A Rather Long Bio
Emerging Artist
I've split my life among three cities, Chicago, New York and San Francisco. I loved living in San Francisco the best and enjoy working in New York the most.
I have fond memories of riding my bike around the University campus, making art for hours, challenging the waves in Lake Michigan after the storms had passed, studying art history and life drawing at the Art Institute of Chicago, and even protesting the Viet Nam war with a fervent cast of thousands.
But when I was young, Chicago was a tough, bigoted city groaning under Richard Daly's iron fist, infamous for massive, systemic corruption, and reactionary policies. So I also remember being beaten up by neighborhood gangs, running from policemen who tried to trick me into their car, police assassinations of Black activists, running from police again in riot gear at the Democratic National Convention, and attending the Chicago Seven trials where Bobby Seale was gagged and chained to his chair in open court, merely for protesting that he had no lawyer. I was glad to leave Chicago in the end.
In my teens, I and my best friend, whose skin happens to be a lovely cafe au lait, found only one club where Whites and Blacks could dance together—The Happy Medium. Chicago has changed for the better, fortunately, but remains noticeably less cosmopolitan than either New York or San Francisco.
I attended high school in New York, where I excelled in art and creative writing classes, was invited to paint a large mural in the hallway, and created posters for performing arts events. In my less interesting classes, my textbooks were filled with sketches on the title pages and along the margins.
I was friends with musicians in a few bands, and sometimes got asked to contribute my talents. A drummer saw my drawing of a colorful 'Birdman' emerging from his eggshell and asked me to paint it on his two bass drum heads. I sealed it with polyurethane and it held up well. Then I created a wrap-around design for a bassist. He had sanded his electric bass down to the dark red mahogany and wanted something simple but eye-catching to wrap around the curves before applying the finish. I created a dramatic black and white landscape which included waves and a volcano and incorporated the red wood as an integral part of the design.
Learning
I studied creative writing, printmaking, painting, and Chinese ink brush painting at Goddard College in Vermont, enduring long, lonely winters. I looked out my window one moonlit night to see three wolves dragging a deer carcass across the snow. Later, at the Art Students League in New York, I studied painting and printmaking with a wonderfully eclectic bunch of pros and amateurs. At SUNY Oneonta I learned inspirational engraving and lithography techniques, thanks to department chair Ed Mullen. In Italy, at the Università di Urbino, I studied art history and jewelry making. I was completely floored by Botticelli's Annunciation in the Galleria degli Uffizi. Such a simple but effective composition! I remember café mornings, with golden light falling on the rooftops like the notes of a heavenly trumpet.
I earned my Bachelor of Arts in Visual Arts at SUNY New Paltz, where I was graduated magna cum laude. This degree has served me not at all in my art career, but I had a wonderful time learning about working in different media and planning two- and three-dimensional art and design projects. My art history and critique classes have had a lasting impact (for better or worse) on my understanding of art-making and the function of 'fine art' as a commodity in the marketplace.
For my advice on the struggle to become an artist, please read Living An Artist's Life in my blog. For my approach to making art, read my Artist's Statement and view the Fine Art and Illustration sections of my portfolio.
After college, I worked an odd variety of jobs. Because of my visual art background, IBM hired me to read blueprints for mainframes, terminals and parts; and a dental lab hired me to mold teeth from impressions. I got jobs as a graphic designer, typographer, and stat camera operator at small agencies, marketing firms, and publications in New York and later in San Francisco. I designed advertising layouts, brochures and point of purchase displays, managed print production from pre-press to press check, and created traditional and digital illustrations. The printers were always kind, and went out of their way to explain the processes, which helped me design documents and images so that they could be correctly color-separated without extra costs.
On the first few design jobs, I learned manual publication layout and design, photo-typesetting, paste-up techniques, and stat camera special effects. But when the first digital design application—PageMaker— hit the market, I quickly mastered it—on an Apple SE!— followed by Illustrator, Photoshop, QuarkXPress, and InDesign as each one debuted at MacWorld and other trade shows.
Along the way, I acquired an understanding of information architecture through working with databases; and coding HTML through building my first web sites by hand. Dreamweaver and WordPress came along much later, and are wonderful tools, but I'm glad that I still know how to fix the code.
Teaching (always learning)
In 1993, I began teaching digital design, illustration, and pre-press in San Francisco, and discovered effective ways to share everything I had learned thus far to help others start creative careers. I taught and designed curriculums at many schools, including San Francisco State University and The Graduate School in Washington, DC. I eventually accepted a program chair position at the Center for Electronic Art, where I built the curriculum for Print Design.
