle school, a teacher once told me, “Casey, you can’t save everyone.” At the time, I didn’t fully understand my teacher. I began high school with the expectation that I would understand the world better and perhaps understand people better. But being a teenager wasn’t easy. I learned alot from failed friendships, relationships, insecurity, and mental health battles during this time. I began to see that the only hero I needed to be at that time in my life was a hero to myself. The world can be scary and unforgiving, which meant that being a hero was the harder path to take in life.
I began to create Trinity: Vampire to speak to young readers who were looking for a hero. Myles Suzuki, the protagonist of this comic, is the last person one would expect to take on such a large role. He struggles with depression, bullying, insecurity, and often is shy, awkward, and a pushover. After a fateful night with his best friend and first love, Myles is challenged with the task of rising up as the hero he never anticipated himself to become. But before he can take on the role, he must find strength within himself to conquer both the monsters in his head and the monsters of his world.
This is a coming of age story that follows the journey of an unlikely hero. Myles is the younger version of myself that yearned for a place in the world. Trinity: Vampire is a loveletter to the comics and media that helped me become my own hero.
The illustrations in this exhibition are panels and excerpts from both the prologue and the upcoming first volume of the series. Myles begins to understand the harsh reality of his world and now has to train himself and ally with others to find the answer to the most pressing question in his mind:
WHERE IS SCARLETTE CASABELLA?