Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Adieu, Adieu to you and you and you!




Doing the show was a lot of work and a lot of fun. I was so honored to have worked with these 10 amazing artists and to have met a couple in person as well! Thanks to everyone who helped make the show a success; the artists, the visitors, the faculty and organizations that brought groups in for tours and worked with me on the workshop, my coworkers who dealt with my frazzled nerves, etc, etc. It was a great experience, and the show will live on through this blog for as long as I can leave it up :)

Thanks again!
~nancy

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Two weeks left!



If you haven't yet been to the gallery to visit the Paint for Print show, I suggest you hurry up.

The show is open though next Friday December 19th. That will be the last day every to see these particular works by these amazing illustrators gathered together in one convenient location. I mean, after the 19th, you'll have to go to Toronto, Montreal, Tel Aviv, Winona Lake Indiana, New York, Altadena, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Bremerton Washington and Apex North Carolina to see all of them- and that's assuming that the artists are home when you show up- which is unlikely because they're busy people with a lot of stuff to do. It would just be a logistical nightmare. You're far better off stopping in the gallery.

Which is: Glass Curtain Gallery, 1104 S Wabash, Chicago, IL 60605 With convenient parking nearby, close to public transit and tasty restaurants. See you there!

Monday, November 17, 2008

The catalog









This is the exhibition catalog. I have awkwardly posted it here (can't get the pdf to link up to the blog) b/c there seems to be a northern version of the bermuda triangle that sucks up anything I post to Canada (i.e. Gérard and Joe never seem to get my mail!) Perhaps it's stuck in line at border security (?). The actual catalog is a 9 x 12 tri-fold, so viewing it in single pages is a bit awkward- but you get to see the content regardless! Enjoy!

Friday, November 7, 2008

panel and reception night








The panel and reception went great. The previous post was my take on it after having drank a bit of gallery wine- it is important information though.

The panel was moderated by Caroline Cook Juhlin who works in the Portfolio Center to bring students together with industry people. As a photographer and former photo rep, she knows everyone and is really good at getting people in to talk to students. Steve Munro is an artist's rep from the firm Munro Campagna. He had a great take on how artists should go about getting a rep and getting work. John Hendrix was there for it, he gave some really insightful info (companies wanting rights to media not yet invented?!). Liz Miller-Gershfeld is the Head Art Buyer at Energy BBDO and was great to meet. She really came across as someone who is inundated with mailers and promos all day and yet still cares and still wants to comb through and see everyone's work. Dan Bruce is a Group Creative Director and only hires art directors who can draw (which I thought was refreshing!). He also stressed that he is not the target for illustration mailings and promos as he has zero time to look at them or space for them. The consensus seemed to be to have a strong portfolio, send mailers to art buyers and have a strong online presence. Good info. We recorded it- both the audio and video, and will start to work on getting it online either through here, the Portfolio Center or perhaps youtube (?) I'll update this w/ the location of the video once it's up.

The reception went good as well. The weather (rainy and crap) put a bit of a damper on the attendance, but particularly earlier on it was a good crowd. At the very end of the night a class came in (applied drawing) that was SO interested in the work and so appreciative of seeing that everything is perfect and in its final stage on the walls and was all done by hand with no digi tools :)

John attended the reception as well and had the best time of his life (this is just my inference- but I'm pretty sure that was the case). His lovely wife and future baby came to the party as well (seen here). I was really glad that they could make the drive from St. Louis in and that the students and attendees got a chance to meet him and talk shop.

I had a great time. I'm happy to have done the show (despite any conclusions you may have drawn from last week's posts). It may be a bit on the selfish side, but I've gotten a lot out of it :) Hopefully other peoples do too!

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Hardly any degrees of separation





Okay, so I should probably be posting pics of our highly successful panel talk featuring the super nice and talented artist John Hendrix and the equally pleasant, articulate wonderful panelists Liz, Steve and Dan. Or I could show pics of the people who came to the reception- and I will.

