The Graphic Vindicator | Vol. 1, Issue 2 by WashU Sam Fox School

VOL . 1, I S SUE 3

A RT S

a t WA S H I N G T O N U N I V E R S I T Y I N S T . L O U I S

Illustration by Vidhya Nagarajan, BFA10

S A M F O X S C H O O L O F D E S I G N & V I S UA L

Illustrators Go Above…and Way Beyond Unbound by earthly limitations, MFA-IVC students divine the comic, the cosmic, and the otherworldly. Our program draws from tremendous Facilities & Resources, starting with our home in Weil Hall. See A3

Dive into our 8-page Student Work feature section with a spotlight on the MFA-IVC thesis project. See B1

Get to know our faculty — distinguished scholars and practitioners in illustration, design, and visual culture. See A7

CURRICULUM

THE MFA-IVC CURRICULUM NUTS & BOLTS

Build your illustration practice at a top research university in a vibrant, creative city.

he Sam Fox School’s MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture program combines studio practice in illustration and writing with the study of visual and material culture. With a focus on illustrator authorship, this twoyear, fully residential program is made for illustrators, comic artists, and designers. MFA-IVC graduates will be prepared to work as author-artists of graphic novels and picture books, professors of illustration, critical writers on popular culture, and curatorial staff in museums, libraries, and auction houses. The MFA-IVC program is built on the strengths and expertise of the school’s illustration and design faculty and the vast visual culture resources of Washington University in St. Louis, including the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum and the Dowd Illustration Research Archive, a preeminent site for studying the history and culture of American illustration.

50% illustration studio work

20% visual culture history & theory

YEAR 1 FALL

YEAR 1 SPRING

Finding Your Voice

Discovering Your Place

Understanding visual culture and mapping your own visual history.

Learning to narrate a usable history and finding a conceptual home for your work.

Illustration Studio 1: Drawing & Voice

Illustration Studio 2: Artist / Author / Audience

6 CREDITS

The Illustrated Periodical

Literatures of Drawing

3 CREDITS

Special Collections: Research Methods

Comics & Cartooning: A Critical Survey

3 CREDITS

Elective 3 CREDITS

3 CREDITS

Special Collections: Exhibitions & Engagement 3 CREDITS

10–20% hands-on archive work

10–20% electives

YEAR 2 FALL

YEAR 2 SPRING

Framing Your Practice

Building Your Audience

Homing in on your core ideas and style to build your thesis statement and project.

Showtime! Exhibiting your work, entering the industry, and planting your flag.

Thesis Studio 1

Thesis Studio 2

9 CREDITS

Readings in Visual & Material Culture

Local Archives Internship or Elective

3 CREDITS

Advanced Archival Practice or Elective

Elective

3 CREDITS

C A M P U S & FA C I L I T I E S

Our Home in Weil Hall

View of Anabeth and John Weil Hall from the Jordan Charitable Foundation Central Plaza. Peter Aaron / OTTO.

ur newest building, Anabeth and John Weil Hall, houses all of the Sam Fox School’s graduate programs in visual art, architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, and, of course—the MFA-IVC! Designed by KieranTimberlake, the 82,000-squarefoot, LEED Platinum facility includes our digital fabrication studio, a time-based media studio, numerous exhibition and project spaces, and an indoor courtyard with a two-story, living green wall—a favorite spot for students. Located on the main floor of Weil, the Roxanne H. Frank Design Studio—a.k.a. the Roxy—is the MFA-IVC’s home base. Each student has their own studio space and access to the MFA-IVC printer, scanners, Wacom tablets, cutting boards, and central AV. With ample space for pinups and group critiques, the Roxy also provides numerous areas to work, read, and sketch. Continued on A4

MIDDLE: Students working in the “Roxy,” the MFA-IVC’s dedicated design studio. Whitney Curtis / Washington University. BOTTOM: With a two-story, living green wall, Kuehner Court is a favorite hang-out spot. James Ewing / JBSA.

The design studio is gorgeous. There’s amazing light and lots of areas to work. It’s a very communal space, but you also have the privacy to focus on making great work. — John Hendrix, Kenneth E. Hudson Professor of Art and Chair, MFA-IVC

C A M P U S & FA C I L I T I E S

Sumers Welcome Center and Brookings Hall. Peter Aaron / OTTO.

