All images courtesy of leo-and-diane-dillon.blogspot.com

Many great artists can attribute the core foundation of their work to their matriculation at Parsons, but how many can attribute the core foundation of their marriage to our institution? Leo and Diane Dillon can do both.

Illustration power couple and class of ’56, the Dillons met in 1953 while studying at Parsons where they “became instant arch-rivals and remained together from then on.” Shortly after graduation, they married and developed a very unique method of creating work together.

With a career spanning over 50 years, the Dillons created more than 100 speculative fiction book and magazine covers. Together, the two amassed over 20 prestigious awards for their work including the 1971 Hugo Grant Award for Best Professional Artist, five New York Times Best Illustrated Awards, the 1976 and 1977 Caldecott Medal, and the 2006 Knickerbocker Award.

Following Leo Dillon’s death in 2012, the New York Times referred to the Dillons as “one of the world’s pre-eminent illustrators for young people, producing artwork — praised for its vibrancy, ecumenicalism and sheer sumptuous beauty — that was a seamless amalgam of both their hands.”

In 1997, the Dillons were inducted into the Society of Illustrators’ Hall of Fame and in 1991 they received a Doctorate of Fine Art Degree from Parsons.

“The Art of Leo and Diane Dillon” is on display October 21 – December 20, 2014 at the Museum of American Illustration at the Society of Illustrators. For more info on the Dillons and the current exhibit, visit the Society’s official website.

The 105th meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, October 28, 2014 at 7 pm at Parsons The New School, 2 West 13th Street, in the Bark Room (off the lobby). Free and open to the public. Please note 7 pm starting time.

Eddy Portnoy: A Brief History of Yiddish Cartooning
Jews and cartoons have an unusual relationship. Initially, Jews were the victims of a particularly virulent anti-Jewish caricature, and did not engage the form within the context of their own culture until the second half of the nineteenth century in the Yiddish press. Though little known, the cartoons of the Yiddish press serve as a pre-history to subsequent activity in the field by Jewish artists.

Eddy Portnoy teaches in the Judaic Studies program at Rutgers University and also serves as the academic advisor at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. In addition to curating exhibits, he writes and lectures on Jewish popular culture.

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“Ever since I can remember drawing has been my outlet for expressing everything. When I am happy I draw and when I am sad I draw even more. As an observant Jew most of my work is religiously inspired. I believe that tradition carries so much wisdom, but also needs to be processed through to feel applicable to the time I am living in. Spending hours on a project allows me to organize my thoughts and actualize them into a piece of art. I hope to inspire others to question their reality with my work, but more importantly to simply make people smile. I want to show that there is always something deeper to the reality we see every day. Whether it is a lesson from a sacred text or my own thoughts, I want to provide a suggestion of meaning, worth, and happiness to my audience. I like to think of my work as wishes for the world.”

Jessica graduated last spring! Want to get in touch?  Email her at JessTDeutsch@gmail.com and visit her website here.

How much do you know about the world’s most secretive society? Do you want to learn more about the lives of ordinary people in North Korea?

Every year, thousands of North Koreans risk their lives to escape political persecution and economic hardship. If caught trying to escape or caught in China and sent back, they are at risk of extremely harsh punishments, including brutal beatings, forced labor, forced abortions, torture, and internment in a political prison camp.

LINK (Liberty in North Korea), and organization based on the West Coast, helps North Koreans escape and relocate to South Korea and the United States. LINK is visiting our campus this Friday, October 17th. If you are interested in hearing the stories of North Korean refugees and learning more about the situation in North Korea, please come to the LINK info session on Friday at 6 East 16th Street, room D1004 at noon.

For more information, check out http://www.libertyinnorthkorea.org

The 104nd meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, October 21, 2014 at 7 pm at Parsons The New School, 2 West 13th Street, in the Bark Room (off the lobby). Free and open to the public. Please note 7 pm starting time.