But- tonight I have to say I walked away with a funny thought. Back when I was researching bios for the artists, I saw that Robert MacKenzie had worked on a Harry Potter movie. I am always excited when I find the actual lineage of a degree of separation, and there was a huge one. I heart Harry Potter. And there it was. Me to Robert. Robert to Harry Potter (or to someone to someone to Harry).

And John establishes 2 more. Really one more, but kinda two. My husband worked on a My Chemical Romance project featuring James Dewees of the Get Up Kids who I LOVED for years. (me to Davey to James to Get Up Kids-btw- this pic is one of James holding a sign that says "hi Nancy" from when Davey worked with him- he made James do that which Davey is so great for making him do!) Well, there are two roads to TGUK now! John went to school with Travis Millard who did the covers of Something to Write Home About and On a Wire (by TGUK). So cool.

AND also- John worked at the New York Times and met the puzzle master himself- Will Shortz! (me to John to Will Shortz).

So yeah. Super f-ing cool. And those are just the ones that I know about. I'm sure through the other 8 artists there are even more shortcuts to my favorite things (Terry Gross? Jim Henson? Obama? Oprah? Morrissey? The possibilities are endless!) Just more reasons why these artists are superfly coolio! (as if the work isn't enough!)

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

dust off your party clothes!



Don't forget to press your best suit and polish your dress-up heels, the reception is Thursday!!!

Here are the details:

Paint for Print: Contemporary Illustration, Traditional Media
Glass Curtain Gallery
1104 S Wabash, 1st floor
Chicago, IL
5:00 pm-8:00 pm

Also, if you have the day off, there's the not to be missed panel talk earlier in the day featuring JOHN HENDRIX live and in person , along with Liz Miller-Gershfeld (Head Art Buyer Energy BBDo), illustration rep Steve Munro (Munro Campagna), and moderated by Caroline Cook Juhlin. That info is:

Paint for Print Panel
Conaway Center
1104 S Wabash, 1st floor
Chicago, IL
11:00 am - 12:30 pm

See you there!

Friday, October 31, 2008

done. (almost)








Done. Except for lighting, labels, and some odds and ends (plex cut to the wrong size, needing to add printed thing, etc). It's very nice. Was very rushed, but really came together. This morning 1/2 of the professional work wasn't up, none of the shelves for printed samples, and no student show. So today was productive with the help of Michael, Katie (who single-handedly hung the student show!) and Kyle.

I'm really happy with it- it's weird to stand in the place and be physically surrounded by everything that was ideas, notes, or images on websites or in magazines. I don't know why it's so different with this show, except the massive scale of it all. I really was blindsided by how different it's been from other shows that I've worked on. Now we have the reception to look forward to. I'll meet John on Thursday when he's on the panel talk and then at five is the reception.

Now, I have to wake up a bit, finish my Halloween costume and go have some fun!

Thursday, October 30, 2008

half full or half empty?






Remember the panic mode from a few days ago? Totally justified. Today seemed to progress slow as molasses. I spent the entire day painting in the names of the artists, which, at the end of the day look like vinyl anyway (which would've been 2 hours work vs 10). I was yelled at by a security guard, talked to 2 classes (I try so hard to get over my fear of public speaking!) At about 7pm after feeling discouraged about the names not looking painted, I decided to paint a nice happy yellow around the statement on the title wall. As is, it looks like a crappy dried out highlighter pen went over it. I'm either fixing that tomorrow or adding orange to the subtitle and dates to try to de-crappify it. Just a boat load of negativity today and I left asking myself why the H I'm going through all this trouble for... (?)

And, I have my own illustration work waiting to be drawn as well as my robot suit for the Halloween party I hope I still make it to waiting to have the lighting system (i.e. control panel) installed.

I miss my life and feel really discouraged tonight. There's still 1/2 a show to hang, all of the shelves for the printed materials, and- oh yeah, the entire student show in the back of the space. This is why I panicked Tuesday. Grrrrrr....

