Art department receives grant
SADA uses ILLUMINATE Grant to bring in two professional illustrators
Liberty University’s Department of Studio and Digital Arts (SADA) has been awarded a teaching grant that will allow students to attend lectures from professionals in the field.
The ILLUMINATE Grant is awarded each year by Liberty’s Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) to a faculty member or team of faculty members for use in their department.
This year, the SADA department was awarded the grant with the help of faculty members Monique Maloney, Stacy Canon and Christopher Phillips. With the money, they have chosen to bring in two award-winning illustrators to present lectures to students.
Megan Halsey and Melanie Hall will present two lectures about The Life of an Illustrator: Making a Living through Visual Storytelling and a book signing. Halsey and Hall have more than 25 years of experience in illustrating.
“A lot of my graphic design students are creating children’s books from scratch,” Maloney, a SADA instructor, said. “So they’re writing their own manuscripts. They’re illustrating it. They’re designing, and they’re going to be producing the final books.”
Maloney said she is ex- cited for her students to hear the lectures because Halsey and Hall each have experience with illustrating children’s books. She said the lectures will provide hands on techniques for her students to apply to their own children’s books.
“What it provides to our students is two things: one, they get to hear from professionals in the field, and two, see techniques that are used to make and book signing are free artwork,” Todd Smith,and open to the public.
SADA department chair, said. “You can’t lose when students get to see that kind of thing.”
The lectures are scheduled for Oct. 16. The first lecture, Two Illustrators, Two Stories will be from 10 a.m.–11:30 a.m. in DeMoss Hall 4040. The second lecture, All about Art Licensing, will be 2:15–3:45 p.m. in the Grand Lobby of DeMoss Hall.
The book signing will also be held Oct. 16 at 6-8:30 p.m. in the Liberty University Art Gallery, located in DeMoss Hall 4069. Both the lectures and book signings are free and open to the public.
“We look forward to in- viting two established illus- tratorstoLibertyUniversity who have mastered the art of storytelling,” Phillips, instructor of SADA, said. “This opportunity offers the students remarkable insights for future career endeavors. Uniquely, this vein of work presents opportunities for students in both studio and digital arts.”
HUDSON is a news reporter.