Continued from A3 Vast Campus Resources In nearby Bixby Hall, our expansive printmaking atelier provides a dedicated space for MFA-IVC students to explore book arts and an array of printmaking approaches. The suite is outfitted with equipment for etching, letterpress, lithography, intaglio, photopolymer plate, silkscreen, and risograph printing. At Island Press, the school’s researchbased printmaking workshop, students can assist in the production of prints by some of today’s most influential artists, including Trenton Doyle Hancock, Lisa Anne Auerbach, James Siena, Sue Coe, and Henrik Drescher. Adjacent to Weil, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum offers three floors of gallery space to showcase its world-class permanent collection as well as exhibitions by leading modern and contemporary artists and designers. All students have free membership to the museum. The school also has a dedicated art and architecture library—which holds more than 105,000 volumes in various media—and an illustration research archive (see A5). Students will find the museum curators and subject librarians eager to help with their research! Because all of our programs are located on main campus, students have access to the full resources of Washington University—including amazing food. They can engage with students and faculty from other disciplines through classes and collaborative projects, participate in student organizations, and easily access the city of St. Louis (see A10)—one of the best reasons to become a WashU student. MIDDLE: Students learn pressure printing and

risograph techniques in the Kranzberg Book Studio. In Fox Fridays workshops like these, students can learn new techniques in facilities across the Sam Fox School. Carol Green / Washington University. BOTTOM: (left) MFA-IVC students gather for

final critiques in the Roxy. Whitney Curtis / Washington University. (right) Lobby of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. Virginia Harold.

TAKE A 360° TOUR OF OUR SPACES! Get an inside look at the Sam Fox School’s studios and facilities from the comfort of your couch.

>> samfoxschool.wustl.edu/the-school/visit

C A M P U S & FA C I L I T I E S

What is the Dowd Illustration Research Archive?

he Dowd Illustration Research Archive (DIRA) is the most comprehensive archival collection of periodical illustration held by any academic institution. Established in 2007, the DIRA acquires, preserves, promotes, and brings sustained academic consideration to the culture of illustration. The growing range of the collection extends from book, magazine, and advertising illustration to comics in all their forms—caricature, poster design, and virtually every aspect of visual culture. A particular focus is 20th-century periodical illustration, including the collections of some of America’s premier illustrators such as Al Parker, Robert Weaver, Henry Raleigh, and others. The collection also includes the Walt Reed Illustration Archive, a distinguished resource comprising original illustrations, periodicals, books, and magazine tear sheets from the 1860s to the 1970s. It is a tremendous resource for students and faculty alike. The MFA-IVC program works closely with the DIRA and the University Libraries’ Department of Special Collections, whose faculty co-teach courses in research methods and curatorial practice. They foster the discovery of new materials and new perspectives, and are an indispensable part of Team IVC.

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We have worked to diversify our holdings and prioritized women and people of color, including the acquisition of illustrators represented in the collection drawings and papers of the cartoonist and novelist Charles Johnson. The students are also benefitting from rich material in years of illustration rare books, too—for instance, a gold mine represented of 18th and 19th century caricature. In the 1,000+ age of the digital file, tangible physical linear feet of archival materials objects can seem magical. digitized tear sheets

115

163

Featured artists:

—D.B. Dowd, Professor and Faculty Director, Dowd Illustration Research Archive

SPENCER T. BANKS R.O. BLECHMAN NELL BRINKLEY SEYMOUR CHWAST BERNIE FUCHS JOHN HELD, JR. ROSE O’NEILL GLADYS PARKER ROBERT ANDREW PARKER

Visiting artist Kyle T. Webster examines some of the DIRA’s collection.

JACK UNRUH

ACTIVITY ZONE!

4 1) J.C. Leyendecker. Tearsheet of The Saturday Evening Post cover, July 7, 1934. Al Parker, for The Saturday Evening Post, June 1, 1946. From the Dowd Illustration Research Archive collection, digital archives.

2) E. Simms Campbell. Tearsheet of Judge magazine cover. 3) Rose O’Neill. Detail of original drawing for “Little Girl with Grown Up Eyes,” Good Housekeepking, May 1932. 4) A selection of Golden Age comics from the DIRA's archive.

EXTRA-CURRICUL ARS

Visitors Bring Inspiration, Big Ideas

ach semester, the Sam Fox School brings nationally and internationally recognized illustrators, designers, architects, artists, landscape architects, urban designers, historians, and critics to campus, promoting new ideas in practice, theory, and technology. The MFA-IVC program also brings in special visitors for class visits, workshops, and individual critiques. You’ll have the opportunity to meet exciting practitioners in the field and learn about many professional paths.

RECENT VISITORS

Recent collaborations have included the Illustration Media Symposium in 2019 with the DIRA and the Norman Rockwell Museum, as well as Blind Spots, the 13th annual Illustration Research Symposium, in 2023. BELOW: Alison Bechdel received the Washington University

International Humanities Prize in November 2022. MFA-IVC students met with her in studio for a pin-up critique. Whitney Curtis / Washington University.

ELEANOR DAVIS

MOLLY MENDOZA

RICHIE POPE

ACTIVITY ZONE!