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Me and my big ideas







So back in January or whenever this show got approved- I decided to have huge stencils made in vinyl of all of the artists names to help delineate whose work is whose, and also to jazz up the white walls (I'm not a real fan of colored gallery walls- pretty much the only viewpoint of mine that could be construed as "conservative".

Anyway- that was a great idea then. Now that it's time to do it, it just looks like a pile of problems (is this blog turning into a place for me to whine about how much work this is?) There's the bleed factor (paint seeping under the stencil), we have to measure out all the work, figure out where the left edge is, and then install the rta ("ready to apply"- an acronym for the vinyl text), paint the names in, dry them, peel them off, install the work. But, it should look cool.

Tonight I did the test on the title- it worked great. I may change my color scheme for the show now though. It occurred to me on the way home (long after I painted on the walls of course) that I should've used orange. The identity of the show- created by Robert in Creative and Print in the school- is orange based. But then the title would be orange and the rta below it black- which is so Halloween, so maybe this is better. BUT maybe the names should all be orange instead of the 10 different colors that I've bought to do them in.

Whatevs. That's for tomorrow. For tonight is a glass of wine and a shower to wash away the drywall dust and paint in my hair.

Extreme gallery makeover








omg- flipping nuts. And Mark does this for every single show- it's mind boggling. I started the day pretty much needing to breathe into a paper bag (see the before photo). The walls were in place, but everything needed to be sanded, painted, and cleaned and cleaned and cleaned before I could bring any work in to lay out the show. So I panicked. I got to work painting, keeping my panic on the inside (except for explaining anxiety dreams to Mark or telling Neysa- our Director- when she asked how panicky I was). So we all sat down, talked through how it's do-able to restructure the gallery during every install at Glass Curtain (this is something I do not do at the other galleries). And, proceeded during the day with lots of help from the super freelancers Michael and Chelsea as well as the super work aides Nick, Greg and Kyle to go from picture A (big old mess) to picture B (clean gallery with work laid out ready to install tomorrow).

Mark has a cold and got the brunt of the worst job today- sanding drywall mud. While he was working on that, the gallery looked like there was a fog machine on (hence the dust masks and Greg's fancy shoe covers). It's probably a supreme health hazard- aside from the fact that it produces so much dust that takes so long to settle, that it took all of us a good couple hours to de-dust the gallery afterward. And Mark and his team do this for every single show- did I mention this? I find it admirable, but f-that!

Which is my way of saying thank you to everyone who helped today :)

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

re.....lax.....

I'm feeling a little tense. A little paranoid... Walls take time to build. three days time, it turns out. The estimates are putting me starting the install and laying out the work late Wednesday or early Thursday. This makes me have palpitations. I am the type that wants the work to be going up the first day. The forth day? Palpitations.

It'll be fine. It'll get up. It'll look great. (say aloud and repeat)

Thursday, October 23, 2008

obstacles or "why I'm flippin' nuts by nancy"









So- there are logistical issues with working at Columbia. We have the whole "city is our campus" line that the admissions peoples tell new students- and that was SO true this week. Because bringing this show together involved trekking things all over the city.

So as not to bore you, here's a quick run down of what I'm talking about: work comes in to mailroom, mailroom calls me, I walk a block to the mailroom, navigate my way through the tore up sidewalk in front of the door, get the package of artwork, navigate back through the sidewalk (repeat ten times). Gather all the work out of my office, bring in the car, bring in students to help (thank you Nick and Andy), haul all the boxes to the car (in front of my office is now a no parking zone), drive the boxes to the next no parking zone to unload (repeat).

Also- trip to Ikea to get 24 steel shelves to use as magazine racks to show the printed materials on- which I'm hoping is an excellent solution to the problem of finding a way to put tear sheets and books neatly into the show. (thanks to Katie for painting them!)

