Interview by Mercedes Arnold

MVM: Welcome!! Can you state your name, and pronouns, and talk about what you do? You are so talented in so many ways, I’d love to hear the full scope of who you are.

JY: My name is Jess Yeomans, she/her. I am first and foremost an artist and illustrator, and I also happen to run a tugboat around New York City. I focus on creating illustrations for children’s books. I do have this small shop, Whale & Anchor. It’s a creative outlet where there's no pigeonhole, I don't have to have a style; if I want to make art, I can make art and sell prints. If I want to make these really pretty firestarters that are really fun to make, then I’ll make and sell those. If I feel like painting little ornaments, because people really love them then I get to do that too. 

As far as other work, I also drive a tugboat around various areas in New York. We push barges. It depends on what kind of product can be inside of the barges, we're not married to one barge, so we could be moving one oil barge that's going to fuel up a container ship that's bringing in goods from outside the country, or it could be gasoline for your car. We're not moving stone barges and we're not doing ship assist, which is what the folks in Portland do; when the ships come in with various products, they're helping to get the ship to the dock safely, but that's not what we do. We're doing other kinds of maneuvering with other vessels. 

MVM: What is your boat’s name? 

JY: Right now I’ve been working on the Potomac. I had been working on the King’s Point because the Potomac was in the shipyard. The King’s Point was the boat that I worked on when I first started decking when I was throwing lines and making up to the barges and doing all the things that the deckhand does. I worked on that boat for three years and trained with my captain driving that boat. Essentially that was my training wheel boat. To go back there and be running the boat as the mate, was a full circle moment. It was crazy and really cool to be back. 

MVM: I have to ask some more questions about tugboats! How long was your training to become a mate? 

JY: I had a really great captain, who lives in Hope, and my old engineer lives in Camden. So, my captain let me drive the boat all the time, driving it “light tug”, which means that you're driving around without a barge, you're driving with just a tug. He would start feeling more comfortable letting me drive with barges up and down the river, and in and out through the kills, which is the area of waterway between Bayonne, New Jersey, and Staten Island, New York. It’s a very busy area because that’s where the majority of the docks are. The ships are coming in there because they're going up to New York. It gets crazy in there. 

So he started letting me drive there and then he started letting me do docking sailings. I was really fortunate to be with a captain who was so supportive in that way. I felt like I had a one-up on people that were either very lazy and wanted to wait until they had enough sea time to get into the program, or, were not taking advantage of something like training opportunities. I was older when I came out to the boats. I'm 40 right now and I started out on the boats in 2017. It wasn’t like I was coming out here as an 18-year-old kid, I had a goal in mind when I started. So let me backtrack here so you can see how this all started, it will all connect! 

I was at the Society of Illustrators in New York City at the time. It was like Hollywood for illustrators. I met some of the biggest people in my industry who are like the Tom Hanks and the Brad Pitts in the illustration field. I got to sit next to, talk to, and work on projects with them, it was massive. Through that, I was able to get a six-book children’s book contract where I was going to be illustrating the books in the series. I quit my full-time job and started freelancing full-time. About two books into that series, something happened with the editors and they put everything on hold. It was like, shit, that was my rent, what am I going to do? 

From there, I had been talking to my mom who knew the administrative assistant at the company where I am right now. She suggested I take over for her when she left. I specifically said I don’t want to work with tugboats, yet here I am. I started working there part-time. As the illustration jobs started dwindling, I picked up more time there, and then at some point, my boss said to come work full time, so I said fine. 

One day they brought this launch boat in and I jumped on because I was getting really tired of being in the office, I was bored. I was done with all my work so I jumped on to give them a hand. The captain that was on there let me steer a couple of times and tried to teach me how to come alongside a tugboat and get the crew off and come away from it. He was like, I think you have a knack for this, I think you should get your license. I ended up going to school for a while and accrued sea time and got my license. 

When that captain got a promotion, I went from the office to the captain of this launch boat. From there, this is what leads me to Maine. I had never had any money, I was living in Brooklyn at the time, living paycheck to paycheck. I finally was able to have some money so I'm like, I'm gonna take myself on a trip and go to Maine. I've always wanted to visit, so because of all of that, this happened. That is why I'm finally home in this state since the day I stepped foot on this land, there was something about it that was calling me home. It was like, this is where you need to be. Every day I wake up and I’m so thankful that I’m here because I love it. It’s a wonderful thing. 

