This spring Delano 鈥淎kairo鈥� Mills 鈥�23 graduated with a bachelor鈥檚 in Studio Art and a minor in Arts Management from 91爱豆传媒. This summer he鈥檚 working as an admissions clerk at the Springfield Museum and received a $3k grant from Assets for Artists to focus on his artistic practice.
Mills, from Springfield, Mass., was awarded the 2023 Massachusetts Statewide Capacity Building Grant Program this July to fund a website and his first 60+ page comic, 鈥淒esert Sunflower Vol 1: Seed of the Red Sun,鈥� which was independently published and is now available on Amazon.
鈥淪ince graduating I've achieved what I wanted to; getting a job in a field I'm interested in with decent daytime hours, close to home, and I was able to complete my book as well,鈥� Mills said. 鈥淚'm excited to see what my future holds post-graduation.鈥�
Mills is a digital illustrator, photographer, character designer, and comic artist
who primarily focuses on bringing black representation and visual aesthetics like
Afro-Punk, Afro-fantasy, and Afro-Surrealism into the forefront of sequential art
and storytelling.
Navigating the process of publishing a book wasn鈥檛 easy for Mills, which is why he chose to self-publish.
鈥淭he goal of this is to prove that self-publishing is possible and that artists don't
need to rely on publishers 鈥� selling their IP and losing their creative freedom,鈥�
he said. 鈥淭hat is something I value greatly. I now take on the role of everything
a publisher has to do, but at the end of the day I still have my creative freedom
and that is invaluable.鈥�
The Massachusetts Statewide Capacity Building Grant Program awarded 26 artists split into two cohorts, one in July and the second in October. The program offers an unrestricted grant of $3k, priority access to Assets for Artists online workshops for the year, one individual coaching session with an Assets for Artists trainer, support for setting goals and making an action-oriented plan to reach them, and peer-networking opportunities within the cohort.