And that's to say nothing of the matting. Back in summer when the show was months away and I just wanted the best artists possible, I offered to mat any unframed work. Most of these images in the show weren't created for gallery exhibition, so they aren't framed. This offer made it easier on the artists, and also made shipping less expensive. Then a couple weeks ago, when it came time to find someone to mat the work, my inner virgo came out and decided to do it all myself for fear of anyone else touching (aka ruining) these awesome works of art.

Also- trip to the hardware store to have them cut 40 something pieces of plex (thankfully I didn't get all virgo on that task)- to be picked up next week.

This week I came to regret the mat-it-yourself choice. I ordered the mat board and backing boards. Four boxes (32 x 40" in size, 32-39 pounds in weight). I then drove in, loaded them all into the car, drove home, lugged them all up to my 3rd floor walk up apartment (it was easier on my schedule to cut mats in my studio between projects than to do it at work), cut 44 mats and backing boards (my cat just learned to sit on whatever I'm doing- which made me extra glad that I left the art at work), haul all 4 boxes down again, take them into work, insert all of the art into the mats, and...done w/ that-mostly.

So now all that's left to do is re-cut a few mats, order all of the vinyl lettering, move some walls around in the gallery, paint the gallery, and install the show. Easy peasy.

Despite all of this moaning about how much work this week has been, I was so so excited to put the work in the mats (using non-adhesive, archival, safe as can be mounting strips). I am actually looking forward to installing Monday just to start to see this come together. It's been a long, long time of planning and it will be so cool to see everything DONE! And, I'll be working with Michael and Chelsea who are excellent freelance preparators and Mark who is a great wall-movin' coordinator!

Monday, October 20, 2008

Bio: Gina Triplett














Gina Triplett

Years In Industry: 10

Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Bio:

Gina Triplett is an illustrator living in Philadelphia, PA. Gina studied illustration at The Maryland Institute, College of Art in Baltimore. She enjoys spending time exploring the city, sitting at cafés, playing with her dog and collaborating on paintings with her husband, Matt Curtius under the name Gina and Matt. Her clients include Target, Converse, Urban Outfitters and Chronicle Books. She is represented by Frank Sturges.

Bio: Joe Morse
















Joe Morse

Years In Industry: 23

Location: Toronto, Ontario

Bio:

Joe Morse graduated from the Ontario College of Art in Fine Arts/Printmaking. He has been awarded many grants including two Elizabeth Greenshields Grants to study in Italy and Japan. He also studied in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico on a Sauza Awards Grant. He has been recognized with over 150 international awards. He is Illustrator-in-Residence for the illustration program at Sheridan College. He lives with his wife, Lorraine Tuson, and their children, Jackson and Parker Lily in Toronto. Joe has an extensive client list including Major League Baseball, Nike Europe, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone and The New York Times. He is represented by Sally Heflin.

Bio: Robert MacKenzie















Robert MacKenzie

Years In Industry: 10

Location: New York, New York

Bio:

Robert MacKenzie grew up in San Mateo California. He graduated from San Jose State University with a degree in Illustration and Animation and has worked as a freelance Illustrator and a designer in feature films. His work has appeared in Spectrum, Communication Arts and the Society of Illustrator’s Annuals. He has worked in the art departments of Lucasfilm, PDI Dreamworks, and Blue Sky Studios. Robert’s work appears in the books; Out of Picture, Volume 1 (Villard Books), Jack and the Beanstalk (Sterling Publishers), Fly, Cher Ami, Fly (coming soon - Abrams Books). He is represented by Shannon Associates.

Bio: Aaron Jasinski



















Aaron Jasinski

Years In Industry: 8

Location: Bremerton, Washington

Bio:

Aaron grew up during the 1980s in the Pacific Northwest, about an hour outside of Seattle. He received a BFA in Illustration from Brigham Young University in 2000. His art has shown in Europe and throughout the United States. He draws, paints and mixes music. He currently lives in Seattle with his wife Kristin. Aaron is represented by Shannon Associates.