MY FIRST DAY OF GRAD SCHOOL Last night I had the started out

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JILLIAN TAMAKI

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snack food

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were made of a

, but then it got really weird. First of all, when I got to

adjective

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Text by Stephanie Ellis Schlaifer

same famous illustrator

PING ZHU UNIVERSITY NEWS

Alison Bechdel Receives 2022 Washington University International Humanities Prize Awarded by Washington University’s Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences, the biennial prize honors the lifetime work of a noted scholar, writer, or artist who has made a significant and sustained contribution to the world of arts and letters. The prize is accompanied by a $25,000 award.

STUDENT WORK Our students create work in a wide array of forms and media, from books and comics to posters, games, and film. Each contributes a unique and valuable perspective to the field, shaped by their diverse experiences and backgrounds, both personally and professionally.

Madeline Valentine

SPECIAL FEATURE: STUDENT WORK

Kruttika Susarla

Henry Uhrik

SPECIAL FEATURE: STUDENT WORK

THE MFA-IVC

Thesis What is an MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture thesis project? And…what can it be?

he MFA-IVC thesis project defines a professional orientation in the practice, criticism, and curation of illustration and cartooning today. Thesis projects have both a studio component and a critical component, drawing on a student’s creative work and the cultural archive as zones of investigation and achievement. For the studio component, students create an original and complete work. This might take the form of a picture book, zine, game, animation, comic, or another form of publishable matter. Students also write and design a critical essay that establishes an editorial position for engagement with visual culture. This document addresses the student’s working process and provides the historical and contextual framework of their work within the field. Students begin work on their thesis project in the fall of their second year (see A2). In the Thesis Studio courses, students receive critical feedback and support to help them frame their ideas. In the spring, thesis projects are shown at a public exhibition.

Taylor Dow. Selected card designs from Bad Baby Lich Lords.

MFA candidates exhibit their work at the 2023 MFA-IVC Thesis Exhibition. Dmitri Jackson.

SPECIAL FEATURE: STUDENT WORK

THE MFA-IVC

THESIS ESSAY As part of their thesis project, MFA-IVC students write a critical essay, which establishes a historical and contextual framework for their work. Read the full essays on our website. Taylor Dow, MFA ’21

Bad Baby Lich Lords is a card game about infant necromancers raising the dead. Its art direction prioritizes excellence in cartooning and legibility in character design, with cards forgoing the cramped, textheavy designs of popular card games like Magic: The Gathering in favor of full-art, character-driven card faces. Its colorful style of cartooning and character design recalls the spirit of 1980s trading cards like Garbage Pail Kids, with every card persisting as an art object outside of gameplay. Card names share an underlying spirit of mischief and use poetic devices—like puns and alliteration—to draw connections between characters, setting up and delivering punchlines and callbacks as cards are revealed. The sum of these parts constitutes an antidote to the current landscape of collectible card games, in which mechanics and market value supersede visual merit.” Jonathan Marshall Smith, MFA ’21

Over the past several months I have explored ideas about authorship in comics and my position in the medium as I have developed a pitch for a graphic novel set in the fictional community of Waynes Creek, which lends its name to the working title for the project. Waynes Creek explores grief, community, gender enforcement, and masculinity through a story about a young man returning home after the suicide of a childhood friend-turned-abuser. At its heart, it is a story about a man trying to bridge the impossible distances of time, death, and isolation to understand someone who has hurt him, and to understand himself. For a long time, my practice has been grounded in meditative, observationally rooted drawing. This evolved to include a long-running practice of short, reflective, diaristic comics. My thesis synthesizes the things I’ve learned in an attempt to navigate the distance between those short autobiographical glimpses and longer narrative fiction. In particular, the unique attributes of comics with the potential to ‘cleanse the doors of perception’ and evoke reflection in comics readers.” Madeline Valentine, MFA ’21

How does one bring the qualities of genre painting to psychic unrest, where truth and beauty are not present? With severe psychic pain comes distortion of time and place. The sufferer’s impression of setting and intimate details of daily life are skewed and cannot be trusted. What would define the traditional genre painting is thrown out of whack. Little details are off. The sufferer questions the truths both within her and around her and rearranges them accordingly. To convey this, I chose to distort the interior spaces of my images with shifting angles and unfixed edges. Everything is marred by confusion. To show the space truthfully was not important. I chose not to research Mount Sinai or the Upper East Side. I didn’t look for any pictures of the facility’s interior. I wanted my memory to dictate the floor plan. I became an unreliable narrator, with a recollection skewed by time and psychic distance.” See work from Madeline Valentine’s The Freakiest Dungeon in the Castle on B1. RIGHT: J. Marshall Smith. Cover and select pages from Songs in the Gutter.

SPECIAL FEATURE: STUDENT WORK

Cydney Cherepak

Amanda Greene

SPECIAL FEATURE: STUDENT WORK

Cydney Cherepak

Animated GIF Sequence Students designed a three-part animated sequence (or, ahem, a GIF tych) to create a dynamic narrative with ambient, looping motions. They began by making a list of 100 things they like drawing and then worked intentionally with them. “Learning to solve a project in a world that you enjoy is a huge part of finding your voice,” says program chair John Hendrix. “When we make things we enjoy, our work gets better.”

