Schedule

PRISMS Opening Remarks

Creative Kinship: A Pedagogical Approach to Testing Picturebooks with Children in an Undergraduate Illustration Studio

This presentation provides a model for teaching illustration students how to create children’s media with children instead of for children developed for the course, "The Narrative Art of the Picturebook," at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts. It will detail a method of critiquing picturebooks in a nursery school setting adapted from Megan Dowd Lambert’s Whole Book Approach and share examples of how children’s feedback shapes student work. This pedagogical method demonstrates how children can provide creative insights that traditional studio critiques preclude. Most crucially, this presentation reframes the prevailing model that positions children as passive recipients of visual media, and instead situates them as capable co-creators by applying Marah Gubar’s “kinship” model to the picturebook illustration process. It urges instructors of children’s illustration to use collaborative testing as a tool to foster more reciprocal relationships between students and the children for whom they illustrate.

Redesigning Life Drawing for Illustration and Animation

We created the figure drawing class we wish we’d had when we were in school. Semester after semester, we've seen our illustration and animation students struggle with their figure drawing skills. Many of the struggles our students encounter are the same hangups we faced ourselves as students. Figure drawing class needed an update. In this talk, we present a re-imagining of the foundational figure drawing class that combines traditional life-drawing methods with modern technology and influences from the worlds of comics, character design, film, and animation. We'll discuss course structure, assignments, and an innovative multi-instructor classroom approach.

Foraging Among Fascicles: Reframing Illustration History Through The Pickwick Papers

Despite the temptation to see illustration as an eternal practice as old as cave painting, the field is decidedly modern, elementally tied to printing, publishing in vernacular languages, and rising literacy rates from the fifteenth century. During the first third of the nineteenth century, approaches for combining text and images in pamphlets and books evolved haphazardly. The metal engravings plopped into the new literary annuals of the 1820s— diminutive gift books marketed to genteel women as Christmas presents—were added to increase their appeal. Self-conscious editors began to commission textual illustrations (meaning commentaries) to explain or enliven the pictures, typically portraits or landscapes. Caricaturists were engaged to create book projects and writers commissioned to “write up to” or respond to images, as was true of Thomas Rowlandson’s Tours of Dr. Syntax (1810-12) with text by Willam Combe. Finally the rise of the novel inspired publishers to contemplate the inclusion of pictorial embellishments, comprehensively undertaken by Thomas Cadell’s “Opus Edition” of Walter Scott’s Waverly novels, 1829-1833.

In such a fluid environment did new publishers Chapman and Hall undertake to publish what would become The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (issued 1836-37), simultaneously commissioning established caricaturist Robert Seymour and the young writer Charles Dickens, a pairing which would end in tragedy for one, and dramatic success for the other—in the process shaping the power dynamics of serialized fiction illustration which would prevail for the next 150 years. This paper will address the use of historical printed matter in an archival setting to investigate the serial format of fascicles, or monthly pamphlets, to enable graduate students to study: an illustrated reading experience as defined in the 1830s; an editorial process from a primary source; the rise of advertising in serial formats; the appearance of Sam Weller as a character in Volume 4 which saved a sagging project; the role played by H.K. Browne, or “Phiz,” who would become a primary illustrator to Dickens across many projects; the growth of Dickensiana; the symbiotic relationship between the magazine and book publishing businesses; and the historical phenomenon of the popular “hit series,” pioneered through fascicle publishing.

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Session Moderated Q&A

Froggy People: Anthropomorphism and Slice-of-Life in Autobiographical Comics

This presentation explores how a personal comic making practice evolved into a study on how and why comic makers use animal characters in autobiographical narratives about everyday life.

Culinary Storytelling: Illustration as an Interactive Bridge Between Culture and Food

Many recipe books and food packaging in the market today rely on highly stylized food photography, lengthy instructions, and creating experiences that are appealing but often out of reach, ultimately alienating readers. This session advocates the use of illustrations in recipe books and packaging designs as a richer, more engaging method to retain cultural authenticity while also enhancing interactivity. Using my thesis on Konkani culinary traditions in India as a primary case study along with visual analysis, I demonstrate how illustration can overcome language barriers, weave cultural narratives, and humanize ingredients by celebrating their imperfections. I will also examine successful illustrated representations of food, from recipe books to packaging design, to understand comprehension and emotional resonance across different formats. Ultimately, I aim to inspire the use of illustration as a dynamic tool for cultural preservation and education, proposing applications in heritage projects, inclusive designs, and digital culinary platforms.

Thoro: Black Illustrators in Hip-Hop and Their Influence on Global Illustration

From fashion, to marketing, publishing and beyond, there is not a creative industry in the 21st century that does not reference or employ hip hop aesthetics. This presentation will illuminate how the emergence of Hip Hop culture in 1973 was visually elevated by a community of Black illustrators, both trained and untrained, who created a new language now recognized as a global illustration style. It will provide context and proof of the invaluable contributions these artists have made to the illustration industry, and to the wider global creative culture.

Session Moderated Q&A

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Linger Here: Teaching the Power of Silence in Comics

Drawing from my experience as a cartoonist and educator, and grounded in my research into works like Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina, this talk examines how visual silence invites reflection, tension, and ambiguity, allowing students to approach storytelling not as a march toward plot, but as an experience. Ultimately, silence in comics is a form of invitation, a moment where the artist steps back and allows the reader to enter. In teaching students to embrace this space, we prepare them not only to make stronger visual stories but to become more empathetic, attentive readers and makers.

Esperancita’s Mostly True Memoir: Cultural Reunification and Healing of Migration Trauma Through Illustration

In this presentation, I will explore how "Esperancita’s Mostly True Memoir" bridges creative practice, academic research, and pedagogy. I will demonstrate how visual storytelling can engage students in nuanced conversations about migration, identity, and memory, while fostering empathy and self-expression. The project offers a model for research and art-making as a socially engaged and personally transformative act. I’ll reflect on how storytelling through illustration can be used to surface lived experience, foster empathy, and create space for culturally responsive dialogue. For me, this work isn’t just a book; it’s a love letter to Colombia, the home we were forced to leave, and a gift I didn’t know I needed: a way back to myself.

Imagination in Practice: Using Creative Visualization as a Research Method in the Classroom

This presentation shares a classroom model that adapts Carl Jung’s active imagination and other contemporary visualization practices into a working method of visual research. Through guided exercises based in memory, dream, and observation, students generate written and sketched artifacts: raw material they shape into grounded characters, environments, and concepts. Developed through the continuing education course, Active Imagination: Ideation Process for Creatives at Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2022 and later refined in undergraduate illustration projects at Pratt Institute and Queens College, CUNY, the approach strengthens skills essential to a sustainable studio practice, including attention, associative thinking, and ideation. This session shares prompts, student examples, and reflections on applying the method in diverse educational contexts.

Research: "The Non-Coercive Rearrangement of Desire"

Literary critic and feminist theorist Gayatri Spivak defines education as a non-coercive rearrangement of desire. This presentation will show how I translated my graduate school research into the classroom to teach students how to broaden their media literacy skills, navigate professional environments, and most importantly, help them discover what they love; as self-awareness is the key to discovering your visual voice.

Session Moderated Q&A

Wearing Many Hats—Juggling Art and Education

This talk focuses on my career as an artist, author, educator, and agent, with examples of how my creative work fuels and informs pedagogy.