About

Kevenn T. Smith has been drawing since he can remember. As a child, one of his favorite things to do was draw characters from the stories that he loved, including a panoramic visual documentation of all the characters and symbols of Christmas when he was five years old. He was also enamored with the Oz books by L. Frank Baum and the accompanying illustrations by John R. Neill. He proudly carried around a Trapper Keeper covered in his drawings of Oz characters at school, even if the other kids didn’t think it was cool.

As a preteen, Kevenn developed a passion for comic books and comic book art. He soaked up images like Norm Breyfogle’s Batman, Jim Balent’s Catwoman, and Wonder Woman by creators George Perez, Jill Thompson, Lee Moder, and Mike Deodato. In high school, he filled most of his free time by creating his own comic books and drawing his own fashion designs, themes he would return to while making art during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While attending Illinois State University, Kevenn honed his skills as a character designer and designed the looks and costumes for many performances of plays, dance and opera, including the mainstage production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado.

After graduating Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor's of Science in Acting, he moved to the Cleveland, Ohio area and landed work downtown in law firms while he pursued simultaneous work as an illustrator, costume, hair and makeup designer and crafts artisan. Kevenn's art adorned the wrap-around covers for the 2005 and 2009 issues of Oziana Magazine, the Official Magazine of The International Wizard of Oz Club.  The 2005 issue also included a short story that he illustrated. He contributed a character design for work for The National Organization for Women (NOW). In addition, Kevenn worked with a producer of the independent SciFi thriller film, Socket, to create character designs for a comic book adaptation of the movie.  Kevenn has provided artwork for the 2010 New York Comic Con Edition of Comedian Kevin Conn’s comic book, Lava-Roid, as well as artwork and writing for the hilariously charming independent queer superhero comic book, So Super Duper, by San Francisco writer, Brian Andersen. In 2018, Kevenn served as Illustrator and Editor to the humorous self-help book, My Husband is Not a Rainbow: The Brutally Awful, Hilarious Truth About Life, Love, Grief, and Loss by the writer, comic and TEDx Speaker, Kelley Lynn Shepherd, which reached #1 on Amazon's Grief & Bereavement New Releases within twentyfour hours of its release.

In Cleveland, Kevenn has worked locally as a Costume and Makeup Designer at Playhouse Square, BorderLight International Theatre & Fringe Festival, Talespinner Children's Theatre, Cleveland Public Theatre, Theater Ninjas, Brunswick High School, and self-produced performances his frequent collaborator, Ray Caspio, whom he also created the Lucy & Humphrey webcomic with.

Kevenn strives to create works that convey distinctive personalities and diverse appearances and often explores themes such as human equality and sensuality, spiritual identity, and challenging traditionally masculine-centered definitions of strength and what it means to be strong.