Tag: Artist

Chris Semtner

March 11, 2026 / ravenchair

Chris Semtner is an award-winning, internationally exhibited visual artist whose work can be found in numerous private and public collections. He has written several articles and chapters in addition to eight books about Poe, visual art, horror, pop culture, and cryptography. His writing has appeared in Biography.com, Crime Writers’ Chronicle, Resources for American Literary Study, and other publications. He has been featured in publications including the New York Times, Mental Floss, Atlas Obscura, SyFy Wire, and Rue Morgue Magazine, in addition to appearing in documentaries in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Venezuela, and Japan. As the curator of the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, VA, he regularly speaks about strange and macabre subjects at various venues from the Steampunk World’s Fair to the Library of Congress and as far away as Paris and Kyoto, Japan. He has participated in several RavenCons, and they even gave him a Webster Award.

Xexilia O. Shadows

March 10, 2026 / ravenchair

Xexilia O. Shadows is a “retro” webcomic artist who began her magnum opus Eternity Concepts in 1999, a mystery-romance. She has since continued and crossed into gallery and museum showings of her work, along with publishing her web-comic series in an ongoing collection of volumes. With an urge to express millions of unsaid moments, screams, and cries, Shadows’ works are both cryptic and emotionally deep, functioning as a storytelling medium. Using her own unique symbol language parsed within many wider meanings of imagery, she calls her pieces “visual mysteries” and maintains that most, if not all, works contain one, often several, puzzles. Far more complex than appearances let on, with the puzzles never publicly acknowledged or discussed, Xexilia has opted to present viewers with an intellectual test and allow curiosity, boldness, and willingness to accept failure all as solutions to help unlock the deepest meanings of each work.

This year marks the second edition release of her original first volume of Eternity Concepts, which was first announced and released at RavenCon 2015! She hopes to release the second volume this year. Eternity Concepts was also the subject of her solo exhibition at ArtWorks Gallery, featuring a collection of pieces of characters and themes from the series, and chosen as the subject as she wanted to ensure Eternity Concepts—and webcomics—crossed over into serious art pieces rather than being just a mere online hobby. Her pieces will show in London, Paris, Milan, Tokyo, and NYC over the course of 2026, and are always on display at ArtWorks Gallery in downtown Richmond at her resident studio space in studio 108.

Tangent Artists

March 8, 2026 / ravenchair

Tangent Artists, founded in 2009, has had the privilege of providing entertaining stories in the form of comics, gaming books, merch and now novels and videos. Starting with their best seller: The Handbook for Saucy Bards their Guild Guide series is expanding to include The Barbarian’s Coloring and Activity Book (for reading levels 2-4). And Monica Marier’s Must Love Dragons series is launching the prequel: Must Love Humans! Find out how Linus met Deirdre in this meet-cute gone wrong.

Hannah “Spoon” Wilson

March 3, 2026 / ravenchair

Hannah “Spoon” Wilson is a professional illustrator and artist whose work ranges from book covers and inset illustrations, to fine art and paintings, to biological illustration. They frequently explore elaborate depictions of the natural world, mixed with witchy, nerdy, and fantastical elements. Their work is crafted in a variety of media, but ink, watercolor, and digital are their favorites.

Recent publications of their work include inset illustrations in Lesbians in Space 2: The Sapphics Strike Back— an anthology by Space Wizard publishing, the covers for the brand new Gen X romance series by Samantha Bryant—Not Too Late, Acid Reign, and Ready or Not, and the inset illustrations for the upcoming reprint of When the Television Decides to Murder your Girlfriend by Martin Shannon.

When they aren’t drawing, you can typically find them making and dressing up in custom cosplays! Other hobbies of theirs include reading while curled up with their cat, weaving, hiking, and traveling with their husband and dog.

You can see their work on most social media sites under @spoonwooddraws, on their website at spoonwoodvisuals.com, or come by their booth in the Artist Alley to say hello!

Ruth Sanderson

October 8, 2025 / ravenchair

Ruth Sanderson’s career as a professional illustrator spans over 45 years. In recent years she’s been illustrating fantasy and horror for the limited-edition company Centipede Press, including covers for Bram Stoker’s Powers of Darkness and Alligator by Shelley Katz, as well as covers and interiors for The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons and Things Seen and Unseen, a short story collection by Terry Lamsley.

Ruth was a guest at Comic-Con in San Diego and received the Inkpot Award there. Her scratchboard art has garnered two Chesley Awards. Ruth has also illustrated over 90 books for children, including many award-winning fairy tale picture books. In 2015, the Norman Rockwell Museum mounted a solo exhibition of her fairy tale illustration, and all the artwork from her book The Twelve Dancing Princesses is now in the museum’s permanent collection. She has exhibited at many Worldcons and World Fantasy cons and has been artist GOH at numerous conventions. Among Ruth’s current projects is her first novel, The Mirror of Truth, a YA retelling of Snow White and The Seven Dwarves.