posted: February 3, 2012

Tonight, the Society of Illustrators 54th Editorial & Book show will open, and I'm honored to have received a Gold Medal in the Editorial catergory for this piece on the topic of overfishing for Men's Health magazine.
The article's author, the actor and activist Ted Danson, admits to being that guy who goes on a little too long about why you shouldn't have the sea bass, even though it was going to be great before he ruined the experience. In equal measure funny and informative, he gave the article the perfect balance of grim statistics and light humor to make an engaging point. By choosing to echo the Dutch tradition of still life abundance, I tried to hit a similar note. Looks like it netted a good result.
Huge thanks to CD Robert Festino and AD Dena Verdesca for throwing the line my way, and to the jurors for awarding this piece a Gold. I have a few other pieces in the show as well, and they seem to be heavy on the theme. I'm happy to have reeled a few in!

posted: January 31, 2012

This Friday, February 3rd, the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design will open a retrospective exhibit of my work including portraiture, music-related projects, gallery pieces, and a range of commissioned paintings from the last decade or so. I'll be giving a talk Friday morning at 11am for students, staff, faculty and the public, and I'll be attending the official opening that evening (the soft opening was on January 27th, and the show will run through March 2nd).

PCA&D has a terrific program that focuses on illustration, graphic design, photography, and fine arts, and they've been the host of some wonderful workshops and exhibitions over their 30 years, including greats like Seymour Chwast, Gail Anderson, Raul Colon, Jerry Pinkney, Bill Plympton, and Marshall Arisman, just to name a few. I'm tremendously honored to have been invited to exhibit and speak there, and I'm excited to see many of these pieces together in one place (many were borrowed from collectors for the show).
Below is a sampling of some of the works in the exhibit--if you're in the area, I hope to see you there!

posted: November 13, 2011

A little belated on the announcement, but a show of my new paintings, along with sculptures by Gustavo Torres, opened here on Friday at Gallery Shoal Creek, and will be up through December 3rd. Here are some of the pieces. If you happen to be in Austin....

Marc Burckhardt + Gustavo Torres
November 11 - December 3

Gallery Shoal Creek | 2905 San Gabriel, Ste 101 | Austin, TX 78705 | tel. 512.454.6671

posted: October 21, 2011

A few months ago, I was approached by the organizers of the Texas Book Festival, one of the premier literary events in the country, to be the featured artist for this year's festival. In its 16 year history, the Festival has featured the work of painters, photographers, and other Texas-based fine artists, but never an illustrator, so it was a particularly gratifying honor. Over the course of my 20+ years in the field, I've created art for hundreds of book covers, several children's books, and increasingly "authored" my own work through personal projects and gallery works that have found a home in a commercial context after-the-fact, and that experience has given me a special affinity for the literary field.

 
Founded by Laura Bush in 1995, the festival has featured literary luminaries such as Frank McCourt, Robert Caro, Sam Harris, Ingrid Betancourt, Maureen Dowd, Adam Gopnik, Barack Obama and R.L. Stine.
 
This year the festival features over 200 authors including Jim Lehrer, Molly Shannon, Chuck Palahniuk, Susan Orlean, Jon Scieszka, Lawrence Wright.... and me.
 
I'll be speaking on Sunday about my work in publishing, portraiture and personal work and how these things came together in my recent collaboration with Gary Golio, "When Bob Met Woody", published by Little Brown earlier this year.

The work that was chosen for this year's event is part of that body of self-authored work, and adding to the pleasure of this honor was working again with DJ Stout and Stu Taylor at Pentagram Design, whose work on this campaign was, as always, terrific. Below are just some of the implementations.

Tonight's the Gala, so Janice and I will get the chance to meet some authors whose covers I've created work for in the past, like Steven Saylor, Jim Lehrer, and Michael J Rosen. Should be fun!