Theodore Taylor, III: Illustrator

by Charles McGuigan 06.2022

Teddy Taylor is a gifted artist who already has eight titles in print to his credit, with another one coming out in October, and three others currently in the works. One book of his illustrations was on The New York Times Best Sellers list, another won the prestigious Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent. He even has the honor of having had one of his books banned in certain libraries—a distinction he shares with the likes of Alice Walker, George Orwell, Maya Angelou, Harper Lee, John Steinbeck, Kurt Vonnegut, and so on. 

Teddy Taylor, his partner, Sarah Schultz, and their son, Theo, live in an elegantly appointed mid-century bungalow tucked along a quiet street in Lakeside. Sarah and Teddy—artists, both—have decorated their home with their own works, and those created by friends and other artists they admire, along with memorabilia from their own lives. To enter that space is to immerse yourself in the deep creative pool of art, that rare gift that preserves humanity, enlarges its scope and propels us all forward. During the course of the interview, Teddy and I migrate from the dining room to his office and then out to the living room where we join Sarah, and then she shows me her own studio, and her works inspire a future cover story.

Theodore “Teddy” Taylor, III grew up in a middle class neighborhood near Valley View Mall in Roanoke. And even after his family moved out to the county, Teddy continued his studies in the Roanoke Public Schools and graduated from Patrick Henry High. His mother, Leslie, worked as an editor for The Roanoke Times, an award-winning daily newspaper that some of the townies referred to as “the liberal rag”. And his dad, Ted Taylor, who passed away while Teddy was still in high school, worked as a manager for Norfolk Southern. But like his son, he also had an artistic streak, and played jazz guitar with The Reflections. 

Teddy wears a short-sleeved olive drab shirt that’s emblazoned with white images of skulls, small sprigs, daggers and slices of pepperoni pizza. He’s relaxed, and seems at home in the world. We begin of course at the beginning, and his boyhood and teenhood in Big Lick, the Star City of the South. 

“I grew up in a middle class neighborhood, and most of my friends were white,” Teddy says, and then grinning broadly, adds with a sonorous laugh, “I remember my grandmother asking why I didn’t have any black friends.” Unlike many other Roanokers of his age, Teddy had no discernible accent, and still doesn’t. It might have had to do with the fact that his father was originally from Washington, D.C. and that his mother was a military brat. Her father served in the US Air Force and their family lived on bases all around the world, from Japan to Thailand, and stateside.

Not long ago, Teddy and a friend were talking about southern food, and this is what Teddy said: “I guess I’m fake southern because my family’s not technically from the South.”

Yet it was in the South that Teddy first developed his love for the art of illustration. From the time he was in elementary school, Teddy kept a notebook, and he would doodle, and draw Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Sonic the Hedgehog, emulating past masters of the art, and always perfecting his own techniques.

In an after-school program in elementary school, a counselor, who was also an artist, kept a sketchbook with him at all times. “I think that’s what made me want one of my own,” Teddy tells me. “And then in high school, my art teacher, Fletcher Nichols, who had attended VCU, kind of convinced me to go to VCU, too. In senior year I decided to go.”

Like every other VCU art student, he went through the rigorous AFO (Art Foundation Program), spending countless all-nighters in the studios at the Bowe Street Deck. 

“That’s where me and Sarah met,” he remembers. “We would be in there all night. We really got to know each other in the wood cutting room.” But where Teddy majored in communication arts, Sarah majored in photography and craft/materials studies. “We both made a lot of friends through VCU, friends that we sill have today,” says Teddy.

One of his illustration instructors told the class that few of them would actually become illustrators. “He said that most of us would become designers, and maybe three of us would do illustrations for a living,” Teddy says. “That’s why I went into web development and web design.”

After graduation, Teddy moved to DC and interned as a web designer for a PR firm. It led to a permanent position there, a job Teddy has to this day. “I just stayed with them for twelve years,” he says. “I don’t do much web design anymore. I do coding mostly.”

This is a full-time job with The Brick Factory, formerly the Bivings Group. “It’s  nine to six weekdays, but it’s nice to have a regular source of income and insurance,” says Teddy.

When Teddy moved to DC, Sarah headed up to Baltimore and lived with her mother.  “She would come down on weekends and we finally moved into an apartment together in DC,” Teddy says. “We stayed up there for eight years and when we had our son we couldn’t afford child care, so that’s when I started working from home full-time. Sarah had to go back to work, and I worked at my desk with Theo strapped to my chest.”

