Devon Rodriguez — Work In Progress w/ Elizabeth Méndez Berry —at St. Paul's

As a child, Rodriguez wondered why he lived in a single cramped room with his family, where he was beaten often and never felt safe. But despite difficult circumstances, he always believed he was going to be a successful artist.

When he was in the ninth grade, his art teacher invited him to ride the New York City subway, with one destination in mind: the development of his craft, by drawing the commuters sitting across from him. A blank page in his sketchbook was something Rodriguez could control in an otherwise chaotic life.

In this astonishing memoir, he explains how his art, his grandmother, and his own relentless drive saved him from heart-wrenching circumstances and led him to redefine out-of-fashion realist portraiture as fresh and magical.

Rodriguez writes with rhythm, verve, and an artist’s POV, painting a vivid picture of his native Bronx, the tattoos and rooftop graffiti that mesmerized him as a kid, and the teachers who saw his potential and nourished it.

Painting regular people in all their complexity is Rodriguez’s gift and his offering to the world, an old-school act that has made him a new-school star. Work in Progress delivers Rodriguez’s most precise and moving portrait yet: of himself.

Devon Rodriguez is a Bronx-born portrait artist of Puerto Rican and Honduran descent. He rose to notoriety for drawing realistic portraits of commuters on the New York City subway system. He has also portrayed such luminaries as former President Biden, Oprah, and more. The most-followed visual artist on TikTok, he was a finalist in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. His work has been featured in The New Yorker and The New York Times. He was named a 2025 Time100 Creator and a Forbes Top Creator the same year. He lives in New York City.

Rodriguez will be in conversation with Elizabeth Méndez Berry (She/Her), Vice President & Executive Editor One World. Elizabeth’s career has been led by curiosity, from her own award-winning journalism to her work as an editor and grantmaker. She started out as an assistant music editor at Vibe magazine where she wrote and edited music criticism; in his book Decoded, Jay-Z cited one of her essays as an inspiration for the line “I’m like Che Guevara with bling on, I’m complex / I never claimed to have wings on” in his iconic track “Public Service Announcement.” Before joining One World, she invested in the arts and journalism as a funder at the Ford Foundation and the Nathan Cummings Foundation. She cofounded Critical Minded, an initiative that supports cultural criticism. At One World, she acquires nonfiction and works with authors including Yaba Blay, Eve L. Ewing, Jeneen Interlandi, Devon Rodriguez, Guadalupe Rosales, and Adam Serwer.