As a kid, Stephen Cefalo always knew he wanted to be an artist.
The question was, what kind of artist would he be? Even at a young age, he had narrowed it down into three lofty aspirations.
“I wanted to be a comic book artist, a Disney animator and a classical Renaissance painter,” he said. “So I was all over the place.”
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Turns out, he has pretty much done a version of all of them. From painting the classical human form to animating the Nickelodeon cartoon “Rugrats” to working on a graphic novel about an ongoing secretive Navy space program, Cefalo has a varied and eclectic background in art.
He has brought his unique perspective on art to Franklin College, where he is serving as an artist-in-residence on campus this year to teach a winter term class on the architecture of the human form.
Cefalo has been fascinated by art for as long as he can remember. His earliest memory is of the stained-glass windows at Frauenkirche Cathedral in Nuremberg, Germany, where he was born.
When his family moved to a suburb of Philadelphia, he would stare transfixed at a portrait of his grandfather in World War II, and be fascinated by presidential portraits hanging in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
“I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t an artist,” he said. “It was never a question. That’s how I identified, always somehow.”
By the time Cefalo was 12, his aunt, who lived near Evansville and was an accomplished classical painter and sculptor, started teaching him how to use oil paint.
But while he was learning a more formal style of art, he also loved the visual style of animation and comic books. He and his best friend created their own superhero comic in junior high and sold them for $1 apiece.
Using a Super 8 camera his mother had bought him, he was making cell animation and reading every book he could find about animation.
“There was always this insatiable desire to be the most versatile and incredible artist I could be, and I feel like I’m still on that quest,” Cefalo said.
Studying in New York at the School of Visual Arts, he focused on fine art before switching to emphasize illustration. He learned from Steven Assael, one of the leading American figurative artists.
After graduation, he worked as an assistant to Jeff Koons, a famed pop artist who is known as the “World’s Most Expensive Artist” for his record-breaking sales.
He had befriended a fellow illustrator who worked at Nickelodeon, and was hired on to work as an animator on “Rugrats” from 1999 to 2001.
Cefalo enjoyed animating and doing illustration work, and he was happy with the direction his career had taken. But on one of the most tragic days in American history, he was forced to reconsider his pathway.
From his office on the 42nd floor of Nickelodeon’s headquarters in New York City, he watched as the south tower of the World Trade Center fell during the Sept. 11 attacks.
“It was unreal. It felt like we were watching TV, but it was scary,” he said.
Cefalo started to think about his work as an artist, and decided to go back to graduate school to again focus on fine art. He was accepted to Indiana University’s fine art program, where he earned his master’s degree in 2004 under the tutelage of longtime professor Bonnie Sklarski.
From that point, he was immersed in classical painting. He focused his own artwork on the human form, taking the foundational aspects of the figure art and adding his own tweaks and flourishes to it.
He also taught at the Arts Academy of Cincinnati and the University of Arkansas.
“There was just this wellspring of creativity in my final years at Arkansas. The teaching was great and the art was great, I was selling like crazy and really popular,” he said. “It was a really fertile environment there.”
Cefalo eventually returned to New York to work with Koons again before moving to Raleigh, North Carolina — where he still lives — to focus on painting full time.
His own work has continued to progress, but in the past year, he has become part of an off-the-wall yet utterly fascinating project. He was hired to do animations for “Cosmic Disclosures,” a program on the Gaia television network, which is focused on consciousness programing. The show comes from the mind of Corey Goode.
Goode has built a popular following by claiming he has been part of a secret military operation dealing with extraterrestrials, colonies on the moon and Mars and a clandestine government.
Though far-fetched, the idea was fascinating for Cefalo. When Goode put a call-out on Twitter for an artist for his projects, Cefalo submitted a design for an alien being that Goode had described.
“I thought it would be the coolest thing, because it would take everything I was currently excited about and wrap it up into one thing,” he said.
Though his initial animation wasn’t chosen, Cefalo stayed resolute, sending Goode’s company revised images over and over. His persistence paid off, and he was offered a job.
Now, with Goode planning to release his story in a series of three 75-page graphic novels called “Return of the Guardians,” Cefalo has been picked to do the illustration for it.
“So basically, I dropped everything else, and am putting my whole life into this graphic novel,” he said. “It’s what my heart and soul are going into.”
At the same time, he took the opportunity to return to teaching. Franklin College art professor David Cunningham, who Cefalo had met while in graduate school at Indiana University, encouraged him to apply for the school’s residency program.
Cefalo is the third visiting artist featured at Franklin College, made possible with a $50,000 grant from the Allen W. Clowes Foundation. Brazilian artist Artur Silva and sculptor Sayaka Ganz have been the other two artists-in-residence.
His class, titled “Drawing Figures from the Heart and Brain,” has been centered on the human form and how it’s been portrayed throughout history.
The work created by students during the course, as well as some of his own art, will be featured in an exhibition starting Monday. Cefalo will also present a lecture titled “Human: The Divine Template,” on Feb. 13.
“It’s been a nice revisiting of teaching the figure, which is still a big passion of mine,” he said.
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Stephen Cefalo
Home: Raleigh, North Carolina
Occupation: Artist-in-residence at Franklin College; figurative painter, illustrator, art instructor and animator for Gaia’s “Cosmic Disclosure”
Education: Earned his bachelor’s degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 1999; earned his master’s degree in fine art from Indiana University in 2004
For more information: Go to stephencefalo.com, returnoftheguardians.com or find him on Instagram at comic_disclosure_artist.
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“Human: The Divine Template”
What: A lecture by guest artist Stephen Cefalo focused on the architecture of the human form.
When: Feb. 13, 7 p.m.
Where: Henderson Conference Room, Johnson Center for the Fine Arts, corner of Branigan Boulevard and Grizzly Drive, Franklin College
Cost: Free and open to the public
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