INTRODUCTION
Hi friends! This book chronicles the process, problems, and progress that occurred during fall 2019 and spring 2020 in my first year of the Illustration Practice MFA program at the Maryland Institute College of Art. I came to MICA as an environmental studies and education studies major from Massachusetts (by way of Ohio, the land of corn...and my mom!), where I discovered partway through my undergraduate career that people would actually pay me for drawing! What? Drawing things can be a career? Amazing. After I graduated I spent a few years working a few different jobs, all the while doing freelance illustration work and selling my art. I learned a lot about being an illustrator during that time, but I craved the peer community and mentorship that I had been immersed in while at school. After researching Illustration MFA programs around the country I fell in love with MICA’s mission and culture, and the captivating, juicy work coming out of the ILP program. I knew it was my dream come true to come work with these amazing artists and mentors, Kimberly Ellen Hall, Whitney Sherman, and the rest of the ILP students! Please enjoy this jaunt through the ups and downs of my experience so far. I hope you find a picture you like, a sentence that resonates with you, or a page you can tear out, cut up, collage, and turn into something better. Happy doodling! Love, Abby
FALL SEMESTER
PAPER ENGINEERING
Paper cutting and engineering was our first workshop of the program, and while I had lots of fun creating teeny tiny books in the folding workshop we did with Stephanie Gillman, and adored Erik Ruin’s social justice papercut pieces, I found that the precise nature of the folds and cuts was pretty counter to my loose and blobby art style. I wanted to create something that I could spend more time coloring, and less time struggling with the x-acto knife blade so I settled on sketching out a little house with a warm glowing light inside to think about creating home in this new city. I cut the house out of paper, colored it with paint markers, and folded and glued it together. I put a little ceramic egg light inside to illuminate the cutouts, but felt like it wasn’t finished so I added a tiny book and tried to engineer a large hand to hold the house--both of which ended up not being very successful. While I don’t think I will pursue papercutting again (or precise geometric paper folding for that matter) I did enjoy creating a small intimate object with hidden features and pockets and would like to explore those aspects again in different media.
RISO ZINE I was so excited to do the risograph project and it ended up being a lot more challenging for me than I anticipated. I had hoped that my background in screen printing would allow me to do some super complicated color layering work but I struggled so much with getting my story to an engaging place that I ended up not having much time to spend on the colors. I instead focused on the narrative aspects of my story, and on pushing the yucky strangeness up and saccharine cuteness down in my illustrations. I started by wanting to exaggerate the drama of something unpleasant, and sketched out a zine about the horrors of touching wet slimy food floating in the sink. My cohort and Kim liked the expressions of the character but didn’t feel like they cared about the story so I went back to the drawing board. The next story I wrote was about expressions that my family would say when I was a kid that led me to visualize grotesque metaphors literally. My first sketches were stiff and boring, and Kim pushed me to “get weird!” I think this project was a breakthrough for me where I accepted that I didn’t have to only draw things that I consider “pretty” or “appealing”, and I started to embrace my wacky imagination a bit more as it extended to my practice. Unfortunately, because I spent so long tweaking the narrative and the line drawings, I didn’t get a chance to put as much time into the color work and ended up not doing any layering. I also wish I had used a heavier weight paper, because the ink bled through the other side and ruined the “big reveal” of the poster on the back a bit. These hiccups made me interested in pursuing risograph printing again later in the year with my independent project so I could really dig into those juicy juicy colors and choose a paper that fit the job.
LASER CUT WORKSHOP LASERS! I was extremely pumped to use the laser cutter! I had never had access to such fun fancy machines before. I was quick to learn Rhino, the software we used to create the designs, and spent a fair amount of time helping pals troubleshoot their own problems designing for cutting. For the first test we were instructed to make a very simple shape so I drew this geometric eye doodad and was very pleased with how it came out. Next, I sketched out two different masks in indesign because I knew I wanted to create something wearable for my reaction piece. I also purchased some brown papier-machĂŠ masks, thinking that would make it easier to assemble the laser cut pieces into a facefitting form. But oho! Flat hard pieces do not glue easily onto curved surfaces! The end structure was fragile and broke when a fellow ILPer tried to put on the mask during critique. Also, the masks looked really goofy when we actually wore them. Next time, I want to create masks that make you look ~cool~ and have a stable structure. After critique, we all agreed the brown color fell flat and that I should paint them when I showed all my work for the end of the semester critique. After painting the masks in what is slowly becoming my signature bright colors, I could instantly imagine the types of characters that would wear them. I quickly drew up a vibrantly colored sketch of two sisters that would wear the masks to get the courage to show their bravery and spunk. In the end of semester critique, Lisa Perrin, Molly Egan, and Kim all agreed that this extra character and context development work made the masks one of the stronger pieces I made all semester. I hope to explore these characters more in future projects. What kind of world do they live in? What are their personalities like? Who do they become when they put on the mask?????
