Vesper Stamper

Vesper means “evening prayer”, but my parents named me after a James Bond girl–the original Bond girl, Vesper Lynd, who was James’ first love, and maybe only love, from Casino Royale. She was loyal to Bond even to death. Well, I suppose both namesakes are worth pursuing.

Hilary Knight taught me to draw as a child, in the wee hours when I would copy page after page of his “Cinderella” in painstaking detail. Everything I did was filtered through my wandering eyes; every leaf of every tree; ubiquitous graffiti in pre-Giuliani Manhattan, the beauty marks on my mother’s face.

I set off to art school at the tender age of 13, always knowing that I’d travel through life with a paintbrush in my hand. It was at LaGuardia High School for Music and Art and Performing Arts in New York City that I discovered new worlds in children’s book illustration and theatrical scene design. After a year at North Carolina School of the Arts studying Scene Design, I was driven back into the arms of my mother City and earned my BFA in Illustration from Parsons School of Design in 1998.

Since then, I’ve been illustrating and designing web sites for everything from sneakers to motor oil to midwives to musicians, and stirring up the muse with my band, Ben + Vesper, and all sorts of handwork on Etsy.