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On the Road Again

FEBRUARY 25, 2015
To my Beltway friends please feel very welcome to drop around the Johns Hopkins Homewood Campus in Baltimore next Monday. I've been invited to do a talk about being an illustrator in these times and . . . in the way-back.  I think I will do a reverse show this time; starting with the newest and work back. This way I will be able to show new things before everybody faints. I figure you have a good 18 1/2 minutes to work with. As Nixon said to Rosemary Woods. Anyway, as I make the Powerpoint, here are some new things, or pieces of them, I am considering.
The newest would be this for on Oscar Outtakes for The Hollywood Reporter. Neil Patrick Harris didn't actually do the ice bucket thing on Streep and Moore but did do the tidey whities routine. We also had him in a Stephen Hawking wheelchair opening number. There were 4 more in this story. The result of a pitch to AD Peter Cury who really made this happen.


Here's a detail of the piece shown above: my Ship of Fools cover for The Nation. Just as the GOP's "governing majority" shows what it really is: a wreck. Thanks to Robert Best, Roane Carey,  Katrina Vanden Heuvel.

Here's the father of Fiddler on the Roof, Sholem Aleichem for an online mag.

Hillary Clinton, in "Dumbest Quotes of 2014" for GQ, states that corporations don't create jobs.
Conservative BS is plentiful enough without liberals giving them competition. Gotta keep an eye on that Hillary. There were 24 total illos in that series.

For a life of Jerry Brown for The LA Times, a full pager. Some ten illos. Writing by me, as in the others so far.

The Nation asked me to prepare a piece of art to present to the great author Toni Morrison at a dedicatory dinner, with one limitation: no likenesses of her allowed. Apparently, she doesn't even like photographs. We hit on the  idea of drawing her books! They all have interesting covers so it made for an exciting assignment. She said to me with a big smile, "It's beautiful, I love it." Very thrilled. She is a favorite author of mine, probably of yours too.

For the wonderful Robert Priest + Grace Lee, in 8X8 magazine, Sepp Blatter, the perfectly named head of the World Cup. Sleazy, corrupt, rude, ugly.  In short, my kind of people.

This was also the year I got to work with one of my favorite designers and people, Soojin Buzelli . . .  just before her getting a richly deserved Gangel Award at the SI last month. We collaborated on CIO magazine's Awards Issue. The challenge here was to render portraits of people I had no idea about the identity of. Also I didn't want to offend anyone (without cause). It meant a cover and 11 full pages and two spots. All done by Monday. Actually I had about a month. But it felt like a Monday deadline. Anyway, here's a couple of them  (whoever they are).



Another of my favorite designers is Len Small who has made of Nautilus a mecca of modern illustration. He stands at the nexus of science and the humanities, print and digital, art that is beautiful and also tells an important story. Here, for a piece on varieties of genius. As in Lincoln as well as Einstein.
In spite of all the dispruptions we see everywhere, we are lucky to have the media and graphic design world that we have today, thanks to the people who are in it. I feel so grateful for the priviledge of working with them!
© 2024 Steve Brodner