100 Notable alumni of
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Updated:
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is 319th in the world, 135th in North America, and 128th in the United States by aggregated alumni prominence. Below is the list of 100 notable alumni from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago sorted by their wiki pages popularity. The directory includes famous graduates and former students along with research and academic staff.
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Hugh Hefner
- Occupations
- editoractivistphilanthropistjournalistentrepreneur
- Biography
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Hugh Marston Hefner was an American magazine publisher. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of Playboy magazine, a publication with revealing photographs and articles. Hefner extended the Playboy brand into a world network of Playboy Clubs. He also resided in luxury mansions where Playboy Playmates shared his wild partying life, fueling media interest.
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Orson Welles
- Occupations
- radio personalityscreenwriterstage actorplaywrightfilm director
- Biography
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George Orson Welles was an American director, actor, writer, and producer who is remembered for his innovative work in film, radio, and theatre. He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time.
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Ed Harris
- Occupations
- film actorcharacter actorscreenwriteractorstage actor
- Biography
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Edward Allen Harris is an American actor and filmmaker. His performances in Apollo 13 (1995), The Truman Show (1998), Pollock (2000), and The Hours (2002) earned him critical acclaim and Academy Award nominations.
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Lara Flynn Boyle
- Occupations
- film actortelevision actorsingeractor
- Biography
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Lara Flynn Boyle is an American actress. She is known for playing Donna Hayward in the television series Twin Peaks (1990–1991). After appearing in Penelope Spheeris's comedy Wayne's World (1992), Boyle had a lead role in John Dahl's neo-noir film Red Rock West (1993), and in the psychological thriller The Temp (1993), followed by roles in Threesome (1994), Cafe Society (1995), Happiness (1998), and the villainous Serleena in Men in Black II (2002). From 1997 to 2003, she starred in the ABC series The Practice, for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination.
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Kim Novak
- Occupations
- film producerfilm actorpaintermodeltelevision actor
- Biography
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Marilyn Pauline "Kim" Novak is an American retired actress and painter. Her contributions to cinema have been honored with two Golden Globe Awards, an Honorary Golden Bear, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
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Georgia O'Keeffe
- Occupations
- draftspersongraphic artistarchitectural draftspersonpainterartist
- Biography
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Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was an American modernist painter and draftswoman whose career spanned seven decades and whose work remained largely independent of major art movements. Called the "Mother of American modernism", O'Keeffe gained international recognition for her paintings of natural forms, particularly flowers and desert-inspired landscapes, which were often drawn from and related to places and environments in which she lived.
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Halston
- Occupations
- costume designerfashion designer
- Biography
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Roy Halston Frowick, known mononymously as Halston, was an American fashion designer, who rose to international fame in the 1970s.
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Bruce Boxleitner
- Occupations
- voice actornovelistfilm producerscience fiction writerfilm actor
- Biography
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Bruce William Boxleitner is an American actor and science fiction and suspense writer. He is known for his leading roles in the television series How the West Was Won, Bring 'Em Back Alive, Scarecrow and Mrs. King (with Kate Jackson), and Babylon 5 (as John Sheridan in seasons 2–5, 1994–98). He is also known for his dual role as the characters Alan Bradley and Tron in the 1982 Walt Disney Pictures film Tron, a role which he reprised in the 2003 video game Tron 2.0, the 2006 Square-Enix/Disney crossover game Kingdom Hearts II, the 2010 film sequel, Tron: Legacy and the animated series Tron: Uprising. He co-starred in most of the Gambler films with Kenny Rogers, where his character provided comic relief. He also voiced General Moss in the films AniMen: Triton Force and AniMen: The Galactic Battle.
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Shel Silverstein
- Occupations
- writercartoonistcomposeractorpoet
- Biography
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Sheldon Allan Silverstein was an American writer, cartoonist, songwriter, and musician. Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, Silverstein briefly attended university before being drafted into the United States Army. During his rise to prominence in the 1950s, his illustrations were published in various newspapers and magazines, including the adult-oriented Playboy. He also wrote a satirical, adult-oriented alphabet book, Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book.
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Jeff Koons
- Occupations
- photographerpaintersculptorartistinstallation artist
- Biography
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Jeffrey Lynn Koons is an American artist recognized for his work dealing with popular culture and his sculptures depicting everyday objects, including balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror-finish surfaces. He lives and works in both New York City and his hometown of York, Pennsylvania. His works have sold for substantial sums, including at least two record auction prices for a work by a living artist: US$58.4 million for Balloon Dog (Orange) in 2013 and US$91.1 million for Rabbit in 2019.
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David Sedaris
- Occupations
- writercomedianessayist
- Biography
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David Raymond Sedaris is an American humorist, comedian, author, and radio contributor. He was publicly recognized in 1992 when National Public Radio broadcast his essay "Santaland Diaries". He published his first collection of essays and short stories, Barrel Fever, in 1994. His next book, Naked (1997), became his first of a series of New York Times Bestsellers, and his 2000 collection Me Talk Pretty One Day won the Thurber Prize for American Humor.
