David Suter Poster | Eldina Siljkovic 2016

David Suter Poster | Eldina Siljikovic 2016

Above Poster designed by Eldina Siljikovic, graphic design student at the University of Northern Iowa, commemorating the work of American artist David Suter, whose editorial-page illustrations were widely acclaimed during the Watergate Era. •

A two-day campus visit by the artist took place on October 24-25, 2016,at the University of Northern Iowa. Sponsored by the UNI Department of Art, the event was part of the Meryl Norton Hearst Lecture Series.

Suter's editorial illustrations have been described as "puzzles and mindbogglers, tricks of the subconscious, and foolers of the eye." Some people call them visual puns or metaphors, but the artist prefers "to think of them as equations…It's a little like algebra. I try to combine two images through a process of finding similarities and canceling out dissimilar aspects."

Concurrent with David Suter's campus visit, there were exhibits of his OpEd drawings and of a series of posters (including the one shown here) by UNI graphic design students that celebrated his drawings.

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Frank Swinnerton, Swinnerton: An Autobiography. Garden City NY: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1936, p. 17 [remembering his father, an impoverished copperplate engraver in London]—

If, on Saturday, he was lucky enough to draw some larger money he would be induced to have two or three glasses of beer (which he could never stand), and would arrive home late in the evening a little stupid, with glassy eyes and a painfully courteous manner, carrying some bags of squashed tomatoes and other peace offerings, which he would put mutely upon the kitchen table. It is terrible to think that his marketing had always been bad, so that what he brought was largely useless and unvalued; but if he had silver in his pockets he always produced the whole of it, keeping nothing back, but setting it down with a truly distasteful gesture beside the tomatoes. On such occasions I fancy we were all rather brusque with him, my mother particularly so; and yet I do not recall that there were at any time outspoken quarrels between them. My mother frowned and marched about with her head in the air, dry-eyed, as if she were out of patience with anybody so fatuous; and he sat sighing, very quiet and polite, rather drowsy, at intervals saying humbly: "Can I help you, Ma?" and receiving the briefest courtesies in reply.

• The drawing in the poster is the copyright of David Suter. All rights reserved.