UNI Art History Symposium | Zach Bird

Art History Symposium Poster © Zach Bird 2014

Above In a graphic design course this semester (in the Department of Art at the University of Northern Iowa), students were invited to design a "call for submissions" of art history research papers. The winning papers will be read at the department's annual Art History Symposium on Friday, April 4, 2014. The top three posters were chosen by the university's Art History faculty, including this one, designed by Zach Bird.

UNI Art History Symposium | Alex Rogers

Art History Symposium Poster © Alex Rogers 2014

Above In a graphic design course this semester (in the Department of Art at the University of Northern Iowa), students were invited to design a "call for submissions" of art history research papers. The winning papers will be read at the department's annual Art History Symposium on Friday, April 4, 2014. The top three posters were chosen by the university's Art History faculty, including this one, designed by Alex Rogers.

UNI Art History Symposium | Jake Earp

Art History Symposium Poster © Jake Earp 2014

Above In a graphic design course this semester (in the Department of Art at the University of Northern Iowa), students were invited to design a "call for submissions" of art history research papers. The winning papers will be read at the department's annual Art History Symposium on Friday, April 4, 2014. The top three posters were chosen by the university's Art History faculty, including this one, designed by Jake Earp.

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Alan Coren, The Sanity Inspector—

Apart from cheese and tulips, the main product of the country [Holland] is advocaat, a drink made from lawyers.

Iowa Snowstorms and Beyond

Conference program booklet © 2005

Above It was fun to run across this recently, a reminder of a wonderful weekend from almost ten years ago. It's the program booklet (with an exquisite parody logo designed by Argentine architect Maria Buteler Tilliard, who was a student at the time) for the graphic design faculty's first non-funded conference at the University of Northern Iowa. It was an exhausting delightful success, so much that the following year it prompted us to improvise the first international conference on art and camouflage in 2006 (non-funded as well), which was as much or more a success.

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Alfredo Veiravé (Argentine poet), "Memories of Iowa City and the international Writing Program" in Paul Engle, et al., The World Comes to Iowa. Ames IA: Iowa State University Press, 1987, pp. 195-196—

Starting in September, I already began thinking about what snow in Iowa would be like. As autumn wore on and winter came, that promise was approaching…until one morning when I woke up I heard a noise at the bedroom window. It sounded like a bird lightly touching the glass. While I was coming fully awake I had memories of similar sounds, such as that of some strange animal rubbing against the glass. And suddenly I remembered the snow, and I jumped out of bed and went to the window. There it was: snow. During the night the whole countryside had changed to white as if by magic. I was so excited that we had to get dressed and run out into the street to feel the light, magical Iowa snow.

Long Midwestern Winters

Story Illustration © Kim Behm

Above Short story illustration by Iowa-based artist Kim Behm, who teaches at Hawkeye Community College, Waterloo IA.

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Richard Critchfield, Those Days: An American Album (New York: Dell, 1986), p. 156—

But the snow, the unchanging blackness and whiteness of it, the bitter cold, the ceaseless wind—it could give you a really bad case of "cabin fever" if you let it. Father [a country doctor] used to tell about finding patients in remote farmhouses, most of them women, who'd made themselves ill with depression and loneliness over the long winter. All the early settlers had tales of women on isolated homesteads going mad. Even our farm, just a half mile south and two miles west of Hunter, could get pretty lonely. In the dead of night the sound of a coyote—three short yelps and a long howling wail—can be just about the most desolate sound there is.

Theatre Poster | Michelle Watson

Theatre poster © Michelle Watson 2011

Above Theatre poster designed by Michelle Watson, completed while an undergraduate graphic design student at the University of Northern Iowa.

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Stanley Elkin, Early Elkin (Flint MI: Bamberger Books, 1985)—

We read, I've told my classes, to die, not entirely certain what I mean but sure it has something to do with being alone, shutting the world out, doing books like beads, a mantra, the flu. Some perfect, hermetic concentration sealed as canned goods or pharmaceuticals. It is, I think, not so much a way of forgetting ourselves as engaging the totality of our attentions, as racing-car drivers or mountain climbers engage them, as surgeons and chess masters do. It's fine, precise, detailed work, the infinitely small motor management of diamond cutters and safecrackers that we do in our heads…I haven't said it here, am almost ashamed to own up, but once I opened books slowly, stately, plump imaginary orchestras going off in my head like overtures, like music behind the opening credits in films, humming the title page, whistling the copyright, turning myself into producer and pit band, usher and audience.

