School Notes: School of Art
May/June 2010

Alumnus named to Postal Service stamp committee

Graphic designer Antonio Alcala ’83, ’85MFA, has been appointed to the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee, the panel that annually reviews some 50,000 suggestions for topics and people to be commemorated on U.S. postage stamps. From these thousands of suggestions the committee recommends only about 20 for the postmaster general’s approval. Alcala, who received his MFA from Yale in graphic design, is an adjunct faculty member of the Corcoran College of Art and Design and founder of the design education program DesignWorkshops. His work is represented in the American Institute of Graphic Arts design archives and the Library of Congress permanent collection of graphic design.

Exhibition celebrates artist/educator/publisher

The Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut, renowned for its collection of American Impressionist artists, was the venue this spring for an exhibition of works by Sewell Sillman (1924–1992), a graduate of the School of Art and faculty member during the 1950s and 1960s. Sillman was a protégé of the Bauhaus master Josef Albers, both at Black Mountain College and later at Yale, and passed along to his own students the lessons he learned from Albers on Bauhaus drawing, design, and color. Later, his art publishing firm created prints for many of the leading artists of the time. This display of more than 50 paintings, prints, and drawings—including the artist’s well-known “wave” drawings—is the first to fully examine Sillman’s influence; many of the pieces have rarely or never been seen before.Sewell Sillman: Pushing Limits travels this summer to the Asheville Art Museum in Asheville, North Carolina.