The 2017 Covers + Pages Anthology is on its way!

Covers and Pages is a junior-level sequential storytelling course in which illustration students are encouraged to tell short, sequential, visual narratives. Oftentimes these narratives are without text, so the narratives rely exclusively on visuals as a means to tell the story. 

Every spring, Assistant Professor Maura Cluthe and Assistant Professor Hector Casanova compile and curate the content for the anthology. The covers, however, are judged by various comic book artists from the Kansas City Community. This year, we were lucky enough to have Buster Moody and Matt Fox stop by and jury the covers this year. What an honor!

Matt Fox and Buster Moody in the house!

Buster and Matt graciously joined us one evening in March to jury the covers. With 28 students in the junior class, there were plenty of great covers to choose from. After some back-and-forth deliberation, Buster and Matt narrowed it down to 6 covers and then narrowed it down again to these final 4. For the final anthology, we'll be printing 2 separate books with 4 different covers but the content within the two books will be the same. 

Please join me in congratulating Emily Alvarez, Astrid Blurr, Max Peake and Brinnon Schaub whose work will be on the covers of the 2017 Covers & Pages Anthology! Congratulations, too, to runners-up Gabbi Brandini and Cameron Kunkel! Congratulations all!

Emily Alvarez

Astrid Blurr

Max Peake

Brinnon Schaub

Gabbi Brandini

Cameron Kunkel

Big thanks JooHee!

This October, we were lucky enough to have super-talented JooHee Yoon join us for a day as a visiting artist to our department. 

Visiting Artist JooHee Yoon with Assistant Professor David Terrill

Needless to say, we were all very excited to have JooHee join us for a day. Her fun, colorful, printmaking-inspired work is something that many of us have admired for some time. Her recently released books, Beastly Verse and The Tiger Who Would Be King, both published by Enchanted Lion Books, have created quite a buzz, in addition to her multifaceted editorial work.

JooHee surprised our students by giving them each a print from her recent book, Beastly Verse -- it was a bit of a stampede as students went up to claim their print! She also brought a stack of her recent picture books to sell. I think she sold every last one!

What a wonderful surprise!

At the end of the day, we all get together for a Q&A session with our visiting artist. This is a chance for the students to ask JooHee all sorts of questions. The students had a lot of great questions and JooHee provided some wonderful insight.

The Q&A discussion begins!

Every visiting artist that comes to KCAI Illustration gives our students a project. All the students within every level in the department participate and create a piece for the project; they usually have about a week to complete it. For her project, JooHee challenged the students to create an 18x24 inch travel poster to a place that could be real or imagined. As an instructor, I always love to see what the students come up with and once again, I was amazed. There were some wonderful pieces!!

The final step for our visiting artist is for them to select what they consider to be the top 25-30 solutions for the project. Out of those 25-30 pieces, they select their Top 3 solutions. The students whose work is selected as one of the Top 3 have the opportunity to go to dinner with the visiting artist! Congrats to the Top 3 picks senior Taylor Fourt, junior Ethan Tucker and sophomore Gabrielle Brandini!

Taylor Fourt

Ethan Tucker

Gabrielle Brandini

Dinner with JooHee at Cafe Trio, Kansas City, MO. Also present Assistant Professor David Terrill, Assistant Professor John Ferry, Instructor Hector Casanova, Instructor Kyle Strahm and Assistant Professor Maura Cluthe (taking the picture!). What a fun night!

There were so many strong solutions to this project, that JooHee had a hard time narrowing it down to these final three. So, she chose 3 Honorable Mentions as well. Congrats to senior Alison Polston, senior Karolina Akimov and sophomore Max Peake! 

Alison Polston

Karolina Akimov

Max Peake

Thanks again, JooHee, for taking time out of your busy schedule to stop by and visit with us!