Theatre Poster | Erich Bollmann

Theatre poster © Erich Bollmann

Above Theatre poster designed by Erich Bollmann (Los Angeles), completed in an undergraduate graphic design course at the University of Northern Iowa.

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Mary McCarthy, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1957), p. 5—

It is our parents, normally, who not only teach us our family history but who set us straight on our own childhood recollections, telling us that this cannot have happened the way we think it did and that that, on the other hand, did occur, just as we remember it, in such and such a summer when So-and-So was our nurse. My own son, Reuel, for instance, used to be convinced that Mussolini had been thrown off a bus in North Truro, on Cape Cod, during the war. This memory goes back to one morning in 1943 when, as a young child, he was waiting with his father and me beside the road in Wellfleet to put a departing guest on the bus to Hyannis. The bus came through, and the bus driver leaned down to shout the latest piece of news: "They've thrown Mussolini out." Today, Reuel knows that Mussolini was never ejected from a Massachusetts bus, and he also knows how he got that impression.

Theatre Poster | Amanda Wallace

Theatre poster © Amanda Wallace (2010)

Above Theatre poster design by Amanda Wallace (Golwitzer), completed as an undergraduate graphic design student at the University of Northern Iowa.

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Ludwig Börne, The Art of Becoming An Original Writer in Three Days (said to be one of the factors that influenced Sigmund Freud in his adoption of free association)—

Take a few sheets of paper and for three days on end write down, without fabrication or hypocrisy, everything that comes into your head. Write down what you think of yourself, of your wife, of the Turkish War, of Goethe…and when three days have passed you will be quite out of your senses with astonishment at the new and unheard of thoughts you have had. This is the art of becoming an original writer in three days.

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George Ellis (the twelve months of the year)—

Snowy, Flowy, Blowy,
Showery, Flowery, Bowery,
Hoppy, Croppy, Droppy,
Breezy, Sneezy, Freezy.

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Alan Bennett (Beyond the Fringe)—

We started out trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules.

Digital Illustration | John Vorwald

Story illustration © John Vorwald

Above Digital short story illustration by John Vorwald, completed as an undergraduate graphic design student at the University of Northern Iowa.

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Melvin Fishman—

The holes in your Swiss cheese are somebody else's Swiss cheese [cf. figure-ground].

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Norah Phillips—

On the subject of confused people, I liked the store detective who said he'd seen a lot of people so confused that they'd stolen things, but never one so confused that they'd paid twice.

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D.H. Lawrence (The Later DHL)—

No absolute is going to make the lion lie down with the lamb unless the lamb is inside.

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Woody Allen (Without Feathers)—

The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much sleep.

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Herbert Berbohm Tree (BT)—

The only man who wasn't spoilt by being lionized was Daniel.

Self-Portrait Parody | Evan Seuren

Self-portrait parody © Evan Seuren

Above Digital self-portrait by Evan Seuren (a parody of Triple Self-Portrait by American illustrator Norman Rockwell (1960)), completed in an undergraduate graphic design course at the University of Northern Iowa.

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Guy Browning (The Guardian 1999)—

A shoal of a million fish might not be able to write Romeo and Juliet but they can change direction as one in the blink of an eye. Using language a human team leader can give an order to a team of six and have it interpreted in six completely different ways.

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Tony Benn (The Independent 1997)—

We should put spin-doctors in spin clinics, where they can meet other spin patients and be treated by spin consultants. The rest of us can get on with the proper democratic process.

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Stuart Davis (1940)—

An artist who has travelled on a steam train, driven an automobile, or flown in an airplane doesn't feel the same way about form and space as one who has not.

Fillm Poster | Kenny Meisner

Film poster © Kenny Meisner

Above Proposed film poster by Kenny Meisner, completed as an undergraduate graphic design student at the University of Northern Iowa.

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Charles Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby)—

"What's the water in French, sir?" "L'eau," replied Nicholas. "Ah!" said Mr. Lillyvick, shaking his head mournfully, "I thought as much. Lo, eh? I don't think anything of that language—nothing at all."

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Billy Wilder (Avanti)—

I don't object to foreigners speaking a foreign language: I just wish they'd all speak the same foreign language.

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G.K. Chesterton—

I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.