Profiles

Designer and illustrator Brooke Armstrong advice to new artists is to “make the work you want to see.”

Lyric Theatre at Illinois co-director Julie Gunn “[likes] our students, the performers, to work with living people at least some of the time, and I also like them relating what they’re doing to something in their own lives.”

Evelyne asks two Illinois Art + Design BFA candidates about the messages and media behind the work they've selected for the student exhibition at Krannert Art Museum.

For the second year in a row, graduates of Illinois Theatre’s Acting program are filming their work for casting directors in the hopes of smoothly transitioning into the professional theatre industry.

For Tom Zhang, a second-year MFA student in stage management at Illinois Theatre, COVID restrictions have been frustrating, but they also inspired technological innovations that may live on past the pandemic. 

For LGBTQ+ artists, both the social risks and emotional benefits of sharing aspects of their identities in their work are particularly high.

According to Matt Wiley, “One of the benefits of a simple illustration style is how significantly facial expressions and framing can have on the feeling of a scene.”

Tyehimba Jess' advice to young poets is “Don't give up and revise, revise, revise, and have a decent understanding of American history or of the history of the country you're living in and the country that your people came from.”

Nearly a decade ago, a project local to Brooklyn began a pilot campus program at the University of Illinois that would prove to be successful beyond its creators’ wildest dreams.