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Melinda Dillon
- Occupations
- stage actorfilm actortelevision actor
- Biography
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Melinda Ruth Dillon was an American actress. She received a 1963 Tony Award nomination for her Broadway debut in the original production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Absence of Malice (1981). She is well-known for her role as Mother Parker in the holiday classic A Christmas Story (1983). Her other film roles include Bound for Glory (1976), Slap Shot (1977), F.I.S.T. (1978), The Muppet Movie (1979), Harry and the Hendersons (1987), Captain America (1990), The Prince of Tides (1991), To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (1995), How to Make an American Quilt (1995), Magnolia (1999), for which she was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award, and Reign Over Me (2007).
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Son Seok-koo
- Occupations
- film actortelevision actorstage actoractor
- Biography
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Son Suk-ku is a South Korean actor. He gained recognition for his roles in the television series Matrimonial Chaos (2018), Designated Survivor: 60 Days (2019), D.P. (2021–2023), My Liberation Notes (2022), and A Killer Paradox (2024), as well as the films Nothing Serious (2021) and The Roundup (2022).
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Sarah Vowell
- Occupations
- writervoice actorjournalistactor
- Biography
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Sarah Jane Vowell is an American historian, author, journalist, essayist, social commentator and actress. She has written seven nonfiction books on American history and culture. Vowell was a contributing editor for the radio program This American Life on Public Radio International from 1996 to 2008, where she produced numerous commentaries and documentaries. She was also the voice of Violet Parr in the 2004 animated film The Incredibles and its 2018 sequel.
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Hong Sang-soo
- Occupations
- composerexecutive producerscreenwriterfilm directorcinematographer
- Biography
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Hong Sang-soo is a South Korean film director and screenwriter. An acclaimed and prolific filmmaker, Hong is known for his slow-paced films about love affairs and everyday dilemmas in contemporary South Korea.
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Edward Gorey
- Enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
- Studied in 1943-1943
- Occupations
- costume designerwriterpuppeteerillustrator
- Biography
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Edward St. John Gorey was an American writer, Tony Award-winning costume designer, and artist, noted for his own illustrated books as well as cover art and illustration for books by other writers. His characteristic pen-and-ink drawings often depict vaguely unsettling narrative scenes in Victorian and Edwardian settings.
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Grant Wood
- Occupations
- printmakeruniversity teacherpainter
- Biography
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Grant DeVolson Wood was an American artist and representative of Regionalism, best known for his paintings depicting the rural American Midwest. He is particularly well known for American Gothic (1930), which has become an iconic example of early 20th-century American art.
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Apichatpong Weerasethakul
- Occupations
- film producerinstallation artistscreenwriterdirectorfilm director
- Biography
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Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a Thai independent film director, screenwriter, film producer and Professor at Tama Art University in Tokyo. Working outside the strict confines of the Thai film studio system, Apichatpong has directed several features and dozens of short films. Friends and fans sometimes refer to him as "Joe" (a nickname that he, like many with similarly long Thai names, has adopted out of convenience).
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Elisha Cook Jr
- Occupations
- actorfilm actorstage actortelevision actorcharacter actor
- Biography
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Elisha Vanslyck Cook Jr. was an American character actor famed for his work in film noir. According to Bill Georgaris of They Shoot Pictures, Don't They, Cook appeared in 21 films noir, more than any other actor or actress. He played cheerful, brainy collegiates until he was cast against type as the bug-eyed baby-faced killer Wilmer Cook in the 1941 version of The Maltese Falcon. He went on to play deceptively mild-mannered villains. Cook's acting career spanned more than 60 years, with roles in productions including The Big Sleep, Shane, The Killing, House on Haunted Hill and Rosemary's Baby.
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Shelley Berman
- Occupations
- screenwriterfilm directorteacheractorcomedian
- Biography
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Sheldon Leonard Berman was an American comedian, actor, writer, teacher, and lecturer.
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J. C. Leyendecker
- Occupations
- designerpainterillustrator
- Biography
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Joseph Christian Leyendecker was one of the most prominent and financially successful freelance commercial artists in the U.S. He was active between 1895 and 1951 producing drawings and paintings for hundreds of posters, books, advertisements, and magazine covers and stories. He is best known for his 80 covers for Collier's Weekly, 322 covers for The Saturday Evening Post, and advertising illustrations for B. Kuppenheimer men's clothing and Arrow brand shirts and detachable collars. He was one of the few known reportedly gay artists working in the early-twentieth century U.S.