Eventually the pair decided to return to Richmond. They rented apartments, one in Shockoe Bottom another in Manchester, before finding their home on the Northside. 

In his office, I look through several of the books Teddy has illustrated and study some of the posters and prints on the walls, and then scan the zines and the awards and the books by other artists lined up on the shelves.

When I ask about artists he admires, Teddy says, “I can rattle off artists’ names forever, but I just keep thinking about all my friends whose work I am inspired by.”

There’s Richie Pope, who lives in California, and is a storyboard artist for Cartoon Network’s “Craig of the Creek”. Richie’s partner, Nicole Hamilton, also one of Teddy’s friends, worked on “Tuca and Bertie”, a Netflix animated sitcom, and is currently working on the latest permutation of “Animaniacs”.

He talks at length about his friend Shannon Wright, a Richmonder, who is an illustrator and cartoonist. “Shannon did a graphic novel,” says Teddy. “And she does a lot children’s book, too. Watching Shannon doing stuff with kids’ books is really inspiring.”

Teddy’s friend, Chris Vision, who also lives here, has done work for Marvel Comics. “He’s done covers for them,” Teddy says. “He’s also done graphic novels and a few murals around town, too. I’m inspired by him a lot.”

Along with his full-time job with The Brick Factory, Teddy has always made time to commit to his artwork. To date, he has illustrated eight books. He illustrated “C is for Country” by Lil Nas X, which made it to The New York Times Best Sellers list.  The illustration work he did for “When The Beat Was Born: DJ Kool Herc and the Creation of Hip Hop” won him the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Award. This, too: he created the illustrations for Shaquille O'Neal's “Little Shaq” series of children’s books. 

Teddy has also worked with poet Mahogany Browne on two books—“Woke: A Young Poet’s Call to Justice” and “Woke Baby”, both of which were published by Macmillan. One of them was banned by some libraries in—you guessed it—the Lone Star State. Having a banned book to your credit is one of the greatest badges of merit any illustrator or writer could ever desire, because if someone want to ban a book, there is something within it that they don’t want you to know about. 

There’s also a remunerative effect when books are blacklisted and banned.  Remember what happened when the McMinn County School Board in Tennessee decided, in its infinite stupidity, to ban Art Spiegelman’s classic graphic novel “Maus” from school libraries? It soared to the top of bestseller lists everywhere, and bookstores could barely keep the book in stock.

“The ban in Texas actually helped ‘Woke Baby’ sales,” says Teddy.  When he opened his royalty check this year from Roaring Brook Press, a subsidiary of Macmillan, Teddy was more than pleasantly surprised. 

 Right now, he’s working on three projects simultaneously. “One’s a graphic novel for young adults,” Teddy says.  “It’s a lot of work. It’s kind of like doing five picture books at once.”  

Another project, a relatively easy one for Teddy, will be part of a young adult novel. “They saw some of my zine work,” says Teddy. “I do a lot of zines, and the book’s about zines, so they needed some zine pages. That’s all in black and white so I don’t have to color anything which is great.”

He’s also working on a sequel to a book he had illustrated on the life of Charles Henry Turner, a Black scientist. 

And this October, Macmillan’s Roaring Brook Press will release a book both written and illustrated by Theodore Taylor, III. Titled “Off the Wall” the book is about a young girl who moves from a large city to a rural town, and is numbed by a cultural shock that ultimately ignites a creative fire in her soul.

“She’s from an urban area inspired by Sao Palo, Brazil,” Teddy tells me. “And she moves to a small Virginia town, and she feels out of place, and she finds her place through street art and graffiti. I wrote the story and drew the illustrations.”

Though not a practitioner of graffiti and street art himself, Teddy has always admired this form of artistic expression. “It’s very me,” he says. “The book is very me.” 

As if passing on the baton to another generation of artists, here’s what author/illustrator Theodore Taylor, III wrote about his upcoming book: “My goal with this book isn’t to push children to tag up their neighborhoods, but to inspire those who feel like outsiders to find their voice within their communities. Find like-minded friends. Find un-like-minded friends. Explore every nook and cranny of your environment and discover where you belong, and what you’re inspired to do. Growing up, I often felt like an oddball but eventually found my way to a loving, inspiring community of artists, creatives, and, yes, geeks. You are never alone.”