Gary Panter attempts to invoke the unfolding lotus of the 1960s by thumbing through an old magazine missing pages – LOOK, Jan 9, 1968.

Gary Panter is an illustrator, painter, designer and part-time musician. Panter’s work is representative of the post-underground, new wave comics movement that began with the end of Arcade: The Comics Revue and the initiation of RAW, one of the second generation in American underground comix. He’s had three one-man shows at Fredericks & Freiser gallery in  New York City. In 2008, Gary was the subject of a one-man show at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. His books include a comprehensive monograph, Gary Panter (PictureBox), and four graphic novels: Jimbo in Purgatory (Fantagraphics); Jimbo’s Inferno (Fantagraphics); Cola Madnes (Funny Garbage); Jimbo: Adventures in Paradise (Pantheon). Gary has won numerous awards, including three Emmy Awards for his production design on Pee-wee’s Playhouse, as well as the 2000 Chrysler Award for Design Excellence. For more information visit: http://www.garypanter.com/site/

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“Isis Bucket Challenge” / courtesy of Eliza Bender

Eliza Bender is a junior illustration major from Sugar Loaf, NY. Employing a hyper-realistic style, she recontextualizes the spaces in which icons and phenomena exist to provide a polarizing, insightful, and often clever viewpoint that’s unmistakably clear. Eliza’s politically-fired illustrations often provoke heated commentary amongst viewers, as evidenced in a reddit post that spent a fair amount of time atop the site’s front page.

Her animatic “The Water Tower” received the very first Hammie Award for Best Character Design, a prize instituted within the program to recognize the best student work in Animation.

To see more of Eliza’s work:

Official Website: elizabender.com
Facebook: facebook.com/elizabenderillustration

With her alter-ego, Tomby, Parsons Illustration alumna Emily Eibel defies the common perception that every illustrator has one distinguishable “style” of work. 

The organic qualities expressed through Emily’s stitched works in contrast to the highly technical and rigid qualities of Tomby’s pixel work may immediately suggest two entirely different artists are behind them; however, as Emily herself suggests, “it’s really just one style in two mediums.” She likens the layer-building process of her pixel illustrations to painting, while considering the stitch work as more like drawing with thread. She claims the solutions in one medium lend themselves directly to the other medium, making it much easier for her to balance the complexities of working as both Emily and Tomby.

Emily’s selected clients boast an impressive list of names including The New York Times, WIRED Magazine, ESPN Magazine, Maxim, The New Yorker, and more!

To see more of her work visit her official website: emilyeibel.com AND tombyillustration.com

The 103nd meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, October 14, 2014 at 8 pm at Parsons The New School, 2 West 13th Street, in the Bark Room (off the lobby). Free and open to the public. Please note 8 pm starting time.

Presentation: Anya Ulinich in conversation with Olga Gershenson.

Anya Ulinich will present her graphic novel, Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel, which the Publishers’ Weekly called “an honest and absorbing tragicomedy about love, sex, and everything that goes with them.” She will discuss how she went from being a painter to becoming a fiction writer to writing a graphic novel, and the steep learning curves along the way. She will also talk about her process, and the challenges of using autobiographical material in fiction and visual storytelling.

Anya Ulinich grew up in Moscow, Russia, and immigrated to Arizona when she was seventeen. She holds an MFA in visual arts from the University of California, Davis. She is the author of Petropolis (Viking, 2007), and Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel, a graphic novel (Penguin, 2014). Ulinich’s short stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Zoetrope: All-Story, n+1, and PEN America Journal. She teaches creative writing at the New School and lives in Brooklyn with her two daughters.

Olga Gershenson has been Jewish in Russia, Russian in Israel, and finally became an academic in the US, where she is Professor of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of Gesher: Russian Theatre in Israel (2005) and The Phantom Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and Jewish Catastrophe (2013), as well as an editor of Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender (2009). She has published widely on Jewish and Israeli films, and she is now working on her own film.

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