During these years of expanding my role as an educator, I also joined numerous Bay Area arts organizations to further my career in the arts. I showed and sold my work in galleries, in group and curated shows, winning some awards, and eventually joined the boards of three arts organizations. I enjoyed the opportunity to steward their growth, but learned that at heart I'm an image-maker and storyteller, not an administrator.
As a designer, I have worked full-time, part-time and freelance, in a variety of roles, including art director and production manager, but visual storytelling and teaching are my passions. I became committed to connecting, educating and promoting artists who, like myself, are eternally struggling to balance life, work and creativity. I began to turn down freelance gigs, to devote more time to teaching design and illustration, making art, and developing an online artist community.
I started an arts e-newsletter in 1996 and soon founded the Artist Resource. This non-profit online art organization, community, and publication served a million artists, designers, writers, students and teachers every year. We had a good long run on volunteer staff and donations, but it was a difficult time for an arts project to get consistent funding, and I couldn't afford to continue, so I closed the project in 2006.
Building and Making
Returning to New York in 2003, I and my husband joined some friends in building a franchise business from the ground up, in Manhattan's iconic Chrysler Building. We offered a variety of small-business services.
I managed our marketing and promotion, document services, digital design, output, and fulfillment. We had some big clients, such as Sony, and interesting projects for the Wales Trade Association, Grand Central Partnership, and Fashion Week. I trained 12 employees and became adept at delegating. Over three years, we grew the business from zero to $500,000 in annual revenues! But the the slumping economy made that momentum impossible to sustain. I was also teaching full-time to pay the mortgage and managing a non-profit long-distance. The 18-hour days and continuing financial insecurity took a very heavy toll on both of us, and eventually I was hospitalized with MS. Our absentee partners were unsympathetic and unwilling to help out, so we walked away in 2007. I have many regrets but at least gained extensive experience in managing resources and people.
In the spring of 2008, I was accepted into the Master of Arts in Illustration program at FIT, one of 14 finalists among 200 applicants. This opportunity was the realization of a lifelong interest in visual storytelling, and a fantastic experience in honing my craft and experimenting with new ways to tell a story. I earned my degree in 2010.
From then until September, 2024, I worked as a full-time senior designer at Hunter College, City University of New York. I ran my own small office for almost eight years, and leveraged my small business experience to train 16 design assistants. We worked on a terrific variety of creative projects for 22 internal clients—over 500 projects per year—creating promotional layouts and illustration; research, writing, and editing; building email communications and managing web sites; printing posters and uploading digital displays; designing event programs, directional signage, and related branded merchandise. You name it, we did it! Mentoring my design assistants and watching them use their growing digital skills in their careers after college brought me tremendous satisfaction and pride. Some of them went into graphic design, or found work in book and e-publishing. Others used those skills for communications and presentations in other jobs, such as teaching. In the evenings I also taught digital graphic design and portfolio development at Touro University and Hunter's Continuing Education Programs.
Due to a restructuring in the division, my office was folded into a larger office in 2017, where I joined a talented team of marketing professionals. My sudden loss of autonomy was balanced by sharing the workload, but I missed all of the creative design and illustration projects that I had managed previously and, sadly, my assistants were laid off. I gained valuable experience in creating email publications and building and maintaining websites with a team, but I really missed all of the fun and varied projects I had worked on for my clients previously. At the same time, I had to give up teaching because of a longer commute, and found that I deeply missed the joy and juice of brainstorming with students. Once again, I was reminded that at heart I'm an image-maker and storyteller.
In September, 2024, I resigned from Hunter, and am now entering my next chapter. I'm seeking a local teaching position and remote illustration and design projects. I want to increase my studio time and finish so many illustration and jewelry projects! I would also like to continue writing. Since earning my MA in Illustration in 2010, I have been slowly working on a suite of illustrations for C. S. Lewis' trilogy of acclaimed allegorical novels: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength. And I'm six chapters and ten illustrations deep in a novel of my own, Axumsit.
I have finally come full circle and am making images of dreams, fables, and worlds that exist only in the author's imagination. Wish me luck!
If you have reached the end of this rather lengthy story of my life, thank you for reading! You have become a dear friend.
May you walk always with beauty before you.
Sincerely, Li Gardiner
