Posters

Posters are for art and for science.

Oh hey!

I used to keep all my pages on google sites, but now I’m moving them over to github and netlify. Moving out of google sites has been a nightmare. I need to do a lot of work to extract the text, translate into quarto / markdown, and manually insert images.

This page is still in transition.

I love posters. I started making posters for scientific conferences almost 20 years ago, moving from a traditional text-in-boxes style to a more free-form structure, and pushing the envelope of scientific posters towards a more visual art experience.

On sabbatical, I started making art posters for art’s sake. Travel posters as a genre speak to my life as a nomadic academic and frequent traveler. I also draw from Cold War propaganda and safety posters: spare lines, limited color palettes, and odd conflation of dour warnings and exhorting slogans.

All of these are available as prints at original size (varies, but think poster) to postcard-size; conference posters are available as high-res graphics to conference organizers.

Are you ready to go outside? Pants, glasses, wallet, keys

Travel

Drawn and idealized from photographs and imagined locations, the Travel series evokes classical travel posters from the WPA era through the Cold War. Travel posters are a beautiful genre designed to evoke the beauty of a location as well as modern travel modes to get there. They grew out of the increased mobility of the railroad and the automobile, transitioning gracefully to ubiquitous air travel in the height of the Cold War.

Dust clouds

Konza Prairie

Academics lead lives rich with travel. As a scientist, my work takes me all over the world for academic conferences. As an academic, I am resigned to moving house every few years: young academics seek permanent positions, while older academics take sabbaticals to renew their energy and enthusiasm for home.

The series includes idealized vistas from places I’ve lived (Bow River Valley, Konza Prairie, and Twin Cities) as well as imagined retreats (Fermee).

This series is ongoing.

  • Konza Prairie
  • Bow river valley
  • Flint hills of Kansas
  • Visit the twin cities

Research

FF-PER

PhysCon

As part of my work on general travel posters, I started working on conference posters. As an academic, I find this kind of applied work deeply satisfying. These are the real posters for both Foundations and Frontiers of Physics Education Research (FFPER, left) and the 2019 Physics Congress (PhysCon, right).

Are you running a conference? Would you like me to make you a poster? Let’s talk.

Once I started with conferences, I couldn’t stop myself from making posters – both advertising and admonishing – for my research group. The below are designed to print at 8.5”x11”, which is free printing in my department.

Statues

Statue poster series.

The Statues series explores the themes of glory in work and resistance to tyranny. Through limited color palettes and bold haloes, these images are drawn from statues of personified abstract ideals. The series includes War (Rosie the Riveter), Agriculture (Field Worker), Industry (A los Obreros), Labor (Monument to the Unknown Woman Worker), Peace (Let us Beat Swords into Plowshares), Dignity (Dignity), Community (Block der Frauen), and Freedom (La Mulatresse Solitude). Original dimensions: 11”x17” (ANSI B).

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