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Watson Design Group Contrapunto bbdo The Voorhes Chicago Designers Exhibit
May/June 2016 Twenty-Four Dollars commarts.com
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BY VICTORIA ROSSI
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t’s an uncommonly calm day at the Voorhes studio in Austin. Blue sky shines through the windows of what was once a gospel church, onto iMacs and reams of colorful back ground paper. One small project sits at the center of the big room, and barely a buzz hums from the lighting equipment, which stands in place of pews. The bulldogs, Lefty and Lucy, pant loudly, but neatly sidestep all electric cords. They’re very respectful unless it’s a food shoot. Today, it’s almost the opposite: teeth. Dark, broody teeth, cracked and lit dramatically for a Texas Monthly feature on forensic science: teeth meant to suggest that something has gone very, very wrong. While photographer Adam Voorhes futzes with the light setup, considering a slip of shadow with a thoughtful expression before shifting a piece of equipment imperceptibly to the left, studio producer and stylist Robin Finlay crouches near where the church altar once stood and slams a set of plaster teeth against the floor. They’re not breaking right, so Finlay dives into her prop room—a riotous jumble of paint cans, pillboxes, a plastic skeleton, and bins labeled “fireworks,” “classic toys,” “assorted toys” and “more toys”— and returns with a tiny hammer and chisel. More smashing ensues. Eventually, she carries the damaged goods to her husband, presenting him with the day’s first photographic subject. “These teeth are fuuucked up,” she says, sounding satisfied.
This isn’t the studio’s first stint with teeth. A few years ago, on another shoot for another magazine, the story was on cosmetic dentistry, where all was meant to go right. The Voorhes set the molds against a cheery yellowandgray background and kept the teeth intact. In the work of still life photography, some objects resurface again and again. For the Voorhes, it has been teeth, eggs, globes and stacks of cash. It’s the studio’s job to make these objects beautiful, of course, but it also must make them thought provoking, inventive, fun—it must create an image the eye can’t drift past. This is what Voorhes and Finlay, photographer and prop stylist, husband and wife, bold and imaginative creators of conceptdriven still life, do best: take common objects and make them, somehow, new. “He complimented her shoes, she wasn’t buying it,” reads the first line of their website bio. “That was the beginning.” There’s another version of that story. Fresh to her art director post at Austin Monthly magazine, Finlay was furious with Voorhes for ruining her layout—how, she can’t remember. She does remember her editor’s urgent aside to her: “You need to be nice to that guy!” and watching that editor follow an offended Voorhes out to the parking lot. “We don’t have many strong opinions,” Voorhes says now, “except about our work.” A true child of Silicon Valley, raised in the 1990s dotcom boom, Voorhes approaches his work like a scientist. Already building websites as a teen, he was drawn to photography by the challenge of manipulating a largeformat camera and the darkroom chemistry involved in his high school photo lab. “He’s the kind of guy who loves to tinker Adam Voorhes was the photographer on every project shown, and Robin Finlay was the stylist. Right: “AFAR magazine hired us to create a set of images for its 2015 Travel Vanguard issue. The best part of this series was the art director, Jason Seldon, who referenced a bunch of our previous work that featured colorful backgrounds and said he wanted us to do that, but on white. The challenge of stripping color from a style based on strong color contrast made us analyze every shadow with more scrutiny, and Jason pushed us to create one of our favorite sets of images that year.” Jason Seldon, art director; Elizabeth Olson, creative director; Tara Guertin, photography director; AFAR, client. 36
Illustration Annual 2016
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STUDENT WORK 1 Dom Civiello, illustrator Malgorzata Zurakowska, instructor Massachusetts College of Art & Design (Boston, MA), school Omaha. “This illustration is part of a series investigating the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, and is based on stories from veterans who survived D-Day.” 24 × 32, mixed media. © Dom Civiello
2 (series) Shoko Ishida, illustrator Dave Chow/Bryan Durren/Francis Vallejo, instructors College for Creative Studies (Detroit, MI), school Otogi-banashi. “Fairy tales from around the world, illustrated with inspiration from Japanese culture. I worked with a variety of different mediums, much like the fairy tales I took inspiration from. I gathered stories from around the world and unified them through the beauty of Japanese culture.” Various sizes, mixed media, digital. © Shoko Ishida
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FRESH JOOHEE YOON
Equal parts illustrator and printmaker, JooHee Yoon experiments with colors by overlapping layers. Based in Providence, Rhode Island, Yoon approaches each image like a puzzle, placing disparate elements to create “a discernable whole.” She studied illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design because she relishes the challenge of interpreting written text, whether it’s a news article or a picture book. “My goal is to add something of my own to the narrative,” she says. Though she’s worked with such illustrious brands as the New York Times, Lucky Peach and NPR, her proudest moment was publishing her own picture book, Beastly Verse. Poems that Yoon had discovered from childhood through adulthood appear alongside creatures in surprising situations, such as an elephant tangled in a telephone wire. Her painstaking craft appears on each page; for three years, she oversaw the book’s design and production, all while applying her knowledge of printmaking. Though she loves holding the book in her hands, she hungers for more. “I would love to try working on a bigger scale, possibly a mural. In a dream situation, I would love to design sets for an opera or a theater production.” Her dreams have grown as big as her beasts. jooheeyoon.com
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1. Spread from Yoon’s picture book, Beastly Verse. Enchanted Lion Books, client. 2. Poster reinterpreting futurist cuisine. Pranzo Improvvisato, client. 3. An illustration for food writer Mark Bittman’s last column. Nathan Huang, art director; New York Times Sunday Review, client. 4. In Nautilus magazine, these illustrations compare the Big Bang theory to creation myths. Len Small, art director. 5. This drawing implies that women might be better decision makers than men. Alexandra Zsigmond, art director; New York Times Sunday Review, client. 6. Spread from The Tiger Who Would Be King. Fausta Orecchio, art director; Enchanted Lion Books, client. Communication Arts | commarts.com
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“DEAR SELF: YOU’RE OVERTHINKING YOUR ILLUSTRATIONS AGAIN. JUST DRAW.” —Shauna Panczyszyn, via Twitter
“INKING IS MEDITATION IN LIQUID FORM ….” —J. H. Everett, via Izzy and the Candy Palace
“MAKE SOMETHING YOU BELIEVE IN OR NO ONE ELSE WILL BELIEVE IN “STYLE = TROPES VOICE = A WAY OF THINKING” IT EITHER.”
“Political art expresses the clichés you agree with, unlike propaganda, which expresses the clichés you don’t.” —Brad Holland, via Atlantic Monthly
“I need to stop all of you for a second that are in the illustration field: We get PAID to DRAW. I love that.” —TUESDAY BASSEN, VIA TWITTER
—John Hendrix, via Twitter
—Ellen Weinstein, via American Illustration’s Design Arts Daily
“If you want to break an artist’s heart, make him/her a compliment that starts with ‘your work reminds me of...’” —Christoph Niemann, via Twitter