Visiting Artist Lecture: Calef Brown

Calef Brown is the author and illustrator of many celebrated books for children including Polkabats and Octopus Slacks, Dutch Sneakers and Fleakeepers, Tippintown, Hallowillloween, We Go Together!, Boy Wonders, Pirateria, and Flamingos on the Roof—winner of the Myra Cohn Livingston poetry award and a New York Times bestseller.

Using engaging and nonsensical characters, Brown crafts narrative story-poems that are meant to be read aloud whenever possible. In interviews, he has cited wordplay, dreams, and the rhythms of music as inspirations. His latest book, Hypnotize a Tiger—Poems About Just About Everything is his first book for middle-grade readers, and it recently won a Lee Bennett Hopkins honor award. Brown has illustrated the work of a variety of authors, including Daniel Pinkwater, Edward Lear, and Jonah Winter and his illustrations have appeared in Newsweek, the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Time, the New York Times, and numerous other publications. He has also created murals, book covers, character design, packaging, and advertising for clients including Adidas, Coca-Cola, Levi Strauss, Laika, Grey Advertising, Weiden and Kennedy, and Sony Music.

Calef has taught illustration at Otis College of Art and Design, Art Center College of Design, Emily Carr University, and is currently an assistant professor at Rhode Island School of Design.