Shumyle Haider

Noah Jodice

Emily Bielski

Noah Jodice

SPECIAL FEATURE: STUDENT WORK

Noah Jodice

FA C U LT Y

What Does Your

MEET OUR FACULT Y

MARK-MAKER Say About You?

LY HT ! L IG SL ERA F

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I MAKE MY OWN CHARCOAL

ADULTERATED SHARPIE MAGNUM

Kenneth E. Hudson Professor of Art and Chair, MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture Program John Hendrix is a New York Times best-selling illustrator and author of many children’s books, including Miracle Man, Drawing Is Magic, and The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler, which won a Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators. His illustrations have appeared on book jackets and in newspapers and magazines all over the world, including Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Esquire, and The New York Times, among many others. John has taught illustration at Washington University since 2005. jhendrix@wustl.edu

Keep an eye on me. Maybe both eyes. SH

Professor and Faculty Director, Dowd Illustration Research Archive LINO CUTTER

I contain multiples. SC

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Bowties. My God, I love bowties. RD ! HA SED NO

#2 & #4 ROUND WATERCOLOR BRUSHES, “MEDIUM-CHEAP”

D.B. Dowd is an illustrator and writer who lectures and curates exhibitions on the history of illustration and cartooning. Through his award-winning travel zine Spartan Holiday, he documents his engagement with the social landscape through a blend of reportage, memoir, and history. His book A Is for Autocrat: A Trumpian Alphabet, Illustrated (Spartan Holiday Books, 2020) won a national gold Addy award from the American Advertising Federation in 2021. Another book project, Illustration: A Cultural History, is forthcoming from Princeton University Press. dbdowd@wustl.edu

Not here to win any popularity contests.

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CARAN D’ACHE NEOCOLOR® II WATERSOLUBLE PASTELS

So, I use crayons!

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I answer to Banksy. AL

Assistant Professor A literary historian by training, Heidi Kolk’s research focuses on the politics of memory, especially the intersections of race and space, heritage, and the material history of American cities. Her 2019 book, Taking Possession: The Politics of Memory in a St. Louis Town House, engages many of these subjects. Heidi’s ongoing project on the “hidden” history of internment explores the lives and work of Japanese-American architects who survived WWII prison camps and went on to make vital contributions to the postwar American cultural landscape. hkolk@wustl.edu

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I write all my blogs with these.

Assistant Professor Shreyas R Krishnan is an illustrator-designer from Chennai, India. She explores intersections between visual culture and gender, and personal and collective memory, through nonfiction comics and zines. She is an editor of the Ignatz Award–nominated South Asian graphic narratives project Bystander Anthology. Shreyas also co-organizes Bad Drawing Club, a monthly drawing group for folks of marginalized genders. sravikrishnan@wustl.edu

Lecturer Dan Zettwoch is a cartoonist, information designer, and printmaker. In addition to many self-published zines and handcrafted mini-comics, his books include Birdseye Bristoe (Drawn & Quarterly), Amazing Facts & Beyond (Uncivilized Books), and Science Comics: Cars: Engines That Move You (First Second). His goofball illustrations and jam-packed diagrams have also been seen in the Missouri History Museum, the State Capitol Museum, and in homemade screenprints commemorating local birds, baseball, and strange foods. dzettwoch9876@wustl.edu UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES STAFF

GENERAL PENCIL CO. KIMBERLY® #525 9XXB

The single-source, 82% extra dark chocolate of pencils. Undertones of fig and wine. À

Dowd Illustration Research Archive Interim Curator LAMY FOUNTAIN PEN

I have another jade plant cutting for you.

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I have a ritual.

PAPER MATE® FLAIR

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BLACKWING® 602

I’m not just an illustrator in real life… I also play one on TV.

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Andrea Degener develops and maintains archival collections specializing in illustration of the late 19th and 20th centuries. Her goal is to elevate the visibility of the Dowd Illustration Research Archive and the legitimacy of visual culture in meaningful scholarship. andread@wustl.edu

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APPLE PENCIL

There is a KyleBrush named after me.