CERAMICS WORKSHOP
The Ceramics workshop I took as an opportunity to really play with clay! I’ve never done handbuilding as an adult and I didn’t have a goal as I approached the workshop other than to get an idea of how the material worked. For the first figure I made, the large goblin-ish head, I found scooping clay out of the inside very therapeutic. For the second piece I made I decided that I wanted to make a character with articulated joints that were attached by string, so I poked holes in the arms, legs, and torso to attach them. This little fella would have benefitted from some planning, because I realized after firing that I didn’t think of a way to attach the head. His headlessness proved useful later, though, as I transformed the pieces I had made into a toy with interchangeable and stackable heads. I referenced these characters throughout the semester in work like the independent project in the spring, the lasercut project, and the sketchbook project, and I’d like to explore this idea of characters with interchangeable and detachable parts more thoroughly in a more well-planned way. My favorite part of the whole ceramics workshop was underglazing, because it had the soothing and meditative quality of coloring, and the underglaze soaked so satisfyingly into the bisqued clay. I was able to explore 3d figures again with the fabric and stopmotion workshops, and hope to continue that exploration next year as I further my practice and generate content for thesis.
IMAGE HARVEST EXHIBITION The Image Harvest exhibition in the fall semester started with the generation of 10 ideas that somehow drew content or themes from our previous body of work. The idea generation process was challenging, especially because I was comparing my ideas to the ILP thesis exhibitions I had seen when visiting MICA. I came up with lots of large installation or sculptural pieces, with complicated technical aspects. I ended up biting off a bit more than I could chew by landing on a three minute long animated music video for a song made by an old college classmate of mine. The animating process, though too much quantity for the time I had, was really enjoyable for me. I created the whole thing in Adobe Animate (previously known as Adobe Flash), and watched some hand drawn special effects tutorials to get a few tips and tricks of the trade. I completely lost track of time while I drew the sequential morphing shapes that went to the beat of the music, and I was so proud to show my hard work in our fall show. I also learned the skills needed to mount and power a television on the gallery wall! The show experience overall was so positive--I loved seeing all my classmate’s hard work up on the walls and celebrating with snacks and friends and family. Though I ended up with a video that lacked detail and plot, this process was really formative for me because I discovered how much I adore animating. I signed up for two animation-based electives in the spring thanks to this music video and I hope to work on more music-based animations in the future with my improved skills.
Abby Cali / MFA Illustration Practice ‘21 Star Dance 2019 Digital
Though I’ve been drawing for a long time, I have always wanted to try animation because of the way it can make drawings come to life with movement and sound. This animation is a music video for the song Star Dance, composed by Griffin Jennings a.k.a. TV EYE. With this video I aimed to capture the feeling of being inside of the song. I created the illustrations as I listened to the song on repeat, drawing the shapes and movements I saw in my mind’s eye. My interest in music comes from my time in undergraduate, when I went to a school that was both liberal arts and music conservatory. I was constantly surrounded by wonderful musicians and live music, so I wanted to honor that history and collaborate with one of my old classmates. This project allows my drawings to dance along to TV EYE’s musical piece.
@abbycali.art
SEWING WORKSHOP
As a child I loved doing mini sewing projects, and thought from the few summers I used a barbie sewing machine at a family friends house that I was well-versed enough to skip the sewing and take on a giant embroidery project on a piece of gauzy sheer purple fabric. I also thought it would be smart to create a line of baby apparel to sell at the winter Art Market! Haha, nope! Turns out learning to sew as a child and then not sewing again for 15 years means you don’t really know how to sew! I quickly abandoned the embroidery piece after an hour of concentrated work left me with only one shabbylooking leaf, and I switched my concept to a stuffed animal. Over thanksgiving break, I still hadn’t really fleshed out what I wanted my stuffed animal to look like but I thought back to ceramics and decided that I wanted to create a stuffed animal with two heads. My aunt and I took a trip to the fabric store and I ended up buying some fuzzy socks and stretchy string, and hand sewing a squishy stuffed head that flips inside out to reveal another character’s head. Everyone loved squishing this little friend, and I brought him to Aya Kakeda’s character design class that I TA’d for as a stress reliever during finals. This project ended up being a great example of a prototype, but not really a finished product. I’d love to someday be able to produce a professional line of reversible toys, but for now the prototype lives on my bedside table and I give him a squeeze every night before I go to sleep.
