SAM FOX SCHOOL OF DESIGN & VISUAL
Illustration by Kruttika Susarla, MFA-IVC ’22
THE MFA-IVC CURRICULUM
The 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 WashU, 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.
Our Home in Weil Hall
Our 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
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.
MIDDLE: Students working in the “Roxy,” the MFA-IVC’s dedicated design studio. Whitney Curtis / WashU. BOTTOM: With a two-story, living green wall, Kuehner Court is a favorite hang-out spot. James Ewing / JBSA.
View of Anabeth and John Weil Hall from the Jordan Charitable Foundation Central Plaza. Peter Aaron / OTTO.
John Hendrix, Kenneth E. Hudson Professor of Art and Chair, MFA-IVC
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 campus, students have access to the full resources of WashU—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: (left) Students learn printmaking techniques while assisting visiting artists with projects through Island Press. Caitlin Custer. (right) The MFA-IVC’s communal studio space in "the Roxy." Audrey Westcott.
BOTTOM: (left) Visiting artist Deb JJ Lee conducts one-on-one reviews with students. Carol Green / WashU. (right) Lobby of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. Virginia Harold.
Sumers Welcome Center and Brookings Hall. Peter Aaron / OTTO.
What is the Dowd Illustration Research Archive?
The 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.
151k digitized tear sheets
115
illustrators represented in the collection
163 years of illustration represented 1,000+ linear feet of archival materials Featured
We have worked to diversify our holdings and prioritized women and people of color, including the acquisition of drawings and papers of the cartoonist and novelist Charles Johnson. The students are also benefiting from rich material in rare books, too—for instance, a gold mine of 18th and 19th century caricature. In the age of the digital file, tangible physical objects can seem magical.
—D.B.
Dowd, Professor and Faculty Director, Dowd Illustration Research Archive
1) J.C. Leyendecker. Tearsheet of The Saturday Evening Post cover, July 7, 1934.
2) E. Simms Campbell. Tearsheet of Judge magazine cover.
Original works of comic art from the Craig Yoe Teaching Collection. The drawings are part of the Dowd Illustration Research Archive in Special Collections at WashU Libraries.
Age comics from the DIRA’s archive.
Al Parker, for The Saturday Evening Post, June 1, 1946.
From the Dowd Illustration Research Archive collection, digital archives.
Visitors Bring Inspiration, Big Ideas
Each 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 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 / WashU.
MY FIRST DAY OF GRAD SCHOOL
Last night I had the superlative adjective dream about my first day in grad school. Things started out adjective , but then it got really weird. First of all, when I got to studio, all my drawing implements were least favorite color , and I couldn’t find anything but a noun to draw on. The printers had been replaced by plural noun . The Cintiqs were made of snack food . When I finally found my desk, I bumped squarely into a large object , and my part of the body turned color , which is exactly when I discovered I wasn’t wearing my article of clothing . No matter, I thought, and grabbed a noun out of my pocket and put that on instead. Not a moment too soon, either, because that’s when famous illustrator walked in singing earworm and told us to take out our plural noun and some noun and draw a pattern animal . Of course, there’s nothing I fear more than same animal, plural, but how do you tell that to same famous illustrator ? I thought, Maybe they won’t notice, and I drew favorite childhood toy instead. But that’s when the noun really hit the fan. I hit Cmd- letter of the alphabet to print my work, like usual, but then dozens of plural noun started verb ending in - ing from the risograph. Before I could say exclamation , same famous illustrator was verb ending in - ing over me wielding a object on your desk , yelling, “You know less about illustration and visual culture than name of your nemesis ’s type of pet !” I’m so glad I’m going to the Sam Fox School because now the only thing that frightens me more than same animal is same famous illustrator
Text by Stephanie Ellis Schlaifer
&
ELEANOR DAVIS
MOLLY MENDOZA
RICHIE POPE
JILLIAN TAMAKI
PING ZHU
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.
Maddie Baker
Kruttika Susarla
Henry Uhrik
THE MFA-IVC
Thesis
What is an MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture thesis project?
And…what can it be?
The 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.
MFA candidates exhibit their work at the 2023 MFA-IVC Thesis Exhibition. Dmitri Jackson.
Taylor Dow. Selected card designs from Bad Baby Lich Lords.
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
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.”
Taylor Dow, MFA ’21
Jodi Kolpakov. Selected pages from thesis project American Standard, a visual essay consisting of illustrations and short comics that all occur at a southwestern Missouri motel over one dreary spring day in 1994.
Arthur Santoro. Manual and board design from thesis project Monster Planet Bounty Hunter, an original board game.
Danielle Ridolfi
Phoebe Santalla
Cleonique Hilsaca
Animated GIF Triptych
Students designed a three-part animated sequence (or, ahem, a GIFtych) 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,” said program chair John Hendrix. “When we make things we enjoy, our work gets better.”
Selected for the Society of Illustrators 64th Annual Exhibition—Uncategorized Moving Image
Shumyle Haider
Emily Bielski
Cleonique Hilsaca
Noah Jodice
What Does Your MARK-MAKER Say About You?
MEET OUR FACULTY
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 The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, 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 WashU since 2005. jhendrix@wustl.edu
LINO CUTTER
I contain multiples.