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BenDeLaCreme
- Occupations
- actordrag queen
- Biography
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BenDeLaCreme is the stage persona of Benjamin Brock Hamlet Putnam, an American drag queen, burlesque performer, and actor based in Seattle, Washington. He is known for being a contestant on the sixth season of RuPaul's Drag Race and the third season of RuPaul's Drag Race: All Stars. He is also known for his solo shows Ready To Be Committed, Terminally Delightful, Inferno A-Go-Go and Cosmos, and as co-creator and host of burlesque revues Freedom Fantasia and Homo for the Holidays.
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Thomas Hart Benton
- Occupations
- lithographerteacherdraftspersonsculptorgraphic artist
- Biography
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Thomas Hart Benton was an American painter, muralist, and printmaker. Along with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, he was at the forefront of the Regionalist art movement. The fluid, sculpted figures in his paintings showed everyday people in scenes of life in the United States.
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Joan Mitchell
- Enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
- In 1944 graduated with undergraduate degree in fine art
- Occupations
- painterartistprintmakerillustrator
- Biography
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Joan Mitchell was an American artist who worked primarily in painting and printmaking, and also used pastel and made other works on paper. She was an active participant in the New York School of artists in the 1950s. A native of Chicago, she is associated with the American abstract expressionist movement, even though she lived in France for much of her career.
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Mykki Blanco
- Occupations
- rapper
- Biography
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Mykki Blanco is an American rapper, performance artist, poet and activist. She has collaborated musically with artists including Kanye West, Teyana Taylor, and Blood Orange.
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Matteo Lane
- Occupations
- artistcomedianpodcaster
- Biography
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Matthew "Matteo" Lane is an American comedian, actor, singer, and illustrator. He has made appearances on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and HBO's Crashing. His favorite performance venues in New York City are Comedy Cellar, The Stand, and New York Comedy Club. Lane is an advocate for the gay community, and was recognized by The Advocate as one of the LGBT Icons, Innovators, and Disruptors for his work in stand-up comedy.
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Audrey Niffenegger
- Occupations
- writerartistnovelistscience fiction writeruniversity teacher
- Biography
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Audrey Niffenegger is an American writer, artist, and academic. Her debut novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, published in 2003, was a bestseller.
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Cynthia Rowley
- Occupations
- fashion designer
- Biography
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Cynthia Rowley is an American fashion designer, known for her books, television appearances and "flirty" and "carefree" women's clothing designs.
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LeRoy Neiman
- Occupations
- painteractor
- Biography
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LeRoy Neiman was an American artist known for his brilliantly colored, expressionist paintings and screenprints of athletes, musicians, and sporting events.
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MC Chris
- Occupations
- musicianscreenwritervoice actorrapper
- Biography
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Christopher Brendan Ward IV, better known by the stage name MC Chris (stylized in all lower case), is an American rapper, voice actor, comedian, and writer. He is recognized for his high-pitched voice and for blending his "geek” background with a “gangsta rap” persona, leading to the popularization of the nerdcore genre originally pioneered by MC Frontalot. He has released ten albums, five EPs, one re-release, and a tenth-anniversary edition of his recordings with the Lee Majors.
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Wen Yiduo
- Occupations
- poetwriter
- Biography
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Wen Yiduo was a Chinese poet and scholar known for his nationalistic poetry. Wen was assassinated by the Kuomintang in 1946.
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Richard Estes
- Occupations
- photographerpaintermanufacturerprintmaker
- Biography
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Richard Estes is an American artist, best known for his photorealist paintings. The paintings generally consist of reflective, clean, and inanimate city and geometric landscapes. He is regarded as one of the founders of the international photo-realist movement of the late 1960s, with such painters as John Baeder, Chuck Close, Robert Cottingham, Audrey Flack, Ralph Goings, and Duane Hanson. Author Graham Thompson writes "One demonstration of the way photography became assimilated into the art world is the success of photorealist painting in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is also called super-realism or hyper-realism and painters like Richard Estes, Denis Peterson, Audrey Flack, and Chuck Close often worked from photographic stills to create paintings that appeared to be photographs."
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Bill Mauldin
- Occupations
- actorscreenwritercomics artistcaricaturistjournalist
- Biography
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William Henry Mauldin was an American editorial cartoonist who won two Pulitzer Prizes for his work. He was most famous for his World War II cartoons depicting American soldiers, as represented by the archetypal characters Willie and Joe, two weary and bedraggled infantry troopers who stoically endure the difficulties and dangers of duty in the field. His cartoons were popular with soldiers throughout Europe, and with civilians in the United States as well. However, his second Pulitzer Prize was for a cartoon published in 1958, and possibly his best-known cartoon was after the Kennedy assassination.
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Vachel Lindsay
- Occupations
- writerpainterpoet
- Biography
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Nicholas Vachel Lindsay was an American poet. He is considered a founder of modern singing poetry, as he referred to it, in which verses are meant to be sung or chanted.
