The Society is proud to announce a new look to the Museum Shop located in the main floor. Visitors are now able to view a larger selection of merchandise specializing in illustration, animation, comic and cartoon art. The Museum Shop includes a wide array of collectibles including limited edition posters, postcards, and gifts featuring artwork from our Permanent Collection and notable Members of the Society of Illustrators.
On behalf of all of us at the Society of Illustrators and the Museum of American Illustration, we want to wish you a happy and healthy holiday season. We also want to thank you for your past support of our exhibits and programs. We truly appreciate your interest in illustration and your willingness to help us advance our mission to educate others about this important art form.
You are the reason we are one of NYC’s only free Museums.
With 2012 rapidly drawing to a close, please consider making a year-end tax-deductible contribution to the Society of Illustrators to help us continue to serve you with exceptional exhibits, programs, films and workshops. We count on your support to keep our Museum free of charge.
The Society’s Museum Shop is currently featuring some artists’ books and products in honor of the Comic and Cartoon Art Annual (CCA), which began May on 3rd. The second of this three-part annual show began on June 14th. This show includes Special Formant, Comic Strip, and Long Form comics and cartoons.
Gold and Silver medals are awarded to top pieces displaying high-quality technique, a strong narrative, and an interesting composition. Medals winners will also receive the M. Prize, a financial award given in memory of Timothy Patrick Moynihan. Gold medalists will each receive $200 and silver medalists will receive $100. An Opening Reception and Awards Presentation for all medal winners will take place tonight, Friday, June 17th beginning at 6PM at the Society of Illustrators.
The displayed artwork has been carefully selected by prominent artists, publishers and editors. Some of the artists featured in our show have items on display in the Society’s Museum Shop.
Gregory Benton’s wordless book entitled B+F earned the MoCCA Award of Excellence in 2013 by the Society. Benton has been making comics since 1993 and his work has appeared in the New York Times, The Village Voice and Fortune. Another of his wordless books, Smoke (2015), as well as pins he has designed of characters featured in his stories are available at our shop. Through Benton’s wild illustrations, Smoke tells the story of two brothers and their typical day at an industrial tobacco farm.
A couple other new additions to the store include the books Lost in NYC: A Subway Adventure and Eventually Everything Connects. Lost in NYC: A Subway Adventure is a children’s book written by Nadja Speigelman that tells the story of a boy named Pablo who gets lost on his first day in New York City because he took the wrong train. The illustrations are by Sergio García Sánchez, who is also featured in the CCA show. The book contains maps photos and facts about the city, which makes the book not only fun to read but even informative. The New York Times enthusiastically praises Spiegelman and Sánchez’s book; “García’s adroit art bursts with activity, while the story highlights the ingenuity city life brings out in the young. Packed with subway maps, lore and miscellany, it’s sure to be treasured by tweens and adults, too.”
Eventually Everything Connects is a special format, accordion book by Loris Lora, yet another successful artist whose illustrations will be on display at the CCA. Unfold the four yards of beautiful pictures to discover the interconnectedness of the artists of the California modernist movement. Lora’s drawings illuminate the storyline of these artists’ lives. In the back of the hardcover you’ll find a word map detailing how these artists are all linked to each other. A Charles Eames’ quote wraps around the length of the folded diagram: “Eventually everything connects – people, ideas, objects… The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se.”
Artist Kevin Czapiewski (known as Kevin Czap) of Providence, Rhode Island has illustrations in the show. Czap’s “Froggy Perf” enamel pins can be purchased in the store as well. They are the perfect addition to your jean jacket or bland backpack!
The Society’s Government Services committee is in DC for the National Museum of the Marine Corps 2017 Combat Art Symposium this week. On their first day they visited the Smithsonian to see the exhibit Artist Soldiers: Artistic Expression in the First World War. Pictured here are Harvey Dunn and Wallace Morgan who were both president of the Society during their careers.
