Faculty portfolios

I engage the visual world as a non-fiction reporter with a modernist sensibility. I am typically in search of that mysterious sweet spot where description and abstraction intersect. My work engages visual and cultural facts—what a creature, item, or social environment looks like—as a means of fashioning things to better apprehend them. Sort of like reconstructing the world as if it were a model train set. I am especially fond of mid-century design, illustration, and cheap spot-color printing. Influences include Stuart Davis, Jim Flora, Mary Blair, Philip Guston, Harry Beckhoff, Milton Caniff, Al Parker, Ben Shahn, and Robert Weaver. I also admire works of informational illustration by persons as diverse as John Emslie (1850s and '60s London), Elizabeth Buchsbaum (1930s American) and the graphic designer Paul Rand.

As a critic and writer on visual culture, I am interested in the world of functional and commercial images. My teaching in American Culture Studies and my work as a curator address periodical illustration, newspaper comic strips of the mid-20th century, the history of animation design, and informational pictures. For more details, please consult my blog, Graphic Tales.