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Kristin Hayter
- Occupations
- singer
- Biography
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Kristin Hayter is an American singer and pianist. She started releasing music in 2017 and performed under the Latin name Lingua Ignota ('unknown language'). In 2023, citing the unhealthiness of reliving her trauma through her performances, Hayter retired the Lingua Ignota project. She embodied a new persona under the moniker Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter.
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Mark Tobey
- Occupations
- illustratorpainter
- Biography
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Mark George Tobey was an American painter. His densely structured compositions, inspired by Asian calligraphy, resemble Abstract expressionism, although the motives for his compositions differ philosophically from most Abstract Expressionist painters. His work was widely recognized throughout the United States and Europe. Along with Guy Anderson, Kenneth Callahan, Morris Graves, and William Cumming, Tobey was a founder of the Northwest School. Senior in age and experience, he had a strong influence on the others; friend and mentor, Tobey shared their interest in philosophy and Eastern religions. Similar to others of the Northwest School, Tobey was mostly self-taught after early studies at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1921, Tobey founded the art department at The Cornish School in Seattle, Washington.
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A. Y. Jackson
- Occupations
- painter
- Biography
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Alexander Young Jackson CC CMG RCA LL. D. was a Canadian painter and a founding member of the Group of Seven. Jackson made a significant contribution to the development of art in Canada, and was instrumental in bringing together the artists of Montreal and Toronto. In addition to his work with the Group of Seven, his long career included serving as a war artist during World War I (1917–19) and teaching at the Banff School of Fine Arts, from 1943 to 1949. In his later years he was artist-in-residence at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario.
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Hope Larson
- Occupations
- cartoonistcomics artistillustrator
- Biography
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Hope Raue Larson is an American illustrator and cartoonist. Her main field is comic books.
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Emil Ferris
- Occupations
- cartoonistdesignercomics artistwriterillustrator
- Biography
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Emil Ferris is an American writer, cartoonist, and designer. Ferris debuted in publishing with her 2017 graphic novel My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, which was praised as a "masterpiece" and one of the best comics by a new author.
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Ivan Albright
- Occupations
- printmakersculptorpainter
- Biography
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Ivan Le Lorraine Albright was an American painter, sculptor and print-maker most renowned for his self-portraits, character studies, and still lifes. Due to his technique and dark subject matter, he is often categorized among the Magic Realists and is sometimes referred to as the "master of the macabre".
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Tania Bruguera
- Occupations
- artistinstallation artistperformance artistpaintertheatrical director
- Biography
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Tania Bruguera is a Cuban artist and activist who focuses on installation and performance art. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts where she works as head of media and performance at Harvard University. Bruguera has participated in numerous international exhibitions. her work is in the permanent collections of many institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art and Bronx Museum of the Arts and the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana.
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James Earle Fraser
- Occupations
- medalistsculptor
- Biography
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James Earle Fraser was an American sculptor during the first half of the 20th century. His work is integral to many of Washington, D.C.'s most iconic structures.
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Gahan Wilson
- Occupations
- writercartoonistcomics artistillustrator
- Biography
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Gahan Allen Wilson was an American author, cartoonist and illustrator known for his cartoons depicting horror-fantasy situations.
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Elizabeth Murray
- Occupations
- photographerpainterprofessorartistsculptor
- Biography
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Elizabeth Murray was an American painter, printmaker and draughtsman. Her works are in many major public collections, including those of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Wadsworth Atheneum. Murray was known for her use of shaped canvases.
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Amanda Crowe
- Occupations
- wood carversculptor
- Biography
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Amanda Crowe was an Eastern Band Cherokee woodcarver and educator from Cherokee, North Carolina in the United States. A graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, her work has been widely exhibited and is held by a number of museums. Crowe dedicated much of her career to teaching and training the next generation of Eastern Cherokee artists.
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John Steuart Curry
- Occupations
- painterlithographer
- Biography
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John Steuart Curry was an American painter whose career spanned the years from 1924 until his death. He was noted for his paintings depicting rural life in his home state, Kansas. Along with Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood, he was hailed as one of the three great painters of American Regionalism of the first half of the twentieth century. Curry's artistic production was varied, including paintings, book illustrations, prints, and posters.
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Archibald Motley
- Occupations
- painter
- Biography
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Archibald John Motley, Jr., was an American visual artist. Motley is most famous for his colorful chronicling of the African-American experience in Chicago during the 1920s and 1930s, and is considered one of the major contributors to the Harlem Renaissance, or the New Negro Movement, a time in which African-American art reached new heights not just in New York but across America—its local expression is referred to as the Chicago Black Renaissance. He studied painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago during the 1910s, graduating in 1918.
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Rashid Johnson
- Occupations
- installation artistphotographerfilm directorsculptorjewelry designer
- Biography
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Rashid Johnson is an American artist who produces conceptual post-black art. Johnson first received critical attention in 2001 at the age of 24, when his work was included in Freestyle (2001) curated by Thelma Golden at the Studio Museum in Harlem. He studied at Columbia College Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his work has been exhibited around the world.