BROOKLYN ART LIBRARY SKETCHBOOK PROJECT
The Brooklyn Sketchbook Project is run by the Brooklyn Art Library in New York City. Kim handed us each a sketchbook and envelope at the very beginning of fall semester, and we chose a theme from the Sketchbook project’s list. After we illustrated the covers and a spread inside the sketchbook, we passed them around to be filled in spread by spread by all of the ILP first years. The theme I chose was “Expires in An Hour” and I had lots of fun decorating the cover with the type of milk carton I had in my elementary school lunches. I started off with big dreams of drawing the same curly-haired character in every sketchbook and adapting her scenario based on each theme. After four sketchbooks I got bored with the character and started experimenting in darker visuals and different styles with ink. All in all I wish I had put more time into the sketchbooks, but because of their far off deadline of ~February~ it was hard to see them as a priority over my more immediate due dates in the fall. I don’t think I really understood how to use sketchbooks in a useful way to enhance my art practice until diving into my independent project development work in the spring semester.
FALL END OF SEMESTER CRITIQUE The fall semester finished with three critics reviewing my work: Lisa Perrin, Molly Egan, and Kim. Lisa is an alum of the ILP program, and works as an illustration professor for the undergrads here at MICA. We actually crossed circles in Cleveland where I lived for a few years before moving to Baltimore, and where she had worked as an illustrator at American Greetings. I am a huge fan of Lisa’s work and got to TA for her Junior illustration class in the spring semester following this fall critique. The other critic, Molly, was one of the first artists that I began following when I started to seriously consider illustration as a career. I was so excited to meet both of these strong illustrators in person and get their opinions on my work. This critique was extremely important to how I approached my work in second semester and really helped my confidence as an artist. Lisa and Molly agreed that a strength in my work was when my voice shone through, and encouraged me to embrace the weird and wacky things that make me, me. They also emphasized things that Kim had been telling me about how the work I feel most passionate about making is almost always better than the work I feel I “should” make because of imaginary preferences I think clients or critics have. Another reason that the critique was so helpful is that it allowed me to see other potential markets for my work. They affirmed that my work was up to a professional standard and that they could see future paths for me in areas like animation, toy design, children’s magazines, and comics. All three of them also encouraged me to embrace the imperfections
and humor in my work.
SPRING SEMESTER
STOP MOTION WORKSHOP
The only stop motion I’ve ever made was when I was around eleven years old and my cousin and I made a movie about a tiny plastic toy man named Fred. I was nervous about this project because of how different it was from the type of animation I had started dabbling in, and because it was a partnered project. Laura Fajin-Riveiro, who I ended up being paired with, was actually one of the people I was most hesitant to be paired with because her work is so detailed and fine and mine is so chunky and all over the place. Instead of our differences clashing, I think we ended up complementing each other so well and we had such a blast making this video. The day the project was assigned, we were also assigned some exercises to get to know our partner’s work. We practiced drawing one another, drawing one another’s work, and art directing. The exercises were challenging and fun, and we got to bond and appreciate each others’ styles, workflow, and process. That day, we went to lunch and brainstormed ideas for our stopmotion. Cooking video??? Italian vocab words??? Spanish vocab words??? Shrimp children??? Chili that comes alive and speaks the advice of your father??? Many amazing ideas. Only one prevailed. Enter: DAD’S CHILI.
Laura and I draw each other!
HAND LETTERING
The hand lettering workshop was a whole lot of fun for me. I realized as I was putting this idea book together that I incorporate lettering in almost all of my final work--and certainly in all my sketches. I love words! And drawing words! I played with juicy round-nibbed dip pens for the workshop, and lettered my own handwriting font and heading for my email newsletter for the final. I’d still like to tweak it some more...it feels dangerously comic-sans-y...but I really enjoyed lettering the heading over a layer of pattern blobs that I had done and I’d like to explore that method of clipping masks more. I feel that the clipping mask really showcased the color palette I chose in an interesting way and was much more fresh than just alternating solid colors for each letter like I would normally think to do.
hey, it’s abby cali - welcome to my newsletter! Here I would put a lot of stuff about my life updates! What have I been up to? Exhibitions? Projects? Client work? I would definitely put in the work I do this summer but I don’t know what that will be yet! I also don’t know if I can put this handlettered font through mailchimp but we will see! Also idk if I can use it on my website. ONLY TIME WILL TELL! What’s cool is I can put a stroke on it and make it bold and I can also use the stretchy things we aren’t supposed to use and make it italic but it gets a little weird like that. I’ve never made
hey, it’s abby cali - welcome to my newsletter! Here I would put a lot of stuff about my life updates! What have I been up to? Exhibitions? Projects? Client work? I would definitely put in the work I do this summer but I don’t know what that will be yet! I also don’t know if I can put this handlettered font through mailchimp but we will see! Also idk if I can use it on my website. ONLY TIME WILL TELL! What’s cool is I can put a stroke on it and make it bold and I can also use the stretchy things we aren’t supposed to use and make it italic but it gets a little weird like that. I’ve never made my own font before! This is very fun! Is it too “comic sans-y”? I really hope not! That would be a big yikes!