Bio: Sterling Hundley




















Sterling Hundley

Years In Industry: 10

Location: Apex, North Carolina

Bio:

Sterling graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1998. While still a student, Sterling was awarded the Starr Foundation scholarship through the Society of Illustrators’ National Student Scholarship Competition. During the summers of 1998 and 1999, Sterling attended the Illustration Academy in Kansas City, Missouri. Sterling has served as a juror for the Society of Illustrators, 3 x 3 Magazine, the SOI Scholarship Competition, and CMYK magazine. His clients include Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, GQ, The New Yorker, The Grammys, Major League Baseball, Scholastic, Random House, Harper Collins, and Penguin/ Putnam. Sterling is represented by Richard Soloman.

Bio: John Hendrix



















John Hendrix

Years In Industry: 7

Location: St. Louis, Missouri

Bio:

John attended the University of Kansas to study graphic design and illustration. He worked as a designer for a few years and went on to attend The School of Visual Arts in New York City. While in New York, John also taught at Parsons School of Design and worked at The New York Times as Assistant Art Director of the Op-Ed page. His work has received numerous national awards, and is featured in both Illustration Now! and Images & Icons, 50 Years of Illustration. John currently teaches undergraduate illustration at Washington University. He lives in St. Louis with his beautiful bride Andrea and spunky son Jack. Sports Illustrated, Entertainment Weekly, Random House, Harper Collins, Penguin and the NBA are just a few of John’s multitude of clients.

Bio: Penelope Dullaghan

















Penelope Dullaghan

Years In Industry: 4

Location: Winona Lake, Indiana

Bio:

Penelope Dullaghan first ventured out on her own as an illustrator in 2004 with the creation of her blog, “Illustration Friday” – a friendly, non-competitive online community where she could chat and exchange ideas with other artists, clientele and curious visitors. Her many achievements include awards and recognition from Communication Arts, the Society of Illustrators, 3 x 3 Illustration Annual ProShow Awards, Lürzer’s Archive and 3 x 3 Magazine. Penelope has an extensive client list including; The New York Times Book Review, Harper Collins, American Greetings, United Airlines and Target. She is represtented by Scott Hull Associates.

Bio: Gérard DuBois















Gérard Dubois

Years In Industry: 17

Location: Montréal, Quebec

Bio:

Gérard DuBois was born in France in 1968. He studied graphic design in Paris for five years. He relocated to Montréal shortly after his graduation in 1989, and has worked as a freelance illustrator since. His career has been profiled by leading graphic arts publications such as Print Magazine, Communication Arts and Grafika. His illustrations have been awarded in Communication Arts, American Illustration, SPD, Folio and Print to silver and gold medals from The Society of Illustrators and The National Magazine Awards.

His original art has been exhibited internationally. A few of his many clients are; The Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, Playboy, The Guardian, Nike, IBM, Nordstom and Microsoft. He currently lives in Montréal, with his wife and his two children. Gérard is represented by the Marlena Agency.

Bio: Shino Arihara



















Shino Arihara

Years In Industry: 10

Location: Altadena, California

Bio:

Shino Arihara was born in California and grew up in Yokohama, Japan. After returning to the U.S. with her family at age 14, she decided to become an illustrator. She then moved to Pasadena, California to attend Art Center College of Design and earned her B.A. in illustration. She illustrated her first children’s book in 2006. Shino and her husband Ken live in Altadena along with their dog, Morgan. Shino’s client list includes Time, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, POZ and New York University. She is represented by Gerald and Cullen Rapp.

Bio: Ofra Amit



















Hello again! In alphabetical order (or reverse alphabetical order since they'll end up that way on the blog when you scroll down) This is the first of the artist's bios as listed in the exhibition catalog.

Ofra Amit

Years In Industry: 8

Location: Tel Aviv, Israel

Bio:

Ofra Amit graduated from Wizo Canada Institute of Design in Haifa, Israel. She has illustrated books, picture books, theater posters and has contributed to magazines and newspapers. Her work has earned awards from Communication Arts, Applied Arts, Israel Museum, the Society of Illustrators Annual and more. Ofra paints mostly with acrylic on paper or wood.