Head of

Special Collections Management

Joy Novak oversees all curatorial and collection management activities for Special Collections, including collection development, instruction, reference, processing, cataloging, and space management. jnovak@wustl.edu SUPPORTING FACULTY

ADMINISTRATION

Heather Corcoran Gerald Early Jonathan Hanahan Audra Hubbell Bill Kartopoulos

Carmon Colangelo Ralph J. Nagel Dean of the Sam Fox School Amy Hauft Director, College and Graduate School of Art

Ben Kiel Edward Kinsella III Penina Acayo Laker Jeff Pike Aggie Toppins

FA C U LT Y

Drawing and Citizenship Excerpted from Stick Figures: Drawing as a Human Practice Having worked as a printmaker, illustrator, cartoonist, and online animation producer

disorienting chatter. Under the circumstances, a heroic materialism. My argument for the primacy of embeddedness in the study of cultural history turns

from the early 1990s onward, I generated my share of social satire. But D.B. Dowd the bloom came off the rose. Over the course of a decade, I lost faith in the editorial mode, especially as it turned into an industry. I got sick of people shooting their mouths off, as arguments began to arrive prepackaged for approved audiences. Enough opinions, I thought, especially my own. I closed up my studio and put everything in storage. I went outside and started looking at things. Material facts. Cars. Buildings. People. Nonfiction. For two years I filled up sketchbooks with no real sense of what the drawings were for. I see now that I was working out a way to situate myself in a landscape in defiance of placelessness, resisting what would come to be called “the cloud.” I labored to re-embed myself in things and stuff as a bulwark against gaseous,

out to be identical to my argument for confronting the social landscape as a visual journalist. What is, is. Look hard. Describe first. Interpret second. Today all my work engages the social landscape. Not the natural landscape, but the fashioned one: crappy architecture, signage, vehicles, holdover statuary, people making do. My illustrated journal Spartan Holiday documents my travels and blends reportage, memoir, and history. These are glyphic procedures. I look at something. I draw it, to understand and reconstitute that thing. I build an equivalence between what I see and forms I make—somewhere between a pictograph and a photograph. Eyes in my skull, hand fixed at the end of my arm, pencil begripped. I am on the scene. Drawing is an act. A simple tool, a tangible frame, a modest surface. The larger forces that will shape this unfolding century are exactly like those that have shaped earlier eras—they are indifferent to us. The human predicament has not changed. Meanwhile, the visual magicians and agents of distraction who wield the power of illusion are always upping their ABOVE: D.B. Dowd, game, and threaten to overwhelm our Development of the repose at every turn. But we are capable of Roman A. Illustration for Stick Figures: action, of sensemaking, of sticking up for Drawing as a Human ourselves. The simple means of engaged Practice, Spartan Holiday Books in citizenship remain close at hand. association with the Norman Rockwell Museum, 2018. LEFT: D.B. Dowd, L Is for Lackey, illustration for A Is for Autocrat: A Trumpian Alphabet, Illustrated, 2020.

What are you working on now? I’m working on a cultural history of illustration with Princeton University Press and hammering away at Spartan Holiday No. 4, about growing up in the postwar United States.

Exploring Public Memory As a cultural historian who began academic life as a visual artist and poet, I have long gravitated to cross-disciplinary study. I work primarily on 19th- and 20th-century subjects, tracing the persistence of established narratives, visual Heidi Kolk imaginaries, and material landscapes in the American city with the goal of understanding their power as a kind of unacknowledged—or at least underappreciated— form of cultural patrimony. In recent years, my research has shifted from a concern with hyper-visible and well-tended sites of memory (for instance, the 1850s mansion near downtown St. Louis that became a celebrated “lone survivor” in a sea of urban renewal–related destruction, which is the subject of my book Taking Possession) to more submerged ones. My overarching research goal has been to interpret the processes by which memory is materialized (or reconstituted), not only through preservation and caretaking, and various acts of consecration, but also through their seeming opposite: acts of forgetting, erasure, and symbolic (or literal) violence. What are you working on now? I am working on two projects at the moment. One is a book that explores the phenomenon of what I call “negative heritage”—sites and histories that are especially vexing or problematic, and often alienated from collective memory. Some, like desecrated burial grounds, have grown increasingly stigmatized over long periods of time, while others, including many in St. Louis, have suffered acts of willful disregard and neglect, abuse, or even wholesale obliteration. This project reconstructs the cultural history of negative heritage, and argues for its new significance in this era of reckoning. The second project, Beauty in Enormous Bleakness, is a multifaceted research initiative (yielding oral histories, a podcast series, an exhibition and digital archive, and publication) that documents the experiences of four especially creative members of the interned generation of Japanese Americans, all of whom attended Washington University’s College of Architecture. By engaging their biographies, and exploring their architectural works, the project illuminates hidden histories—and largely untold narratives—about Japanese Americans’ internment and postwar experiences. It also seeks to expand the public imagination for the legacies and inheritances (positive and negative) of internment.

FAC U LT Y BO O K S H E L F FF S TA K ! PIC

DOWD

A BOY CALLED DICKENS

With acerbic wit and vision (and even hope), this is an abecedarian for understanding—and rebuking—the rise of American autocracy.

ABE LINCOLN CROSSES A CREEK

C H A R L I E H E B D O : A P U G N A C I O U S E L E GY

A IS FOR AUTOCRAT: A TRUMPIAN ALPHABET D.B. Dowd

HENDRIX

HENDRIX S H O O T I N G S TA R S : T H E X M A S T R U C E

RUTHERFORD B., WHO WAS HE?