Harvey Dunn (above) and here is a poster he did during WWI:
Wallace Morgan on horseback (above) Here are some sketches from his time in the service during WWI:
U.S. Army Official War Artists
In July 1917, the idea of official war artists to be sent to France was proposed by the Committee on Public Information, recently organized to coordinate propaganda for the war effort. In December 1917, Captain Aymar Embury II, of the Engineer Reserve Corps, himself an artist, asked his superior if it would be possible for the Engineers to take up the plan. Embury was then instructed to submit the names of painters who might be likely candidates and General John J. Pershing, commander-in-chief of the American Expeditionary Forces gave his go ahead. The artists assigned to the task were William Aylward, Walter Duncan, Harvey Dunn , George Harding, Wallace Morgan, Ernest Peixotto, J. Andre Smith and Harry Townsend. (All but Smith were Society of Illustrators members.)
The group was allowed considerable latitude in carrying out their assignments, both in the rear areas and with the troops at the front. They were provided with two automobiles and issued a permanent pass, which essentially allowed them to travel freely. The artists sometimes worked under fire and were subjected to shelling and air raids. Conditions were often less than ideal, as noted by one of them on his visit to the Chateau-Thierry front: “…my paper wet and soggy, my hands numb with cold—these were the conditions, none too propitious for sketching, that obtained in the Argonne in October.”
Over five hundred works were eventually produced by the eight official artists using a variety of media and covering almost all aspects of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, including the Army of Occupation in Germany.
The Society of Illustrators is proud to present “The Art of Leo and Diane Dillon,” on display October 21 – December 20, 2014 at the Museum of American Illustration at the Society of Illustrators. Featuring a selection of work by the talented duo from a career that spanned over five decades, the exhibit includes illustrations that appeared in newspapers, magazines, advertisements, on book jackets, and in children’s books.
Leo Dillon and Diane Sorber met at Parsons School of Design in New York City in 1954. Right away, they were drawn to each other’s artistic abilities, at first as rivals. But over the years, their competitive friendship led to a personal and working relationship. They were married shortly after graduating and quickly developed a unique method of creating art together. As they once reported, “In terms of our work, it is virtually impossible to consider us separately. On every project we undertake, we hash out ideas together.”
During their long career, the Dillons created thousands of images, changing the approach they took and the media and techniques they used to suit each project. They might choose ink and watercolor for one piece, pastel and tempera for another, and alkyds on wood panel for yet another. They also incorporated diverse characters and cultures into their work, reaching a wide audience and inspiring generations to come.
The Dillons are the recipients of multiple awards, including two Caldecott Medals, five New York Times Best Illustrated Awards, four Boston Globe/Horn Book Awards, two Coretta Scott King Awards, and three Coretta Scott King Honors. They were inducted into the Society of Illustrators’ Hall of Fame in 1997, and their work has been shown in the Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others.
The Society’s exhibit features selections from several of the Dillons’ award-winning children’s books, including the 1977 Caldecott Medal winner Ashanti to Zulu: African Traditions, written by Margaret Musgrove and published by Dial Press; the 2005 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Book The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales,written by Virginia Hamilton and published by Knopf Books for Young Readers; and the 1997 Chelsea Award winner for Best Science Fiction Hardcover Jacket Sabriel: The Abhorsen Trilogy, written by Garth Nix and published by HarperCollins.
Leo and Diane Dillon’s son, Lee, who is a painter, sculptor, and jewelry craftsman, also contributed to some of the Dillons’ illustrations on display. Leo Dillon passed away in 2012. This exhibit is dedicated to his memory and great talent.
Ashanti to Zulu: African Traditions (Cover) Written by Margaret Musgrove Dial Books, 1976 Watercolor and pastel on Bristol board
Collection of Diane Dillon
Image 2
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew (Cover) By C. S. Lewis 1984 HarperCollins / Harper Trophy Acrylic on acetate with bronze frame by Lee Dillon (son)
Collection of Diane Dillon
Image 3
To Sleep with Ghosts: A Novel of Africa By G. F. Michelsen 1991
Collection of Diane Dillon
Image 4
Knight and Dragon 1986 Scott Foresman Pastel and Watercolor on Bristol board
After much delay, the Society of Illustrators' 54th Annual of American Illustration has reached the US and is now available in our Museum Shop and online. We wish the delay in receiving Illustrators 54 was a simple printing error or even a problem in customs, but the story goes deeper.
