Speaker Series

Zach Dodson is an active member of many different arts communities, forging connections between the worlds of design and literature. He has launched such experiments as Featherproof Books, Bleached Whale Design, and The Show N' Tell Show. His hybrid typo/graphic novel, boring boring boring boring boring boring boring, was released under the nom de plume Zach Plague. His Art Direction credits include shelter, Echo, and MAKE: A Chicago Literary Magazine. His design has appeared in Punk Planet, Resonance, TimeOut Chicago, Mule, and Bagazine. His writing has appeared in Monsters & Dust, ACM, Take the Handle, and Proximity Magazine.

In 2009 he was named to Newcity’s Top 50 Literary Figures in Chicago. He currently teaches at Columbia College. Look for a bookstore with a great design section called The Paper Cave in 2011.

Chuck Anderson is an artist & designer who has been running his design studio NoPattern since 2003. Over the last 7 years, Chuck has become well known for his use of light and color in photography, illustration, and other various forms of art both digital and analog. He has collaborated and worked for brands such as Nike, Microsoft, Vans, Reebok, Bank of America, Casemate, and Warner Brothers, among others. In addition to his commercial work, he runs an online store, NP&CO, where prints of his work, books, shirts, and other products are sold.

Visit www.nopattern.com to see more, www.npandco.com to purchase work, and follow Chuck on Twitter: www.twitter.com/nopattern

Scott Thomas is constantly seeking the simplest answer to complex problems. Scott began his design pursuits studying architecture before bouncing to graphic design and web development.

Prior to moving to Chicago, where he set his sights on user-experience design, Scott called London's Shoreditch home. From products to websites, Scott works to simplify the experience of use.

In 2006, he and five other creative types began a design collective, lovingly known as The Post Family. The group is devoted to supporting ‚ "family‚" member's design habits—from silkscreen to letterpress, from illustration to blogging—in an effort to "get back to the hand."

In 2007, Scott's career took a dramatic leap when he was invited to join the New Media team at Obama for America. The chance encounter led Scott to becoming the Design Director of the historic Obama Presidential campaign. He is currently writing a book that explains how an obscure senator rose to the highest office in the land and celebrity status with the aid of branding and design.

Scott plans to continue designing for social causes that might just someday change the world.

Stephen Gossett was born and raised in St. Louis MO. He graduated from Webster University with a BA in Film Studies and eventually moved to Chicago where he would write freelance copy and criticism to support his dreams of working in retail.

He is currently the Managing Editor of Flavorpill Chicago, and his writing has also appeared in ALARM, Flavorwire, and the Huffington Post. He enjoys speaking about himself in the third person, as it makes him feel like a mutant hybrid of Bob Dole and Mike Ness.

Mike Perry works in Brooklyn, NY. Making books, magazines, newspapers, clothing, drawings, paintings, illustrations and teaching whenever possible. His first book titled Hand Job published by Princeton Architectural Press hit the book shelves in 2006. "Mike Perry’s compendium of hand-drawn type points to the continued relevance of the human touch in modern communication." —American Craft, October/November 2007. His second book titled Over & Over was released fall 2008. He is currently working on two new books. In 2007 he started a magazine called Untitled a… That explores his current interests. The fit issue came out Summer 2010. He has worked with clients from Apple, New York Times, Dwell Magazine, Target, Urban Outfitters, eMusic, and Nike. In 2004 he was chosen as one of Step Magazines 30 under 30, in 2007 as a groundbreaking illustrator by Computer Arts Projects Magazine, 2008 he received Print Magazines New Visual Artist award and the ADC Young Guns 6. Doodling away night and day, Perry creates new typefaces and sundry graphics that inevitably evolve into his new work, exercising the great belief that the generating of piles is the sincerest form of creative process. His work has been seen around the world including a recent solo show.
 

Dan Funderburgh was born in Seattle and grew up in the midwest, eventually receiving a BFA from the University of Kansas with a focus in illustration. After moving to New York in 2001 Dan established partnership with the now Brooklyn based wallpaper studio Flavorpaper where his designs are screen printed and distributed. The wallpapers have been featured at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, Pulse Miami and are a part of the Cooper-Hewitt's permanent collection. Occasional collaborations with companies like Brooks, Furni, and Gravis have allowed the work to live off the wall as bicycle seats, furniture, and luggage.

Dan's personal and gallery work includes letterpress prints, sculptures and installations that play off of historical ornamentation. An acute appreciation for both the baroque and utilitarian, Dan's work often combines the language of ornament with shapes of tools and household objects. A 2009 FEAST grant greenlighted a project in which local streets and dumpsters were decorated with a neighborhood specific wallpaper. Dan has been a guest speaker at Pratt,Parsons School of Design, and the Museum of Art and Design as part of American Craft's In Print/In Process lecture series.

He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY where he's preparing for his first international solo show in Cairo, Egypt.

Sonnenzimmer is a Chicago-based art and screen print studio owned and operated by Nadine Nakanishi and Nick Butcher. The couple merges backgrounds in typography, printmaking, graphic design and fine art to create hand-crafted posters, books, and music packaging for a wide array of projects and clients. Working closely with Chicago's bustling free jazz and improvised music community, Sonnenzimmer has found a place where experimentation and abstraction are not only respected, they are demanded. This freedom has allowed them both to work through countless ideas and styles of execution, helping to shape their "visual language, one that is simultaneously quiet and bold."

The graphic art that Butcher and Nakanishi produce draws heavily on their respective fine art practices and vice versa. There is a seamless cross pollination between the two disciplines, one that calls into question the lines that divide them. For this exhibit, both Butcher and Nakanishi are combining the graphic nature of screen printing with paintings to create a distinct body of work, suitable to Public Work's ethos.