In this part maybe I would talk about upcoming things like my thesis proposal and other things like that. Maybe even my trip to the Galapagos if it seems relevant and I did some cool work during that time. Maybe also my post-grad teaching plans? Would that be weird to put in a newsletter? Not sure. I’ll have to look at some other ones to get an idea.
WRITERS IN BALTIMORE SCHOOLS The collaboration with Writers in Baltimore Schools was the most challenging project of the year for me. Prior to coming to MICA, I collaborated with students in Cleveland, helping them develop visual artwork for their personal stories. I thought that my background in that project would help me tackle the task of illustrating these writers poems, but I found it much more difficult to generate my own imagery and interpret the poems without meeting the poets first. Unfortunately, the day that the WBS students came to visit ILP and design an exhibition together, I was out sick with strep throat. I was, however, able to go on the trip to the Baltimore Sun Archive, which was the inspiration for many of the students poems. In the beginning of the project, I was assigned to illustrate the poem “Lexington Market”, which came from the experience that WBS students had visiting the archive, and “Melanin” which was a personal poem by another WBS student. Seeing where all the Baltimore Sun newspapers are made and kept allowed me to contextualize the “Lexington Market” by reading through articles about historic slave markets that remain produce markets around Maryland today. I got a bit bogged down by all of the articles, the poem’s imagery and by research, and I found it hard to come up with a successful image for “Lexington Market”. The research and illustration work I did for “Melanin” was more successful, depicting black women throughout history doing one anothers hair, and that was the piece that was ultimately chosen for the final. It was so amazing to see all of our hard work up on the billboard overlooking 83. I’ve never seen my work blown up so large and I’m still in shock over how cool it looks!
Lexington Market Kenniah Woodson, Grade 9, Western High School What are you trying to hide? The biggest, no your biggest secrets all combined? Now that you are a market--one that everyone loves. Now you are a rat infested area like always. What’s under you and What do I stand above? A book of names that were sold as slaves. A place where I bought my chicken, didn’t even know the white man was pimpin. Selling slaves where I used to get cakes made. Tell me, When were you made. In 1803, the first shed was built to cover the market, but by 1925 there were over 1,000 stalls. You officially opened in 1952. So why are you historic; why you’ve been around since 1782, huh. So what were you back then? Back in 1782, farmers would travel from Towson and Reisterstown To sell their goods at the market. [unfinished]
Melanin By Naiya Scott, Grade 12, Kenwood High School We come from being impregnated by our masters so labor could be multiplied from calluses and bleeding feet, from being afraid to breathe the wrong way, from various bug bites that sit and fester on top of our skin. We come from the realization that we are in hell. We come from war within our country, a civil war. Proving we can conquer. We come from the earth. We come from missed periods, from busted knuckles, blistering backs, broken bones, shackles, and being more susceptible to death than any other race. We come from being needed but not appreciated... putting the needs of our masters before our own. We come from the garden... picking the flowers who would never represent us. We come from being looked down upon.
depression can’t exist if your life is so called “perfect.” We come from being angry and mad even when that’s not the truth, from hair extensions and natural curls, from beauty standards and endless tears, from curves and thick stomachs. We come from sad days but happy nights, We come from R&B music and making love, from laughter and the electric slide. We come from roller skating every Friday night. I come from waking up at 3:00 am and listening to frank ocean while thinking about my past. I come from a personal struggle, from gospel music and rosy cheeks, from tight hugs and wide smiles, from dancing along the cold tile on my kitchen floor, from still having a voice even when I can’t speak. I come from pure, black love.
We come from dirty kitchens and spoiled milk, broken sidewalks and sprained ankles. We were put here... not by choice. We fight from dawn till dusk. Fighting to be represented in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, politics, and the media. We come from happy moments and owning our own businesses.
I come from power and resilience. I come from toughness and perseverance. I come from ambition and chocolate. I come from my ancestors. The lineage that resides across the nation.
We come from taking care of our children alone. From being more protective of our offspring so our 14-year-old son doesn’t get tried as an adult. From fireworks, to gunshots, to gun wounds.