HUNT 102 CROW QUILL PEN Bowties. My God, I love bowties.
ADULTERATED SHARPIE MAGNUM Keep an eye on me. Maybe both eyes. #2 & #4 ROUND WATERCOLOR BRUSHES, “MEDIUM-CHEAP” Not here to win any popularity contests.
D’ACHE NEOCOLOR ® II WATERSOLUBLE PASTELS So, I use crayons!
POSCA PAINT MARKERS I answer to Banksy.
PRESTO! ™ JUMBO CORRECTION PEN I ghost people.
PRISMACOLOR ® COL-ERASE NON-PHOTO BLUE COLORED PENCIL I beat the system.
WOODLESS GRAPHITE PENCIL
I don’t believe in coffee filters, either.
TICONDEROGA #2
Just the facts, ma’am.
PAPER MATE ® SHARPWRITER
I just found 12 pencils in the bottom of my bag. And my car keys!
SHARPIE S-GEL 0.7MM I write all my blogs with these.
GENERAL PENCIL CO. KIMBERLY ® #525 9XXB
The single-source, 82% extra dark chocolate of pencils. Undertones of fig and wine.
LAMY FOUNTAIN PEN
I have another jade plant cutting for you.
KURETAKE NO. 55 DOUBLE-SIDED BRUSH PEN
I have a ritual.
PAPER MATE ® FLAIR
Always be knolling.
BLACKWING ® 602
I’m not just an illustrator in real life… I also play one on TV.
PIGMA® MICRON PN I wear ties on the beach.
APPLE PENCIL
There is a KyleBrush named after me.
Professor and Faculty Director, Dowd Illustration Research Archive
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
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
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
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
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
Heather Corcoran
Gerald Early
Jonathan Hanahan
Audra Hubbell
Bill Kartopoulos
Edward Kinsella III
Penina Acayo Laker
Vidhya Nagarajan
Aggie Toppins
ADMINISTRATION
Carmon Colangelo
Ralph J. Nagel Dean of the Sam Fox School
Amy Hauft Director, College and Graduate School of Art
Dowd Illustration Research Archive Curator
Drawing and Citizenship
Excerpted from Stick Figures: Drawing as a Human Practice
Having worked as a printmaker, illustrator, cartoonist, and online animation producer from the early 1990s onward, I generated my share of social satire. But 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,
disorienting chatter. Under the circumstances, a heroic materialism. My argument for the primacy of embeddedness in the study of cultural history turns 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.
ABOVE: D.B. Dowd, Development of the Roman A. Illustration for Stick Figures: Drawing as a Human Practice, Spartan Holiday Books in 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.
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 game, and threaten to overwhelm our repose at every turn. But we are capable of action, of sensemaking, of sticking up for ourselves. The simple means of engaged citizenship remain close at hand.
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.
FACULTY BOOKSHELF
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 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 WashU’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.
D.B. Dowd
Heidi Kolk
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 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 newest book, The Mythmakers. It is the story of the creative friendship between C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Currently I’m working on a sequel to Drawing is Magic
Examining Culture, Comically
I am an illustrator and designer from Chennai, India, and I am interested in the ways visual culture 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
TAKING POSSESSION
Heidi Aronson Kolk
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.
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 anatomy, process, mythology, pop culture, and language around breasts, made in collaboration with Akhila Krishnan.
A fast-paced, fact-filled collection of the most fascinating parts of life in Missouri, with a kid’s-eye point of view.
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.
ANTHOLOGY Co-edited by Shreyas R Krishnan
A collaborative, nuanced, and radical act of seeing and being seen through the eyes of 51 artists and writers from around the globe.
BYSTANDER
MISSOURI WEIRD & WONDERFUL
Amanda Doyle & Dan Zettwoch
MOUND CITY TATTLER Dan Zettwoch
John Hendrix
Shreyas R Krishnan
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.
Outsize Cultural Scene
All of the city’s
and
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.
art museums
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.
CROSSWORD GRAPHIC VINDICATION
By Stephanie Ellis Schlaifer
ACROSS
2. Holy protagonist of prof John Hendrix’s comic
5. Famed “collar man” campaign D 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 Glaser D, Sorel, and ChwastD
DOWN
1. Felix, Hobbes, and Garfield
2. WUSTL’s namesake
3. Printing on the edge?
4. 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
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.
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
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.
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”
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 creative activity and research 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 WashU offers.
I see you have a swanky 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
42. Outdoorsy illustrator D who gave some fine advice on living in Texas
47. Earthy residence of Sam, the Sam Fox fox
48. Sometimes, they pay the bills
+ With 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!
See back page for answers.
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.
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! samfoxgradadmissions@wustl.edu
WA N T E D
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. FULLTUITION SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE!
APPLY WITHIN
samfoxschool.washu.edu/ mfa-ivc
ABOUT THE SAM FOX SCHOOL
The 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.
GET VINDICATED
Learn more about the MFA-IVC program, our scholarships and financial aid, or how to apply.
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: @washuivc
samfoxgradadmissions@wustl.edu samfoxschool.washu.edu/mfa-ivc @washusamfoxschool | @washuivc
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.