Without our consent or knowledge, the printer we sourced from China omitted an illustrator’s work, Alex Nabaum's "The Evolution of China", an Uncommissioned piece (see below) and printed the book with a completely blank page. The refusal to print this illustration was justified by the printer because Chinese Government censors deemed the image to be “disrespectful to Mao Zedong.” Of course, in no way was this justification for us. The Society of Illustrators does not censor, nor do we accept it. We fought the removal of this illustration and ultimately decided to right this wrong. Alex’s image has been added by a second printer from Hong Kong.
We apologize for the delay in production of Illustrators 54 but are proud we took a stance in the name of free speech and illustration.
Illustrators 54 can be purchased on our online shop by clicking here.
On July 9, the first session to kick off the Summer Illustration Art Academy began. Young artists, all donned in bright orange tee-shirts proudly displayed with “Summer Illustration Art Academy,” met in a gallery in the Society of Illustrators building.
The excited illustration students, with eyes as bright as their tee-shirts, were surrounded by big blue canvases, each with a different sea creature painted on it.
Bags bursting with free art supplies and a hardcover sketchbook were handed out to the 25 students in order to begin the first task of the summer 2012 session, which was to draw one of the fish living in the blue canvases on the wall.
The students sketched all morning, and once it was time for lunch, Jeannie, a 3-year veteran of the Summer Illustration Art Academy staff, gracefully and flawlessly conjured all of the children together to eat.
Following lunch, the students boarded a yellow school bus for the next activity at Central Park and once there, a line of budding artists, each readily equipped with sketchbook and artist pencil, followed Stephan Gardner, the art instructor for the day, through the winding walkways until he stopped at the Alice in Wonderland sculpture.
The students then sketched his or her favorite component of the sculpture. In the bright sun, hands busily worked at images of Mad Hatters, Cheshire Cats, Alices and oversized mushrooms.
Stephen Gardner with the kids
While young artists attempted to depict the sculpture with his or her best drawing capabilities, Gardner, a renowned illustrator from the Society of Illustrators, looked over each student’s drawing to give direction. Gardner drifted from student to student, and despite the warm July weather, enthusiastically gave advice, sketched tutorials and explained techniques.
For the entire month of July, the Summer Illustration Art Academy enabled 100 children, aged 9 through 13, to travel to various locations throughout New York City such as the Bronx Zoo, the Coney Island Aquarium, museum exhibitions and a double-decker bus through Times Square.
At these locations, the students will study a curriculum in accordance with the NYS Learning Standards for the Visual Arts, which consists of techniques including contour line, landscape, narrative, value and motion drawing.
Allen, an Art Academy student said, “It’s fun, I like going to different places,” and when asked what his favorite place to visit was, he responded quickly with “Times Square.”
The Summer Illustration Art Academy is the product of an 11-year partnership between NYC Parks and the Society of Illustrators. T he academy is also the result of the hard work of Mary Polemarhakis, the Director of Program Development in Central Recreation, who has been an advocate for outreach of the visual arts to at-risk youth since 2001.
Written by: Sky Stage, Central Recreation Communications Intern–
Our Intern Hailey wants to share with you a close up of “The Pit and the Pendulum” by Harry Clarke (for the story “The Pit and the Pendulum” by Edgar Allan Poe in his book “Tales of Mystery and Imagination”)
“What I love about Clarke’s illustrations are the little shapes that make up the amazing details of each piece. All of the detail is balanced by larger blocks of more solid black and white.”
Thanks Hailey! Stay tuned for more of our Staff Picks!