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Jim Carlson
Galena, Illinois
Jim Carlson studied fine art at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the
1960s. He made his impact first as an art director at TLK and Leo Burnett in the 1970s
and '80s, then as an award-winning commercial artist and illustrator in the 1990s. Past
clients have included Kraft, Kodak, The Smithsonian and Kimberly Clark. Recent
illustrations can be seen in Log Home Living, the Chicago Tribune and The Oregonian.
Today, he heads a boutique ad agency in historic and picturesque Galena, Illinois,
where he lives on a farm with his writer-wife and too many animals to mention.
Russ Charpentier
San Francisco
Russ Charpentier received his bachelor of fine arts in illustration/design from the
Massachusetts College of Art, then both free-lanced and held staff positions in the
Boston area. From there he moved to New York City, where he served as senior staff
illustrator for a major advertising agency, also freelancing for other agencies. He has
worked as a free-lance illustrator and "comp" artist in San Francisco since 1986,
specializing in antique maps, botanicals, animals, architecture and technical drawings.
More examples of his work may be viewed at www.theispot.com/artist/charpentier.
Jack Desrocher
Eureka Springs, Arkansas
Born in Bermuda to a Navy pilot, Jack traveled extensively throughout his youth. After
graduating from the Ringling School of Art in Florida in 1976, he worked for Hallmark
and later the San Francisco Examiner (from 1981 to 1989). Since 1988 he has been a
freelance illustrator with an impressive range of corporate and editorial clients,
including Ranger Rick, U.S. News and World Report, The New York Times, the Washington
Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Detroit Free Press, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Salon,
Yankee, Horticulture, Scholastic, National Geographic World, MacWeek, Parenting, Gibson
Greetings, Transamerica, Chevron, Arco and the Atlanta Journal Constitution. He also
has illustrated four children's books. Desrocher currently lives on a minifarm in the
Ozark foothills with his wife and two daughters, creating gourd monsters and
neoprimitive paintings and working on his tennis game in his spare time.
Jim Endicott
Newberg, Oregon
Jim Endicott went to art school at Cal State Long Beach, where he received bachelor's
and master's degrees in painting and drawing, finishing in 1972. At first he worked for
a year at the American Greeting card company in Southern California, then started
free-lancing full time for the likes of Chevron, Polaroid, IBM and DuPont. Currently he
mainly does watercolors. "I'm a journeyman," he says. "I do lots of editorial stuff --
lots of magazine stuff: computer magazines, medical magazines; I'm the one they come to
when they're stumped; I can do a range -- I can draw any subject."
Tim Lewis
Brooklyn, New York
Tim Lewis grew up in Michigan, eventually relocating to New York City. After teaching
elementary art for a year and serving three years in the Army Intelligence Agency, he
spent the next five years at the renowned Push Pin Studios under Milton Glaser and
Seymour Chwast. He has been a free-lance illustrator since 1970, also teaching for
several years at The School of Visual Arts and the Parsons School of Design. The first
part of Lewis' career centered on editorial art for magazines and book publishers. For
the past several years, he has focused on corporate and institutional illustration. His
medium is water color, and he has no plans to embrace the computer.
Michele Manning
Berkeley
Michele Manning received her bachelor of fine arts degree in 1983 from the Academy of
Art in San Francisco, spending the next 16 years as a freelance illustrator. Landscapes
and city scenes have always been among her passions, and she is now pursuing a fine-art
career fulltime. Shown here are original pastels and reproductions relating to
transportation in the Bay Area; per Manning, they reflect her interest in the beauty of
nature coexisting with our modern world. "The vibrant colors and lively texture of soft
pastel on colored paper allow me to be spontaneous and sketchy, capturing the intensity
and rhythmic vitality in these bustling scenes," Manning says. "I much prefer drawing
with color to the mixing and brushing on of paint. Drawing freehand from photos I've
taken allows me to work in the comfort of my beautiful studio in Berkeley, capturing
the transient nature of light and the activity in street scenes." Her work is being
installed in the lobby and rooms of the newly renovated Hilton Hotel at S.F.'s
Fisherman's Wharf, opening in May. Her studio is open by appointment (Tel.
510.644.2240); matted reproductions are for sale here at MTC (see Brenda Kahn, ext.
7773).
Steve Noble
Novato
Steve Noble lived in France (his mother is French) until he was eight, when his family
relocated to Novato, where he still lives. After graduating from the University of
California at Davis in economics, and preparing to be a stockbroker, he switched gears
and began to capitalize on his lifelong passion for art. A self-taught artist, Noble
launched his career in commercial illustration in his early twenties, with a special
emphasis on black and white line art. He is equally adept at woodcuts, line drawing in
pen and ink, traditional engraving style in scratchboard and a stylized scratchboard
style, often adding color to the black and white images. He has dealt with a wide range
of subject matter, including products, food, nature, maps, portraits, architecture and
corporate conceptual images. MTC's 1994 annual report was one of Noble's first
assignments. In the ensuing years, his major planning/clients have included packaging
and labeling for Coors light beer (waterfall) and Anheuser-Busch beer, label
illustrations for Sutter Home, Napa Ridge, Fetzer, Cakebread and other wineries;
illustrations for Mercedes Benz; a stock certificate for the newly merged Exxon Mobil;
posters for Union Bank of California; labeling for Tri-Valley Growers; package
illustrations for Ore-Ida, Francisco Bread and Seattle's Best Coffee; and advertising
spots for Sees Candy. He also has done editorial illustrations for the likes of the
Chicago Tribune. You can find more samples of his work at www.stockart.com,
www.showcase.com, and www.sweetreps.com.