NURSE, SOLDIER, SPY

MCTOAD MOWS TINY ISLAND

RONAN BOYLE

AND THE BRIDGE OF RIDDLES

RONAN BOYLE

A N D T H E S W A M P O F C E R TA I N D E AT H

FF S TA K ! PIC

RONAN BOYLE

Through the antics of a plucky squirrel and an unflappable (and powder blue) spirit, the book tackles life’s biggest questions… comically.

INTO THE STRANGEPLACE

THE HOLY GHOST John Hendrix

FA C U LT Y

Finding Your Voice... In a Sketchbook I can’t remember a time when drawing wasn’t a part of my life. I have a box of sketchbooks going all the way back to John Hendrix grade school, and I still carry one everywhere I go. I can credit most of what I value in my work to the

habit of drawing in a sketchbook. A good sketchbook doesn’t just involve rendering objects in your sightlines, but translating ideas into visual concepts. The best sketchbooks are portable vessels of visual improvisation—a responsive compass for raw and risky ideas. My favorite time to draw in my sketchbook is on Sunday morning at church. While sitting in a creaky wooden pew, I listen and create. Of course, you can draw anywhere—at the airport, in a meeting, on a train, at the dentist’s office. Many days I don’t find much in my sketchbook excavation. But there are moments when something magical

happens. A sketchbook can unlock new ideas through a very simple notion: if you find what you love to draw, you’ll find your visual voice. What are you working on now? I am excited for my most recent book, The Holy Ghost: A Spirited Comic, which

is a collection of short personal comics about faith, theology, and creation. On the drawing board now is my next long-form graphic novel, The Mythmakers. It is the story of the creative friendship between C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Both are published by Abrams Books.

Examining Culture, Comically I am an illustrator and designer from Chennai, India, and I am interested in the ways visual culture Shreyas R Krishnan and gender studies intersect. At the core of my work is memory—both personal and collective—and this translates into nonfiction zines, comics, and documentary drawings, often centered on women. Drawing, for me, is a way to remember and record the world around me. It’s absolutely fascinating to me that images can be so instantly accessed by different audiences. When I began making comics, I felt like I discovered a new language that made it much easier for me to communicate using both drawing and writing. I joke that I’m on a #comicscrusade. I want to equip more people not to just read comics but to actually make them. On an individual level, they help people navigate

their emotions and responses to external events. At a community level, comics have helped report and break down societal issues. When more people make comics, we have more voices heard, more representation, and more normalization of the diversity that is constantly around us. What are you working on now? I am working on The Spectacle of Violence, a comic-essay that studies one major moment of gender violence in comics interpretations of the Ramayana. On a lighter note, I am also illustrating a bilingual (Tamil and English) large format poster-zine about fruits. ABOVE: Pulling from real life events and their coverage in

the media, Select Focus (2021) asks who the bystander is in the act of image-making, from subject to creator to consumer. Written by Aarthi Parthasarathy, illustrated by Shreyas R Krishnan. LEFT: From Alphabreasts (2019), an A-Z zine on the anat-

omy, process, mythology, pop culture, and language around breasts, made in collaboration with Akhila Krishnan. MOUND CITY TATTLER Dan Zettwoch

KOLK

FF S TA K ! PIC

KRISHNAN

TAKING POSSESSION Heidi Aronson Kolk

BYSTANDER ANTHOLOGY Co-edited by Shreyas R Krishnan

Through the story of an 1851 St. Louis town house, Kolk’s timely and revealing volume unearths the nation’s systemic failures by exposing what—and whom—we choose to protect.

KRISHNAN

A collaborative, nuanced, and radical act of seeing and being seen through the eyes of 51 artists and writers from around the globe. FF S TA K ! C I P

ZETTWOCH AMAZING FACTS & BEYOND! WITH LEON BEYOND Dan Zettwoch & Kevin Huizenga Amazing is insufficiently superlative. Leon’s extraterrestrial knowledge is comic transportation to a gobsmacking, brain-busting, gravity-defying realm that is—truly—beyond belief. FF S TA K ! PIC

T R AV E L & L E I S U R E

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An Illustrated Guide to St. Louis St. Louis is one of the most affordable, culturally exciting cities in which to launch your career. Here are a handful of highlights.

Our Next-Door Neighbor Located just across the street from campus, Forest Park is home to the Missouri History Museum, the Saint Louis Zoo, the Saint Louis Science Center and Planetarium, the World’s Fair Pavilion, and the Saint Louis Art Museum.

Great Green Spaces With an expanding light rail system, hundreds of city, county, and state parks, and the Great Rivers Greenway—128 miles (and counting!) of bike and pedestrian pathways—St. Louis is made to explore.

Foodie Heaven St. Louis has been named a top food city by outlets ranging from Zagat to Yelp. Famous for local treats like Ted Drewes Frozen Custard (brain freeze warning!) and toasted ravioli, we’re also on the map for great tacos, dim sum, bubble tea, and gastropubs serving up farm-to-table eats.