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Sterling Ruby
- Occupations
- draftspersonceramicistartistsculptorpainter
- Biography
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Sterling Ruby is an American artist who works in a large variety of media including ceramics, painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, video, and textiles. Often, his work is presented in large and densely packed installations. The artist has cited a diverse range of sources and influences including aberrant psychologies (particularly schizophrenia and paranoia), urban gangs and graffiti, hip-hop culture, craft, punk, masculinity, violence, public art, prisons, globalization, American domination and decline, waste and consumption. In opposition to the minimalist artistic tradition and influenced by the ubiquity of urban graffiti, the artist's works often appear scratched, defaced, camouflaged, dirty, or splattered. Proclaimed as one of the most interesting artists to emerge this century by New York Times art critic Roberta Smith, Ruby's work examines the psychological space where individual expression confronts social constraint. Sterling Ruby currently lives and works in Los Angeles. His studio is located in Vernon, south of downtown Los Angeles.
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Jon Rafman
- Occupations
- artistfilmmakeressayist
- Biography
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Jon Rafman is a Canadian artist, filmmaker, and essayist. His work centers around the emotional, social and existential impact of technology on contemporary life. His artwork has gained international attention and was exhibited in 2015 at Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (Montreal) and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. He is widely known for exhibiting found images from Google Street View in his online artwork 9-Eyes (2009-ongoing).
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Burne Hogarth
- Occupations
- comics writerdraftspersoncomics artist
- Biography
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Burne Hogarth was an American artist and educator, best known for his work on the Tarzan newspaper comic strip and his series of anatomy books for artists.
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Greer Lankton
- Occupations
- photographerinstallation artistartistpuppet designer
- Biography
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Greer Lankton, was an American transgender artist known for creating lifelike sewn dolls that were often modeled on friends or celebrities and posed in elaborate theatrical settings. She was a key figure in the East Village art scene of the 1980s in New York.
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Gregory La Cava
- Occupations
- screenwriterfilm directordirectorcomics artistanimator
- Biography
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Gregory La Cava was an American film director of Italian descent best known for his films of the 1930s, including My Man Godfrey and Stage Door, which earned him nominations for Academy Award for Best Director.
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Trevor Paglen
- Enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
- Graduated with Master of Fine Arts
- Occupations
- photographerwritergeographerinstallation artist
- Biography
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Trevor Paglen is an American artist, geographer, and author whose work covers mass surveillance and data collection.
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Will McBride
- Occupations
- photographerjournalistpaintersculptorvisual artist
- Biography
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Will McBride was an American photographer in reportage, art photography and book illustration as well as a painter and sculptor.
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Casey Spooner
- Occupations
- musician
- Biography
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Casey David Spooner is an American musician and artist. He resides in Paris, Los Angeles, and New York City.
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Gertrude Abercrombie
- Occupations
- painterartist
- Biography
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Gertrude Abercrombie was an American painter based in Chicago. Called "the queen of the bohemian artists", Abercrombie was involved in the Chicago jazz scene and was friends with musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Sarah Vaughan, whose music inspired her own creative work.
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Anchee Min
- Occupations
- photographermusiciannovelistpainterwriter
- Biography
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Anchee Min is a Chinese-American author who lives in San Francisco and Shanghai. Min has published two memoirs, Red Azalea and The Cooked Seed: A Memoir, and six historical novels. Her fiction emphasizes strong female characters, such as Jiang Qing, the wife of chairman Mao Zedong, and Empress Dowager Cixi, the last ruling empress of China.
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Thomas C. Lea III
- Occupations
- historianpainternovelistjournalist
- Biography
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Thomas "Tom" Calloway Lea III was an American muralist, illustrator, artist, war correspondent, novelist, and historian. The bulk of his art and literary works were about Texas, north-central Mexico, and his World War II experience in the South Pacific and Asia. Two of his most popular novels, The Brave Bulls and The Wonderful Country, are widely considered to be classics of southwestern American literature.
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Richmond Barthé
- Occupations
- artistsculptorpainter
- Biography
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James Richmond Barthé, also known as Richmond Barthé was an African-American sculptor associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Barthé is best known for his portrayal of black subjects. The focus of his artistic work was portraying the diversity and spirituality of man. Barthé once said: "All my life I have been interested in trying to capture the spiritual quality I see and feel in people, and I feel that the human figure as God made it, is the best means of expressing this spirit in man."
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Byeong Sam Jeon
- Occupations
- artist
- Biography
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Byeong Sam Jeon is an internationally recognized South Korean artist who lives in Seoul and New York. One of his large-scale art installations is CD PROJECT that turned an abandoned old tobacco factory into a shiny dream factory through decorating the 180 meter-long and 32 meter-high outer wall of the factory building with the total 489,440 flattering compact discs collected by 27,912 people from 288 organizations in 31 cities of 9 countries. The total number of the CDs installed was counted by the official Guinness World Records, and announced as the 'Largest Display of Compact Discs'. His works and sketch/prototypes of the giant installations have sold for substantial sums of money by the galleries and private collectors.
