In August 2022, Maine College of Art & Design commissioned a visual narration of art and design movements that shaped (and were shaped by) our community throughout the school’s 140-year history. The artist, Adjunct instructor of Illustration Andrew DeGraff, and former Director of Exhibitions, Prof. Julie Poitras Santos, discussed the inspiration and creation of the work.
Faculty discuss how the College has influenced—and is influenced by—art and design movements
Julie Poitras Santos:Tell me a little bit more about the design for The Evolving Landscape. We see various fine art movements, craft and design histories, film, music, video game development, street art. You spoke a little bit about the intensity of your research process and how much you enjoy that, but I’d love to hear a little more about the selection and editing process.
Andrew DeGraff: It’s funny to look at that and realize how self-referential a lot of it is. I tried to think about some things. Was art driving the culture, or was culture driving the art? Was science driving the art? All of those are constantly having a conversation with each other to the point that they are inextricable, and it became a problem of editing and finding what I could fit where. What could I reference? I was trying to get as much in as possible in a way that was overwhelming but still discernible. It was really nice in the sketch process to work a couple different iterations knowing I wanted to have a vague, non-linear timeline that drifts through the piece from earlier to later. It was a lot of reshuffling and moving components, designing little components, collaging them together. Trying to pick favorite moments—ethically interesting moments. Maybe reference some people that weren’t always the go-to person in terms of the art history that I was taught (which omitted a lot). The research was really about trying to find something that was right and that fit for each spot. I tried to design the landscape as a mostly two-dimensional space. The mountain peaks and valleys emerged as the work became more three-dimensional, more experiential within the timeframe of 1880 to now.
JPS: There’s the Chrysler Building, for example—very clear. I note that you have Dorothea Lange, but not Walker Evans. You have Lee Krasner, but not Jackson Pollock. We see Duchamp; we don’t see Picasso. There’s something so interesting about the methodology for editing, which is personal, yes, but it’s also a desire to tell history from a new perspective that talks about how we need to bring all of our voices into the narration of our histories.
AD: I feel like the past 20 years have done a lot of constructive things to unify art history. There’s just too much good work out there. It’s nice to rediscover a lot of stuff, and it’s very interesting, trying to create a timeline and then having an editorial and curatorial process. Maybe [Krasner is] not a household name, which is stunning. She influenced so many artists. Why wasn’t this in my 20th century class? It was fun to attempt to distill a genre or a movement. The image is almost like a series of individual spot illustrations that all had to come together to form something. They don’t always fit conveniently, but sometimes you can figure out something to activate a space and it works together nicely. And it required some stranger solutions like the minimalism canyon. Trying to figure out things like that was really fun. For instance, constructivism works very well translated down into geometric shapes—you’re basically drawing a sculpture. Other parts were like trying to distill the advent of the digital evolution. Going from pixel building and evolving into 3D modeling, talking about how technology is inextricable from our perception of reality at this point.
JPS: And you’ve selected other threads of our cultural history. You’ve touched on music. You’ve touched on architecture. You talked about the Space Race; I suppose that’s the moonshot there.
AD: I was thinking about how formative it was. People’s perception of the world changed. I remember thinking through all of the technology. Outside of a few things—really the invention of the Bell Labs’ transistor—it was the Space Race that then weaponized all the stuff that created the technological environment that we’re all living in now, and gave us 99 percent of industry, let alone digital art. Would we have Photoshop without the moonshot?
JPS: There’s a way in which the different eras and movements and individual works flow together in this map, this landscape, and the way in which your eyes are invited to move. We can look into the typography of the “140” and those numbers become gallery walls. We can sort of dive into the canyon of minimalism, as you call it. We can actually soar with the airplanes. For me, that flow between areas talks about art history and the creative process. It’s not linear. Things happen, geographically, at different times. Influence is always messy and muddy in the best, most exciting way. Artists engage with each other. There’s no hard moment when Op art ended. I think there’s something about your depiction here that reflects that flow of creative ideation.
AD: We’re moving into some potentially scary, but interesting capabilities. Look at AI and fusion. There is a really interesting convergence happening. It’s been interesting to watch people go through this. Illustration students can build a whole career using free tools and social media.
JPS: It’s a really transformative time; and the College is also evolving.
AD: It’s an interesting, challenging point for a lot of students, with fewer gatekeepers than ever before. The possibilities are huge. The responsibility is huge. Things have changed so much in the past 20, 30, 40 years that I don’t know if there’s ever been such a scramble to catch up to where the students are. They didn’t grow up with three network channels and PBS; they had really different influences. How do you get them to access information from the past? At the start of every project, I send my students down to the library to take out three books of works that inspire because there is a danger of having access to everything. Are you only looking where you’re comfortable? I think it presents a really interesting opportunity and challenge as a school.
JPS: In your work, you embrace complexity and this density of information, which is really great for the students to see. It’s an organizing methodology for embracing the massive amounts of information we have. At the same time, your work is incredibly playful. It’s great to remember that, as artists, part of the pleasure of creativity involves that playfulness, and that openness to what comes in the process just as much as in the planning.
AD: And being playfully antagonistic sometimes. There’s a part of that that I love. Maybe part of that is coming out of the influence of the street art movement, but it’s fun. It should be fun.
