Distinguished Educators in the Arts, 2007
 Robert Weaver (1924-1994) Beginning in the 1950s, Robert Weaver epitomized a socially engaged approach to commercial illustration, drawing the human drama from the immediacy of life. By integrating formal and conceptual currents from fine art practices, he altered the practice’s methodologies, thus dramatically expanding its possibilities. After studying at the Carnegie Institute, the Art Student’s League in New York, and the Accademia delle Belle Arti in Venice, Weaver began his career in New York in 1952 and over the next three decades, his work appeared in Esquire, Fortune, Life, Look, Playboy, Seventeen, Sports Illustrated, and TV Guide, among many other publications. In addition to his magazine work, Weaver illustrated numerous books and advertising campaigns. He was the recipient of many awards from The Society of Illustrators (which elected him into their Hall of Fame in 1985) and the Art Director’s Clubs of New York and Philadelphia, and his work was the subject of the posthumous retrospective, “Seeing is Not Believing: The Art of Robert Weaver” at the Norman Rockwell Museum in 1997. Weaver was a visiting faculty member at Syracuse University and taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York for more than thirty years, co-creating their Illustration as Visual Essay program. His teaching legacy was such that a 1997 issue of drawing / sva was devoted to his memory, giving his former students the opportunity to reflect on his profound influence as an educator. Paul Davis, Editor of the publication, described Weaver’s view of illustration, “as a vital instrument of modern communication, not an afterthought, not a decoration, but a powerful and complete statement, illustration that does not depend on a text but is in fact its own text and its own story.” With his bold line dominant and a focus on urban landscape, Weaver left the process visible, reflecting his commitment to manifesting on the page the changing cultural climate. He stressed the importance of drawing life, from life, guided by a political conscience and incorporating collage elements that literally brought the physical world into his charged psychological space. In 1986, Weaver edited a graduate student publication titled Unframed, stating his goals on the cover, “To put illustrators to work doing the thing they do best...showing us what the world looks like.” Todd Hignite Modern Graphic History Curator, Washington University in St. Louis |
Barbara Bradley After UC Berkeley, Art Center, and a career in New York at Charles E. Cooper Studios, Barbara Bradley, then known as Barbara Briggs, returned to San Francisco. In 1958 she was invited to speak at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. Richard Stephens, the President, thereupon invited her to teach, to build, what would become class by class, the Illustration Program at what has become the Academy of Art University. As Director of Illustration, with the President’s encouragement, she created the classes, teaching them all early on, steadily growing the program, adding faculty and classes as opportunity and need arose inspiring generations of students to become professional “appreciators” of the story, the figure, gesture, character, and costume, to love color, value, composition and to become lifetime learners from illustrators, painters, designers, or the passing beauty in a bank of clouds. I remember her donning of her paisley smock and transforming herself into our teacher who, with a few deft strokes and words, transformed our drawings and our perceptions of what illustration could be, kindling that fire of excitement in our hearts to be the story, to draw with passion, understanding, and to make our voices as artists be authentic, and our own. No metaphor, example pulled from magazine, book or annual, arrangement of model, or costume, was enough as she worked to inspire. Her fiercely demanding reputation came with a passionate concern for our growth and well being as the next generation of illustrators, and as someone who loved learning, the illustration gods, especially Parker and Whitmore, and Fawcett, talk about English cars and yes, even love ice hockey. We, her other children, are spread from New York to Shanghai. We still hear her words, late nights on deadline, reminding us to really see that ellipse, that rhythm, to love that warm/cool relationship, to care about that face and all its expressiveness. Many have her book, Drawing People, the book devoted to her passion for drawing the clothed figure. The school she worked so hard to help grow, until her first retirement in 1992, has become a University of 10,000 students. On Thursdays, you can walk into Bradley Hall, and, in front of her lecture easel, leaning forward on tiptoes, is Barbara, still teaching Clothed Figure Drawing, electrified at the prospect of celebrating the rhythm of a leg, shape of a coat, or enhancing a character based on the model’s pose. I look forward to seeing her passion and enthusiasm, passed on to another generation of thinking, drawing, passionately alive artists in whose hearts she has transferred a bit more of that fire that burns in her own. Charles S. Pyle Director, School of Illustration, Academy of Art University |