Those two guys ended up being my captain and my chief engineer and they were friends of mine in the office beforehand. I used to have a soft spot for these guys because they were so sweet. They'd be working on Thanksgiving or Christmas, and I’d come down and bring some snacks and hang out with them and they became friends of mine. Then I went to visit them in Camden and hang out for the day. I remember thinking, you guys do this every two weeks, you get to be home, here? I took some time and thought about it because it was not only going to be a career change but a complete lifestyle change. I sat alone by this lake playing guitar and drinking for a while and decided, yeah, I want to take this jump, and I never looked back. That’s what brought me here. 

MVM: So you’ve been working for this company for how long? 

JY: I’ve been with the company for over 11 years. 

MVM: I’m assuming that the industry is dominated by men? 

JY: This is a fully male-dominated industry, all across the world. What’s really cool is, in Portland, there’s a boat where it’s almost all women. A friend of mine, Sarah Kaplan, is the captain there. It’s awesome being around them. In New York City, which is where I work, as of right now, I’m the only female tugboat operator that’s captain or mate. On the eastern seaboard in my company, I’m the only female tugboat operator. I think there’s one mate on the West Coast and there are two or three of us in NYC, but I can’t tell you how many tugs are operating in the city. It’s very lonely out there. I can look at it in two ways though. On one side, I feel like fuck yeah, I’m very proud to be representing women, but on the other end, it’s like okay, well ehh. I do have a really good crew though, they are great guys, and they make me feel like I’m part of the crew. 

MVM: Is the industry making any strides to become more inclusive? 

JY: It absolutely is. I have a really great friend, Elizabeth, who lives out on the west coast. She heads up this incredible organization called Sea Sisters. It’s a platform built so that women in all maritime industries can connect. They are trying to be more inclusive of women and providing information that people might need in different scenarios that could arise on board. Unfortunately, in the past, there has been a number of rapes that have occurred on some of the container ships. Being able to provide information on how to navigate that and have a great support system is important. 

When my mother passed away, some of the crew I was working with were really difficult people. I reached out to Sea Sisters and was talking about how I didn’t know how to go back to work. I got so many emails from women I had never met before sharing their experiences and they were making me feel like it was all going to be okay, they were so supportive. Having that outlet and knowing that community is there is awesome.

MVM: I’m sorry for your loss, Jess. Thank you for sharing. What was your mom's name? 

JY: Felicia. She was a five-foot little Italian lady.

MVM: Did she grow up in Long Island? 

JY: She did, yeah. She grew up in North Massapequa, New York, which is where I grew up. We grew up crabbing and doing a lot of fluke fishing. We grew up very poor, we never had any money, but we had a blast. I definitely have a big tie to the water, it’s in my blood. There are times when I'm out on the boat, I'm thinking about her and I'm thinking about my pop pop, that was my mom's dad.

MVM: That does sound like a blast. So, looping back to like your art career. I read that went to the Fashion Institute of Technology, and since then have published nine children’s books. 

JY: Yes, that's right. Six were through a legit publisher, two were self-published, and one was published online as a school learning aid. 

MVM: How did you get into art? What drew you to illustration and working on children's books? 

JY: I've been drawing since I was two. My dad just found a drawing of mine, they’re absolutely ridiculous. I was always drawing and coloring, I always enjoyed it. My parents didn’t know that I could make a career out of it, but throughout my life, people were telling me that I should do something with art, but I didn’t know what that looked like. I was cleaning out a closet at my dad’s house and found a course catalog for FIT, so I decided to apply. I was trying to get into the digital design side of things but they didn’t have any more openings so I took an illustration course. Then I ended up taking a book illustration course and for that, you have to illustrate a book. At one point you have to write and illustrate your own book as well and my professor encouraged me to keep up with it. He’s the one who helped get me that six-book deal. I really enjoyed it, I enjoyed making the characters, and that’s what ended up working. I like telling a story, I have such a warm and safe feeling when I think about laying in bed with my grandmother when I was kid and she was reading me Danny the Dinosaur and Harry the Dirty Dog, all these beautiful classics from when I was kid. To know that I could potentially be a part of that feeling for some other child to enjoy and let them know that you’re safe here, enjoy the story and my art…that’s huge. I think that’s great. 

