An Interactive Comic, Microorganisms & More: the MFA ILP Show

Two Fri­days ago, I had the plea­sure of attend­ing the MFA Illus­tra­tion Prac­tice (MFA ILP) The­sis Exhi­bi­tion at Mary­land Insti­tute Col­lege of Art (MICA). I was real­ly excit­ed to see the show, as I grad­u­at­ed from the pro­gram in 2013 (the first class!) and was­n’t as famil­iar with this year’s work. They did­n’t dis­ap­point! I was real­ly impressed with every­thing I saw, and I admire how they’ve pushed the bound­aries of what illus­tra­tion is/can be. (This idea is the cor­ner­stone of the MFA ILP program.)

So, with­out fur­ther ado, here are some pic­tures of the exhi­bi­tion, but this is by no means a com­pre­hen­sive look. If you’re local to Bal­ti­more, stop by the show before it clos­es on April 12!

Check out more pic­tures from the exhi­bi­tion on my Flickr. (Beware — they’re unedited.)

Il Sung Na

I’ve had my eye on Il Sung Na’s work since the end of 2014. I bought one of his adorable ceram­ic crea­tures at MICA’s Art Mar­ket and total­ly want more of ’em. He had a bunch of through­out his space, and I wish he had them for sale at the opening!

Catherine Ho

When you walk down the stairs and into the Lei­dy Gallery, you’re imme­di­ate­ly greet­ed by Cather­ine Ho’s gor­geous illus­tra­tions. They occu­pied two walls, and each one had a dif­fer­ent feel. The bird fea­tures small, intri­cate lines that are rem­i­nis­cent of an etch­ing. An adja­cent wall is home to the bold stylings of Fox Tales. These fun pat­terns include bright col­ors and adorable critters.

Sarah Schneider

I always enjoy a well-craft­ed inte­ri­or scene, and Sarah Schnei­der’s paint­ings depict intrigu­ing places. Devoid of peo­ple, these slight­ly-dingy rooms give us clues to the type of peo­ple who fre­quent them. I can’t help but won­der, though, what’s the sto­ry behind the over­turned amp and emp­ty beer bot­tles (as seen in the paint­ing above).

Jasu Hu

Jasu Hu’s Project Fab­ri­ca com­bines both of her inter­ests — fash­ion and mod­ern archi­tec­ture. The illus­tra­tor cre­at­ed images of beau­ti­ful, angu­lar gar­ments that cor­re­spond­ed to a spe­cif­ic build­ing. Plus, she built a paper mannequin!

Diana Flores Blazquez

If you’ve read this blog for a while, you know that I love embroi­dery and 3D paper cutting/sculpture. Diana Flo­res Blazquez had many forms of illus­tra­tion in her exhi­bi­tion, but the stitch­ing and cutouts were my favorites. She cre­at­ed a body of work under the umbrel­la of Reg­num, which was a way to com­bine the seem­ing­ly dis­parate dis­ci­plines. The cen­tral theme is bio­log­i­cal taxonomy.

The work above was a giant embroi­dery fea­tur­ing microor­gan­isms. In case you were won­der­ing, this com­plete­ly hand stitched! And like­wise, Diana’s paper-cut ani­mal alpha­bet was also cre­at­ed by hand. Real­ly impressive.

Izzy & Ferd

I’m not a baby/toddler/kid per­son (I’ve nev­er even held a baby in my arms!), but I absolute­ly adored this kidswear cloth­ing line called Izzy & Ferd. The charm­ing designs were cre­at­ed by Liz Puli­do (who has addi­tion­al work in the show), and the cloth­ing is inspired by dis­cov­ery and adven­ture. Lewis & Clark is the theme of their Spring 2015 line.

Laurent Hrybyk

I went to the exhi­bi­tion twice, and both times I trou­ble cap­tur­ing Lau­rent Hry­byk’s work; there was always some­one play­ing with it! Lau­rent cre­at­ed Sam, an inter­ac­tive com­ic about an alien on the run. You wear head­phones and click around the com­ic to advance the sto­ry. There are in-game puz­zles and ani­ma­tions, too! I like this dig­i­tal take on a com­ic and also how Lau­rent designed his exhi­bi­tion space. He real­ly trans­formed it into a dif­fer­ent world.