Last week, Viktor Koen invited me to a walkthrough of an exhibition of his students' work at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) Gramercy Gallery. A member of the faculty in the MFA Illustration as Visual Essay program, Viktor teaches the first semester of the first year of this two-year program. Each student receives the same assignment: to illustrate a short story by creating a body of images without limitation as to concept, medium or form.

This year, the story was Gone by Jack Ketchum, which won the 2000 Bram Stoker Award for Short Fiction. The artwork on display in this exhibition, which opens tonight, ranged from spooky, black-and-white drawings to darkly pigmented oil paintings, with an enormous variety of methods, materials, and points of view. Included in this page are photos from the installation, and from Jack Ketchum's visit to the classroom (below).

On his blog, Viktor wrote,

This year’s short story selection, Jack Ketchum’s Gone...is a classic Halloween story but a deep and twisted psychological narrative too...Loosely interpreted or literally followed, Gone provided universal themes like motherhood, loss, depression and addiction that inspired images of high drama or understated beauty.

Characters and situations, supernatural or not, directed these projects towards the traumatic implications of being responsible for the devastating disappearance of a child and with it every resemblance of normalcy. Several artists create and compose fragments of an atmosphere when others tell stories of complex action that departed much from the original text only to come full circle and echo a common ending. Comic book treatments intertwine the story of Alice in Wonderland, gatefold books function as supermarket maps, chocolate packaging matches emotions with taste. Drawings approximate fictional police records, childrens books feature actors breathlessly looking for their way back home, quiet paintings reflect more of what’s missing and less of what’s there.  

Laying out the installation on paper.

Some [students] draw from very specific and painful historical parallels of children in London and Australia sent to journeys of no return. A number of them use themes of haunted towns or homes where shape shifting assumes symbolic dimensions while the search for the missing child keeps on. Others revolve around masks that alter personalities of children fighting to retain their identity or could be found in hunted forests that claim victims by enticing them with play.  

This wealth of variations illustrates the ability for mystery writing to trigger strong images in direct but mostly associative levels and thematic departures while staying connected to the story in form, direction or spirit. In short, its ability to rattle the creative mind in ways that very few genre’s manage to do...

Students participate in the installation.

The opening reception for Gone is Wednesday, February 10, 6-8 pm at the SVA Gramercy Gallery. Info Also opening is Women in Illustration. Info 209 East 23rd Street, NY, NY. Information about the program, here. Photos © and courtesy Viktor Koen |blog