KaNO Kid, a.k.a. Danny Kimanyen (BFA 1999 Animation), can point to two childhood epiphanies that made him want to be an artist. First was a TV news segment on Jim Davis, creator of Garfield, which showed the cartoonist living "in this big mansion," KaNO says. Second was finding out about painter Keith Haring (1979 Fine Arts), and in particular his Pop Shop, the Manhattan store that sold Haring-branded merchandise.

"I realized that artists don’t have to do just one thing," he says. "You can make T-shirts and you can show in galleries—it's all valid."

Accordingly, KaNO—whose name originated as his teenage graffiti tag, a nod to legendary rapper Big Daddy Kane—has built a diverse career. He has shown his original street-culture-inspired art in galleries, most recently in a group show at the Corey Helford Gallery in Los Angeles, and also in a group show in Brooklyn curated by fellow SVA graduate Toofly, a.k.a. Maria Castillo (BFA 1999 Illustration). He has painted large-scale outdoor murals everywhere from Tokyo to Miami to the Lower East Side. As an animator, he has worked on MTV's Daria and Cartoon Network's The Venture Bros.; he's currently a character designer for the latter channel's Ben 10. As a commercial artist, his projects include a limited-edition Jurassic Park–themed skate deck for Universal Pictures and apparel and a lunchbox for Nike's Jordan brand (a personal "artist's bucket list" item, he says).

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