Bud Peen
Oakland
Bud Peen grew up in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, and studied sculpture at Sonoma State
University, also studying sculpture in Paris under a fellowship. After stints in
Massachusetts and New York City, he relocated to San Francisco and shifted his focus to
freelance commercial illustration, although he continues to pursue a fine-art career on
the side. His editorial art has been published in such magazines as Hemisphere,
Playboy, PC World, Parenting, Money, Better Homes and Gardens and the Los Angeles Times
magazine. His corporate clients include Disney, Lotus, United Airlines, Absolut, Bank
of America, Oracle, Nordstroms and Apple. Peen's illustrations have appeared in such
books as the Macintosh Bible, the PC Bible, A Bulb for all Seasons and The Pied Piper
of Hamelin, his first children's book. His illustrations also have appeared on Web
sites such as Salon, Women's Wire and Playboy. His industrial design includes a new
line of chinoiserie-inspired furniture for the Lam Lee Group, and clocks and frames for
Toronto-based Umbra, Ltd. Peen has lectured at colleges and conferences across the
country and taught illustration as a adjunct professor for five years at the California
College of Arts and Crafts in San Francisco. Peen typically starts his lyrical, playful
illustrations with hand drawings, importing them into the computer for refining and
colorizing. "I like the play between traditional media and electronic media," he says.
"My style tends to be a lot warmer than a lot of the computer illustrations." Peen
lives and works in Oakland with his wife, Jan, and 9-year-old son Jasper. You can find
him on the Web at www.budpeen.com.
Whitney Sherman
Baltimore
Whitney Sherman grew up in New Jersey and attended the Maryland Institute/College of
Art in Baltimore, where she received her bachelor of fine arts in photography. In the
early 1970s, she began a career in publication and package design in Baltimore,
operating her own design/illustration studio as well as working for outside firms.
After progressing to creative director/vice president at a major firm, she decided to
work full time as an illustrator in 1988. Sherman's illustration work is commissioned
by corporate, institutional, book and editorial clients nationally and in Canada. Her
most recent commission of note was the Breast Cancer Research stamp for the U.S. Postal
Service, which has raised more than $9 million for research to date. Sherman's book
illustrations have been commissioned by Henry Holt & Co., St. Martin's Press,
Chronicle Books, Scholastic Books and Clarkson N. Potter/Random House. She has been
recognized by numerous arts organizations, and has participated in shows around the
country. She also has taught at her alma mater, The Maryland Institute/College of Art,
since 1989. Sherman's conceptual editorial work has a look all its own. "What I provide
to my clients is problem-solving, conceptualizing ideas. You might call the pieces
whimsical or metaphorical, but I really think of a piece as being an idea rather than a
drawing," she says. You can find her on the Web at www.whitneysherman.com.
Robert Gantt Steele
San Francisco
Robert Gantt Steele began his career in the architecture field, earning a bachelor of
architecture from North Carolina State University and a master of architecture from the
University of California, Berkeley. He worked as an architectural designer for firms in
San Francisco, North Carolina and in Switzerland from 1969 to 1978, taking a break in
1974Ð75 to study art and design in Vienna under a Fulbright grant. In the
mid-1970s, he began studying figure and head painting, eventually becoming an
instructor of drawing of the head and hands at the Academy of Art College in San
Francisco, a position he held until 1984. By the late 1970s, he began pursuing a fine
art and illustration career, specializing as a realist painter working in watercolors
and oils. He has participated in numerous exhibits locally and nationally, and has been
commissioned on several occasions to produce works for theater productions and
corporations. He also has illustrated several books.
Dave Stevenson
Vacaville, California
Dave Stevenson was raised in Sonoma and schooled in Colorado as a graphic designer. He
worked as a packaging designer until 1984, when he began freelancing as an illustrator.
While he is best known for his scratchboard style, he also paints in gouache and
produces illustrated maps. His clients include Royal Viking Line, Outside Magazine,
Chevron and the National Geographic Society. He lives with his 15-year-old son in
Vacaville.
Bud Thon
Mill Valley
Bud Thon was born in Montana and raised in Peoria, Illinois. He got his start in the
art field painting signs and pinstriping decorations on cars. He parlayed that
experience into a job in a department store advertising department, eventually taking a
book design job at the University of Illinois in Champaign. He then went to work in
Chicago at a corporate design firm, Unimark, later migrating to San Francisco, where he
did graphics for several industrial design firms. He paused midcareer to get a
bachelor's degree from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, then worked as
a freelance graphic designer for about five years. At that point, he picked up his
airbrush again and became an illustrator for 15 years, working for the likes of
Chevron, Safeway, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Intel. In 1997 he received an offer
he couldn't refuse from Pixar Animation Studios in Pt. Richmond, California, where he
now designs sets and props as well as computer-generated graphics. Thon currently lives
in Mill Valley with his two cats. In his off hours, he is a classic car aficionado who
rides motorcycles and builds model cars, often from scratch.
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