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Mike Grell
- Occupations
- comics artist
- Biography
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Mike Grell is an American comic book writer and artist, known for his work on books such as Green Lantern/Green Arrow, The Warlord, and Jon Sable Freelance.
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Red Grooms
- Occupations
- graphic artistprintmakerillustratorsculptorfilmmaker
- Biography
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Red Grooms is an American multimedia artist best known for his colorful pop-art constructions depicting frenetic scenes of modern urban life. Grooms was given the nickname "Red" by Dominic Falcone (of Provincetown's Sun Gallery) when he was starting out as a dishwasher at a restaurant in Provincetown and was studying with Hans Hofmann.
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Phil Foglio
- Occupations
- editorcartoonistcomics artist
- Biography
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Philip Peter Foglio is an American cartoonist and comic book artist known for his humorous science fiction and fantasy art.
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Dean Cornwell
- Occupations
- cartoonistpainterillustrator
- Biography
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Dean Cornwell was a left-handed American illustrator and muralist. His oil paintings were frequently featured in popular magazines and books as literary illustrations, advertisements, and posters promoting the war effort. Throughout the first half of the 20th century he was a dominant presence in American illustration. At the peak of his popularity he was nicknamed the "Dean of Illustrators".
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Frederick Carl Frieseke
- Occupations
- painter
- Biography
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Frederick Carl Frieseke was an American Impressionist painter who spent most of his life as an expatriate in France. An influential member of the Giverny art colony, his paintings often concentrated on various effects of dappled sunlight.
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Richard Hunt
- Occupations
- sculptorlithographer
- Biography
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Richard Howard Hunt was an American artist and sculptor. In the second half of the 20th century, he became "the foremost African-American abstract sculptor and artist of public sculpture." A Chicago native, Hunt studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1950s. While there he received multiple prizes for his work. In 1971, he was the first African-American sculptor to have a retrospective at Museum of Modern Art. Hunt has created over 160 public sculpture commissions, more than any other sculptor in prominent locations in 24 states across the United States.
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Ben Stahl
- Occupations
- writer
- Biography
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Benjamin Albert Stahl was an American artist, illustrator and author. He showed precocious talent, winning a scholarship to the Art Institute of Chicago at age twelve. His artwork appeared in the International Watercolor Show at the Art Institute when he was sixteen. He later taught at the Art Institute, as well as at the American Academy of Art, the Art Students League of New York, Brooklyn's Pratt Institute and at various universities.
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Lala Lala
- Occupations
- singer-songwriter
- Biography
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Lillie Amadea West, known professionally as Lala Lala, is an indie rock musician and songwriter based in Chicago.
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Martin Nodell
- Occupations
- draftspersonvisual artistcartoonistscreenwritercomics artist
- Biography
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Martin Nodell was an American cartoonist and commercial artist, best known as the creator of the Golden Age superhero Green Lantern. Some of his work appeared under the pen name Mart Dellon.
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Ida Applebroog
- Occupations
- artistdraftspersonpainterconceptual artistsculptor
- Biography
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Ida Applebroog was an American multi-media artist who was best-known for her paintings and sculptures that explore the themes of gender, sexual identity, violence, and politics. Applebroog was the recipient of multiple honors including the MacArthur Fellowship "Genius Grant", the College Art Association Distinguished Art Award for Lifetime Achievement, and an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the New School for Social Research/Parsons School of Design. Applebroog lived in New York City and is represented by Hauser & Wirth.
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Margaret Brundage
- Occupations
- painter
- Biography
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Margaret Brundage, born Margaret Hedda Johnson, was an American illustrator and painter who is remembered chiefly for having illustrated the pulp magazine Weird Tales. Working in pastels on illustration board, she created most of the covers for Weird Tales between 1933 and 1938.
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Mat Devine
- Occupations
- singer-songwriterguitarist
- Biography
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Mat Devine is an American singer, songwriter and musician. He created and fronted the alternative rock band Kill Hannah. His debut solo album, Gold Blooded, was released in August 2014. He is currently the Head of Music Partnerships at Cameo.
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Betty Bumpers
- Occupations
- teacherpeace activist
- Biography
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Betty Lou Bumpers was an American politician, advocate for childhood immunizations, and world peace activist, who served as the First Lady of Arkansas from 1971 to 1975. Together, she and Rosalynn Carter ran a successful campaign to ensure that all American school children were immunized. Bumpers was the wife of Dale Bumpers, who served as governor of Arkansas from 1971 to 1975 and as a U.S. Senator from 1975 to 1999.
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Edgar Alwin Payne
- Occupations
- painter
- Biography
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Edgar Alwin Payne was an American painter. He was known as a Western landscape painter and muralist.
