Alumni Update: Alex Rheault

Straight from the Illustration Inbox, we’ve got an update about Alex Rheault (Illustration ’85):

Alex Rheault has recently been appointed Chair of Illustration at Maine College of Art in Portland, where she resides since 2001.  Alex left the Big Apple in 1997, and lived in Sanibel, Florida for two years where she taught cartooning and became the cartoonist in 2000 for the local paper of record, The Island Reporter until 2004.

Alex left hurricane season behind for cooler climes to focus on art, writing, and studies. She completed the Salt for Documentary Studies program as a photography student in 2002, documenting the local fireboat and a wooden boat builder, and attended Vermont College right after, receiving her MFA in 2004.

She teaches drawing, two dimensional design, cartooning, fashion illustration, and illustration related courses in Continuing Studies and the BFA program at MECA, and mentors students privately in writing and visual arts. She exhibits work at Filament gallery in Portland and Patricia Ladd Cargea Gallery in New Hampshire. Her work looks at strategies of authority, language, and hierarchies of preference through everyday objects, images, and text. Her obsession since grad school has been the thinker, Georges
Bataille, whose work has led her to many others.

Alex’s most recent projects include drawing room (no “the”), an evolving identity engaging artists and the public in dialogue and collaborative works, curating exhibits with emerging artists, and community engagement.  Projects such as Chewed Toys Project invite dogs and people to co-create.

Alex gave a paper at SCAD’s Art History Symposium in April where Fred Wilson was the keynote speaker. She spoke about drawing room projects. Here is a direct link to the presentation and directions for how to find it:

• direct link
• go to the bottom, and click on the icon with a page and arrow.
• then click on “find” icon, and scroll down the green to “drawing room”
• click to begin show!

Alex is actively writing and working towards several upcoming exhibits in 2009.

Visit Alex’s website and also check out Drawing Room, Chewed Toys, and Head on a Stick for info about her work and projects.

Thanks for the update, Alex!