MVM: I went on your website and looked at your art, and your illustrations are incredible. Your paintings are beautiful. 

JY: Working in illustration and on books was a pretty grueling process. I was working on books back to back and sometimes two books at the same time. Now it seems like the industry has changed a little bit. I hope to illustrate a couple of my own books this year. 

MVM: What’s your artistic and creative vision when you go into a project? 

JY: I pull from different avenues of inspiration. Disney has been a massive inspiration, I grew up watching these anthropomorphic animals and the landscapes and everything, so visually, there's a lot that gets pulled from that, but also my own style that developed over time.

One of my professors at FIT said, Draw what you know, and I can't agree with that more. 

I'll sit down, and I'll pull out a sketchbook and I'll do some sketches of the character and decide what I want it to look like, how big do I want the eyes? How big do I want the head? You kind of play around with things in the sketching phase. Then from there, you draw a front view, a side view, and action views so that as you're going through the actual pages, you have some kind of a reference point to look back to be like, this is what I wanted him to look from the side or three quarter view. 

MVM: What is your preferred medium?

JY: I like working in watercolor, even though it's really fickle. It’s very unforgiving because once it's down, it's not like it can be manipulated, you can't paint over it necessarily, you have to work from light to dark, and you can't do the other way around like with acrylic. It feels more whimsical, that's the effect that I'm going to be going for. So for the most part, I really like watercolor, but I will do paintings in acrylics. I don't have the time anymore these days to work in oil, because it takes too long to dry. At some point, I’ll break back into it. 

I have different chapters of my year. From January to April, I’m in this little cocoon just making art, going for hikes, or snowshoeing. As soon as April/May rolls around, I’m going camping for two weeks at a time. Art shuts down because the other half of me fully belongs to the land and the outdoors, the oceans, and the mountains. I let my soul breathe out there. I’ll still be making art, I’ll bring my sketchbook and do some sketching while I’m out there, but I’m not thinking about selling any of it. I’m making that art for myself, which is always big for people who are creatives. You have to make art for yourself. 

It is so huge. If you don't make art for yourself, if you don't continue to make mistakes, if you don't continue to try new things and fuck it up and try again to make it better, then you don't evolve as an artist. You don't have to sell any of it. You shouldn't think about that as something you’re going to sell as a finished product, you make it for yourself. There's something in the creative process, there's a trial and error that needs to happen. And sometimes it's nice to not do shit, what happens on this page, I don't really care. I'm making stuff for the sake of making stuff. The two thought processes have to have their own home. 

MVM: Yeah, I absolutely agree with that! How did you come up with the name Whale & Anchor? 

JY: Whale came very quickly because whales are my favorite animal and the anchor was coming from the work that I do on boats. I wanted to tie in my love of nature and the work that I do in iron and steel. It’s a marriage of my two worlds coming together and then the mermaid image is from the very first image I made for Whale & Anchor. 

Now, it’s really awesome to be in a position where people want stuff enough, where I can do things to give back to the community. For the lobster cards this year I gave 100% of everything made from those cards to the Maine Coast Fishermen's Association and the Maine Lobstermen. These folks have really had a tough couple of years. They're such a backbone for the lobster industry here. I have so much respect for so many of those people, they've grown up in this land and multi-generations of Mainers in this industry. 

MVM: I appreciate giving back as well, I think it’s so important to do. To wrap up, any last words?!

JY: If there are any women thinking about getting into the maritime industry and you're reading this, come talk to me. I love supporting women in the maritime field, and women in general. I’m all about small business, and that’s pretty much it! 

Thank you to Jess Yeomans for taking the time to talk with Maine Vibes Magazine! You are incredible.

Web: https://jessyeomans.com

Instagram: @whale.and.anchor

Instagram: @jessyeomans.art

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