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Jeffrey Gibson
- Occupations
- sculptorinstallation artistpainter
- Biography
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Jeffrey A. Gibson is an American Mississippi Choctaw/Cherokee painter and sculptor. He has lived and worked in Brooklyn, New York; Hudson, New York; and Germantown, New York.
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Bill Rebane
- Occupations
- film directorpolitician
- Biography
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Bill Rebane is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is best known for low budget movies such as Monster a Go-Go and The Giant Spider Invasion. Rebane also ran for Governor of Wisconsin in 1979 and 2002 as the American Reform Party candidate.
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E. Irving Couse
- Occupations
- painter
- Biography
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Eanger Irving Couse was an American artist and a founding member and first president of the Taos Society of Artists. Born and reared in Saginaw, Michigan, he went to New York City and Paris to study art. While spending summers in Taos, New Mexico, he began to make the paintings of Native Americans, New Mexico, and the American Southwest for which he is best known. He later settled full time in Taos.
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Franklin Booth
- Occupations
- illustratorwriter
- Biography
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Franklin Booth was an American artist known for his detailed pen-and-ink illustrations. He had a unique illustration style based upon his early recreation of wood engraving illustrations with pen and ink. His skill as a draftsman and style made him a popular magazine illustrator in the early 20th-century. He was one of the first modern ex libris designers in the United States.
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Santiago Martínez Delgado
- Occupations
- paintersculptor
- Biography
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Santiago Martínez Delgado was a Colombian painter, sculptor, art historian and writer. He established a reputation as a prominent muralist during the 1940s and is also known for his watercolors, oil paintings, illustrations and woodcarvings.
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Minerva Teichert
- Occupations
- painter
- Biography
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Minerva Bernetta Kohlhepp Teichert was a 20th-century American artist who painted Western and Mormon subjects, including murals of scenes from the Book of Mormon. She received her art education from the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League of New York, and was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Religious-themed artwork by Teichert includes Christ in a Red Robe, Queen Esther, and Rescue of the Lost Lamb. She painted 42 murals related to stories in the Book of Mormon which reside in Brigham Young University's (BYU) Museum of Art. Teichert was the first woman invited to paint a mural for an LDS Church temple.
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Marc-Aurèle Fortin
- Occupations
- painter
- Biography
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Marc-Aurèle Fortin RCA was a Québécois painter, known best for paintings that convey the charm of small-town Quebec.
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Brad Troemel
- Years
- 1987-.. (age 38)
- Occupations
- artist
- Biography
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Brad Troemel is an American artist and writer based in New York City. Troemel is most well known for co-creating the Tumblr blog The Jogging in 2009 which received attention for its work in post internet art.
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Rolf Armstrong
- Occupations
- painter
- Biography
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Rolf Armstrong was an American commercial artist specializing in glamorous depictions of female subjects. He is best known for his magazine covers and calendar art. In 1960 the New York Times dubbed him the “creator of the calendar girl.” His commercial career extended from 1912 to 1960, the great majority of his original work being done in pastel.
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Warren MacKenzie
- Occupations
- ceramicistartist
- Biography
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Warren MacKenzie was an American craft potter. He grew up in Wilmette, Illinois the second oldest of five children. His high school days were spent at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois.
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George Grey Barnard
- Occupations
- sculptor
- Biography
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George Grey Barnard, often written George Gray Barnard, was an American sculptor who trained in Paris. He is especially noted for his heroic sized Struggle of the Two Natures in Man at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, his twin sculpture groups at the Pennsylvania State Capitol, and his Lincoln statue in Cincinnati, Ohio. His major works are largely symbolical in character. His personal collection of medieval architectural fragments became a core part of The Cloisters in New York City.
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Wafaa Bilal
- Occupations
- video installation artistconceptual artistvideo artistartist
- Biography
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Dr. Wafaa Bilal is an Iraqi American artist, a former professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and currently an art professor at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. He is a Creative Capital Award winner in 2021 for his project In a Grain of Wheat: Cultivating Hybrid Futures in Ancient Seed DNA and named one of Foreign Policy magazine's Leading 100 Global Thinkers in 2016 for his work as an advocate. Bilal's work, Canto III, was included as part of the Iranian pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale. Bilal's current work 168:01 brings awareness to cultural destruction and promotes the collective healing process through education and audience participation. He is best known for his work, Domestic Tension, a performance piece in which he lived in a gallery for a month and was shot by paintballs remotely by internet users watching from a webcam and for his book, Shoot an Iraqi: Art, Life, and Resistance under the Gun, based on that performance, which details the horrors of living in a conflict zone and growing up under Saddam Hussein's regime. He holds a BFA from the University of New Mexico, an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and was conferred an honorary Ph.D. from DePauw University.