(A diary entry written from the soul)
We come from not being able to communicate with one another. Getting a switch off of a tree to teach discipline instead of talking about what’s wrong. We come from whiskey-covered lips because
We come from each other. We are melanin.
INDEPENDENT PROJECT INDEPENDENT PROJECT OH MY LANTA. Independent project serves as practice for thesis next year where we tackle a longer term project and conduct lots of development work. My process started by revisiting a story from my childhood, and thinking about whether it would be more helpful for me to focus on storyboarding, character development, worldbuilding, or writing. After expressing my anxieties about not knowing how to create the characters and world the “right” way, Kim suggested that I produce a ridiculously large quantity of work, and see where that would lead me. I ended up filling ten sheets of letter sized paper per day from Monday through Friday--packed with sketches of whatever my brain thought up, whether it was related to the original story or not. This idea generation was SO helpful for my own confidence, attitude, and perspective on my artwork. I allowed myself to make bad drawings, weird drawings, ugly drawings, silly drawings, and write the nonsensical things that came to mind. It was an exploration of imagination, humor, characters and worldbuilding. In the end I decided that the way that I would take these sketches to final would be to combine my interest in non-sequitur phrases and images, and create surreal illustrations that could eventually be riso printed. Because of the riso aspect, I chose to stick to three colors: pink yellow and teal. I had so much fun layering the colors and playing with value, though I definitely lost some of the whimsical chaos of the sketches in the final artwork. I tried to bring some of the looseness and liveliness back with my pattern work which I finished after the independent project critique. I still don’t know what these illustrations are “for” or where they “go” but I think the project helped me grow so much in my work and I’m excited to move forward with these ideas! Woo!
PATTERN WORKSHOP
Pattern was the second most challenging project of the year because of circumstances outside of the program. During the in-class pattern workshop and for the whole time leading up to the reaction piece’s due date, I fell extremely ill with antibiotic resistant strep throat (OH NO). I only presented sketches during the final critique with plans to finish the pattern in the next few weeks (and a hard deadline of the end of the semester). My concept was to pack as many crazy little monster characters as I could into the grid, and mock them up onto funky apparel that you might find at a brewery, skate shop or the like. I also had concepts for two other abstract patterns that somehow related to the main one and stood lower in the “pattern hierarchy”. I got a lot of extremely supportive, understanding, and helpful feedback from my classmates during the critique. Because of the far-off deadline I prioritized more pressing assignments and I ended up pushing this work until the end of the semester and finishing it at home. I found it technically challenging to visualize the pattern at 100% scale without access to a printer (thanks, virus) but I think I’d like to continue experimenting with patterns more in future work. My final reaction piece stemmed from the character exploration work that I did in my independent project, and I think I was more successful with bringing energy to the patterns than I was with the independent project prints.
REFLECTIONS & MOVING FORWARD
The COVID-19 global pandemic drastically shifted the way that graduate school ran for the ILP program in the second half of the spring semester. Just before spring break, we learned that time off would be extended by a week to give professors the time to switch to online-only learning. At first, there was hope that graduating students would be able to have some time to remain and access the studios and campus resources to finish their work, but as the virus rapidly spread it became clear that even one extra week in close quarters would not be safe for the MICA and Baltimore community. After hearing from my undergraduate students in the class I TA for and from the ILP second years I know that I have been lucky in terms of how my school experience was impacted by the virus’s progression. First years had finished with all of the in-class studio workshops that required MICA equipment and were transitioning to self-directed projects which would be mostly work on our own time. These independent projects were fairly easy to tailor to life stuck at home. My elective courses did not use any schoolspecific equipment unlike my friends in ceramics or printmaking classes, and I did not have a thesis show planned for spring that had to be cancelled, unlike all the graduating students. In addition, most of the graduate students did not live on campus, therefore got to remain in our regular living spaces.
Many of the undergraduate students I know had to pack up their things, move out of the dorms, and finish out the semester alongside their parents, siblings, and without their friends. I’m grateful for my situation in the pandemic, and I do not take it for granted. I sometimes feel guilty that I am not working in healthcare or another job that could have a more direct impact on relief, but I also know that people need art in these hard times to escape and laugh and cry and process all that is going on right now. I have seen a coming-together of so many artists and distant communities that I hope lasts after the world is healed from this deadly infection, and I am nervous but hopeful for what the summer and beyond hold for us as artists, MICA students, Maryland residents, and people on this planet. Thanks for joining me on this journey through my first year of graduate school, and may these reflections provide some insight into the weird wonderful world of what illustration means to me. Love, Abby