Outsize Cultural Scene All of the city’s art museums and most of its major cultural institutions are free. This includes the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, the Saint Louis Art Museum, and our very own Kemper Art Museum. Illustrations by Audrey Westcott, BFA12

ODDS & ENDS

GRAPHIC VINDICATION By Stephanie Ellis Schlaifer ACROSS 2. Holy protagonist of prof John Hendrix’s comic 5. Famed “collar man” campaignD by J.C. Leyendecker; also, a directional symbol 7. Printer’s approval 11. Experimental poet & painter who kept things on the lc 14. The writing on the cave wall? + 16. N.C.D who illustrated Treasure Island, 1911 18. 99% Invisible or Make It Then Tell Everybody, for example 20. Social distance, typographically 21. Digital sketch? 23. Illustrator’s org. 24. Comic exclamation 25. A way out, briefly 26. ReedD or Disney 30. Pilot of a Sopwith Camel doghouse 32. Riveting subject of prof Shreyas R Krishnan’s comic 35. Biannual illo conference 36. Hit ⌘-S 39. Definitive edition of definitions 40. Shadowing someone, linearly 43. 4-part alternative to RGB + 44. Prof Heidi Kolk pens hers with a Sharpie S-Gel (0.7 mm) 45. A pen’s business end

46. IndividualD who secretly illustrated an entire issue of Cosmopolitan (full name) 49. Engrave, acidically 50. Fin, in other words 51. Famed studio of GlaserD, Sorel, and ChwastD

When you say writing sample, do you mean I should, like, handwrite a fiveparagraph essay? Or, wait, do you just want my autograph? IDK, DM me? –Inky in Indy I do loves me some quill pen lettering! But what we really want is to get a sense of your writing style. So, if nonfiction essays are your jam, then we’d love to read that! Or maybe you’re more into short stories, critical reviews, or even poetry. (I’ve been known to dabble in verse, myself.) In any

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Felix, Hobbes, and Garfield WUSTL’s namesake Printing on the edge? Like Vermeer’s View of Delft, to prof D.B. Dowd + 6. Visual journalism, categorically speaking 8. Rose O’Neill’s D impish baby dolls 9. Dietrich, of prof John Hendrix’s book, who plotted to kill Hitler 10. Trench-coated official of many a propaganda poster 12. Alt to et al. 13. Metal frame for type, or high-speed action between Tom & Jerry 15. Italian, but not italic, maybe 17. Foghorn Leghorn’s beginnings, essentially 19. Helpful meaning of dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot 22. Standard ligature 27. Soft lead pencil, possibly a fave of Hamlet 29. Name hidden in many of Al Hirschfeld’sD caricatures

case, writing, authorship, and scholarship are major components of our MFA-IVC program. Show us a sample of your work that demonstrates how you communicate your ideas in writing. I’m used to living with 6 roommates in a 472-square-foot efficiency apartment that costs $$$/month and overlooks both the sewer and a dumpster. (Inexplicably, we also have pets.) BUT…it’s only 90 minutes from anyplace we like to go! Does St. Louis have good living like this? –Crowded in Crown Heights Oh, my. I’m not sure we can find you a comparable sitch here, Crowded, but how would you feel about something with a different olfactory profile? Would living close to restaurants, parks, and free museums be a deal-breaker? St. Louis is one of the most affordable places to live, and there are cool neighborhoods all around the University, like Tower Grove, the Central West End, and University City. ICYMI, see A10 for some of our favorite things to do.

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Official MFA-IVC spokesperson Lightnin’ George answers your frequently asked, white-hot questions about the program. I have made a series of 729 illustrations of cheese. Can I include all of them in my portfolio? –Churning in Cheddar As much as I’d like to see (and sample) the entire fromagerie, I’m afraid you’ll have to narrow it down to your top wedges and wheels. If you happen to experiment with other things, like cracker GIFS, motion graphic crudités, or wine zines, we’d love to get a sense of the full range of your abilities. Send 12-20 images of your best, most recent work that is most representative of your practice.

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CROSSWORD

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31. Hansel and Gretel denouement 32. Hybrid printers that take it one color at a time 33. NYC loft district once home to many artists 34. Magazine page, on the loose 36. Author of Blobby Boys comics; also, prof D.B. Dowd’s standard poodle 37. Sigh of satisfaction or relief 38. Van Gogh, to his buddies 41. Elemental symbol, from the Greek for “carving”

42. Outdoorsy illustratorD who gave some fine advice on living in Texas 47. Earthy residence of Sam, the Sam Fox fox 48. Sometimes, they pay the bills

I think my application is pretty rad and am hoping to save a few bucks on tuition. What kind of financial aid and scholarships can I apply for? -Frugal in Fresno I get it, man—I am always low on the Benjamins (my face is only on the dollar!). And I have great news for you: all MFAIVC students received financial support from the University last year. We offer competitive assistance, based on a combination of need and merit, including several full-tuition scholarships, such as the Sam Fox Ambassadors Graduate Fellowship Program (includes an annual travel stipend) and the Director’s Full Scholarship, along with the Catherine M. & Stanley R. Miller Scholarship, which covers 75% of tuition. Check out the full list of awards on our website, including other full-tuition scholarships offered by the University.