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Anne Rosellini
- Occupations
- film producerscreenwriter
- Biography
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Anne Rosellini is an American film producer and screenwriter. She is best known for writing and producing the 2010 film Winter's Bone with her frequent collaborator Debra Granik. Her work has been nominated for numerous awards, including the Academy Award for Best Picture and for Best Adapted Screenplay. Before becoming a film producer, she was a programmer for various film festivals in Seattle, Washington.
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Edward McKnight Kauffer
- Occupations
- paintervisual artistgraphic designerdesigner
- Biography
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Edward McKnight Kauffer was an American artist and graphic designer who lived for much of his life in the United Kingdom. He worked mainly in poster art, but was also active as a painter, book illustrator and theatre designer.
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Jennifer Reeder
- Occupations
- screenwriterfilm directorvideo artist
- Biography
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Jennifer Reeder is an American artist, filmmaker, and screenwriter. Her short film A Million Miles Away (2014) was nominated for a Tiger Award for Short Films at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and screened at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Short Narrative Films category. In 2003, she had a solo screening at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden. She received a Rockefeller Grant for New Media in 2002 and a Creative Capital grant in 2015 to support the production of her first experimental feature-length film, Knives and Skin. She won a 2018–19 SFFILM Rainin Grant for scriptwriting, and was the 2019 recipient of the Alpert Film Award residency at the MacDowell Colony. In 2021, she was awarded a United States Artists (USA) Fellowship.
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Ben Russell
- Enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
- Studied in 2003
- Occupations
- filmmakerfilm director
- Biography
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Ben Russell is an American artist and experimental filmmaker. Russell developed his reputation over the numerous shorts he made throughout the 2000s, many as part of his "Trypps" series, and as the curator of the Magic Lantern Cinema in Providence, Rhode Island. In 2009, he made his acclaimed feature debut, Let Each One Go Where He May, shot in Suriname in a series of 13 long takes accomplished with a Steadicam. Both a Guggenheim Fellow and participating artist in documenta 14, Russell's work has been described as drawing on elements of ethnography, psychedelia and Surrealism.
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Teresa Burga
- Occupations
- multimedia artistvisual artistconceptual artist
- Biography
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María Teresa Burga Ruiz was a multimedia artist whose conceptual art works during the late 1960s and 1970s position her as a precursor of media art, technology-based art, and installation art in Peru.
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Gray Morrow
- Occupations
- penciller
- Biography
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Dwight Graydon "Gray" Morrow was an American illustrator of comics, magazine covers and paperback books. He is co-creator of the Marvel Comics muck-monster the Man-Thing and of DC Comics Old West vigilante El Diablo.
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David Stone Martin
- Occupations
- illustratorpainter
- Biography
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David Stone Martin, born David Livingstone Martin was an American artist best known for his illustrations on jazz record albums.
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Jane Heap
- Occupations
- journalisteditor
- Biography
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Jane Heap was an American publisher and a significant figure in the development and promotion of literary modernism. Together with Margaret Anderson, her friend and business partner (who for some years was also her lover), she edited the celebrated literary magazine The Little Review, which published an extraordinary collection of modern American, English and Irish writers between 1914 and 1929. Heap herself has been called "one of the most neglected contributors to the transmission of modernism between America and Europe during the early twentieth century."
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Neysa McMein
- Occupations
- illustratorpainter
- Biography
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Neysa Moran McMein was an American illustrator and portrait painter who studied at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago and Art Students League of New York. She began her career as an illustrator and during World War I, she traveled across France entertaining military troops with Anita P. Wilcox and Jane Bulley and made posters to support the war effort. She was made an honorary non-commissioned officer in the United States Marine Corps for her contributions to the war effort.
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Victor Skrebneski
- Occupations
- photographerfashion photographer
- Biography
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Victor Paul Skrebneski was an American photographer born in Chicago to parents of Polish and Russian heritage. He was educated at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1943 and attended the Illinois Institute of Technology from 1947 to 1949. He set up his own studio in Chicago in 1952. The Art Institute of Chicago had an exhibit of his work in 1969.
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Martine Syms
- Enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
- Studied in 2007
- Occupations
- artistfilmmaker
- Biography
-
Martine Syms is an American artist residing in Los Angeles, specializing in various mediums including publishing, video, installation, and performance. Her artistic endeavors revolve around themes of identity, particularly the representation of the self, with a focus on subjects like feminism and black culture. Syms frequently employs humor and social commentary as vehicles for exploration within her work. In 2007, she introduced the term "Conceptual Entrepreneur" to describe her artistic approach.
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Wayne Boring
- Occupations
- pencillerartistillustrator
- Biography
-
Wayne Boring was an American comic book artist best known for his work on Superman from the late 1940s to 1950s. He occasionally used the pseudonym Jack Harmon.
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Robert Storr
- Occupations
- journalistpainterart theoristcuratorart critic
- Biography
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Robert Storr is an American curator, critic, painter, and writer.
