Phoebe Santalla

Phoebe Santalla is a queer St. Louis based illustrator and visual storyteller transplanted from the far northwest suburbs of Chicago. She uses art to explore how individual queer and trans narratives interact with the greater social narrative. Belonging, introspection, mental health, identity, and the interweaving of these elements on both public and personal stages are consistent themes for her. She is invested in the ways that art and stories build community and guide the social development of norms.

Her work has appeared in local St Louis comic anthologies and in a few central Michigan exhibitions. Phoebe has previously worked with Art Reach of Mid Michigan, a community arts nonprofit, as an education coordinator, instructor, and marketing coordinator. She primarily works in pencil and pen but is known to pick up a stylus and work digitally as well.

Outside of making art she spends her free time wrecking her body on other fellow skaters for Arch Rival Roller Derby, reading graphic novels, watching cartoons, begging her cats to behave, and getting too invested in questionable reality TV shows with her partner.