I am writing a graphic novel about a self-actualizing garden snail who casts off his earthly bounds and heads to space. It’s slow-going. Can I enroll in courses in other disciplines at WashU to help fortify my fiction with facts? –Discouraged in Des Plaines You bet! You may take courses at the 300-level and above from across the University—in subjects like writing, philosophy, art history, and the sciences—as long as you have the proper prerequisites. So, fear not, D—It sounds like you and your Astropod are already well on your way.

I see you have a swanky new studio just for MFA-IVC peeps. But, what else ya got? –Scrutinizing in Scranton Well, Scrut, we’ve got all measure of swank. We have our own world-class art museum, an integrated printmaking suite that includes a book studio, a digital fabrication lab, wood and metal shops, an art and architecture library, and more… and that’s just in our six-building Sam Fox School complex! (You might want to pull up a chair and pour an espresso if you want to hear about all the additional resources at the University.) Check out our facilities spotlight on A3.

+W ith the yellow squares in 14-across, 4-down, and 43-across, the acronym of this MFA program D Represented in the collections of the DIRA

St. Louis native! WashU alum!

What does one do with an MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture? –Pragmatic in Presidio I admire your brevity, P, so I’ll come right to the point of the pencil. Our graduates will be prepared to work as authorartists of graphic novels and picture books, professors of illustration, critical writers on popular culture, and curatorial staff in museums, libraries, and auction houses. We know you’ll go far! Can you show me how to make lightning bolts come out of my eyes? —Curious in Curitiba Can’t be taught. But, MFA-IVC students have a statistically higher chance of becoming positively electrified with knowledge than any other sector of the population. Got a question about the MFA-IVC program? Hit me! mfa-ivc@wustl.edu

CL ASSIFIEDS

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WANTED GET

VINDICATED Graphically!

SAM FOX SCHOOL seeks new class of amazing

ILLUSTRATORS WRITERS/VISUAL CULTURE-MAKERS for MFA-IVC program.

Other interests may include drawing, painting, sketchbookery, motion graphics, typography, printmaking, storytelling, comics, animation, writing, art, book-binding, viz journalism, Americana, illus. history, zine-ing, hand lettering, kerning, archivescouring, et al. viz nerdcetera. Must be willing to relocate to bustling cosmopolis w/ good eats & EZ livin’. No curmudgeons, snoots, or malcontents need apply. Excellent qualifications req. N IO PS T I TU HI L L A R S L E! U F OL AB H SC VAIL A

The SAM FOX AMBASSADORS GRADUATE FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM

Contact us with any questions you may have about the MFA-IVC program, our scholarships and financial aid, or how to apply.

APPLY WITHIN

provides exceptional graduate students with full-tuition scholarships and an annual $750 travel stipend for research. All MFA-IVC program applicants will be automatically considered. samfoxschool.wustl.edu/admissions

samfoxgradadmissions@wustl.edu samfoxschool.wustl.edu/admissions

samfoxschool.wustl.edu/ mfa-ivc

@samfoxschool | @samfox_mfa_ivc

ANSWER TO TODAY’S PUZZLE C

ABOUT THE SAM FOX SCHOOL

he Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts offers rigorous degree programs in design, art, and architecture; an outstanding collection of a world-class art museum; and the unparalleled resources of a leading research university. With a nationally and internationally recognized faculty, innovation and collaboration are at the core of our mission. Through the work of our students, faculty, and alumni, we are striving to create a more just, sustainable, humane, and beautiful world.

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ACTIVITY ZONE!

M.Y.O. Comic

CHOOSE ONE

Awkward Introduction / From the Frying Pan to the Fire / Bad Date / Peekaboo!

Washington University encourages and gives full consideration to all applicants for admission, financial aid, and employment. The University does not discriminate in access to, or treatment or employment in, its programs and activities on the basis of race, color, age, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, veteran status, disability, or genetic information. Applicants with a prior criminal history will not be automatically disqualified from consideration for admission. Inquiries about compliance should be addressed to the University’s Vice Chancellor for Human Resources, Washington University, MSC 8016-29-2220, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130.

MFA-24-0041

Using one of the prompts above, create an action sequence involving two or more characters. No words allowed. Draw in the space provided, or go nuts and work outside this publication. If you are bold (and so inclined), share your finished work with us on Instagram: Based on an actual assignment from Professor D.B. Dowd @samfox_mfa_ivc.