CREATIVE PEOPLE WHO REGULARLY work with top illustrators have long been vocal fans of American Illustration. Today's issue of DART features three top illustrators who also teach illustration in New York. And here are a few comments about AI that were overheard in the lunchroom:

"AI is one of my most effective teaching tools. It presents the most defiant, experimental, raw, unbiased, cutting-edge art, the kind that other illustration annuals do not dare to show. "
- Mohamed Danawi, Illustration Department Chair, Savannah College of Art and Design.

"I think it is not unrealistic to say that virtually every major illustrator of this generation got his or her start in American Illustration."
- Phil Hays (1932-2005), Former Chair, Department of Illustration, Art Center College of Design

"If the profession of illustration is to prosper and grow, it will be because of groundbreaking work done by true artists for the love of the art form. This is the kind of work that is consistently featured in American Illustration."
- Fritz Drury, Illustration Department Head, Rhode Island School of Design

1991: Nightmares of 1991, by Steven Guarnaccia
People we lost and things we wish hadn't happened.

Steven Guarnaccia is the chair of the Illustration Department at Parsons The New School for Design. He was previously art director of the Op-Ed page of the New York Times. During his 25-year career as an internationally recognized illustrator, he has illustrated for major magazines, including Time, the New York Times Magazine and Rolling Stone, and has created artwork for clients including Disney Cruise Lines and the Museum of Modern Art. He is the author and illustrator of numerous children's books, and the co-author of Black and White, a book on the absence of color, published by Chronicle Books.

1992: Untitled, by Jordin Isip
The democrats take the White House, Rodney King gets a beating in L.A., snail mail becomes a quaint thing of the past, the future still looks bright.

Jordin Isip is from Queens, New York but he has lived just across the border, in Brooklyn, since graduating from Rhode Island School of Design. His mixed media images have been published in numerous magazines including Adbusters, The Atlantic Monthly, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Progressive, Rolling Stone and Time Magazine, and on book covers, posters, T-shirts, records and CDs. Awards include American Illustration, Art Directors Club, Communication Arts, Print Magazine, Society of Illustrators, and Society of Publication Designers. In addition to making illustrations, he exhibits in galleries, curates shows and teaches at Parsons The New School for Design, and Pratt Institute.

1993: Untitled, by Frances Jetter
The first World Trade Center bombing. The wolf was at the door, ready to blow down even a house of steel, with its blissfully sleeping pig unaware.

For more than 30 year's, Frances Jetter's linocuts and collages have illustrated articles in The New York Times, The Nation, The Progressive, The Washington Post, Time, and the Village Voice. She has created book jackets for Knopf, MacMillan and Franklin Watts, and illustrated limited edition books for the Franklin Library. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, The New York Public Library Print Collection, and the Detroit Museum of Arts. In 2003, she received a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. She has taught at the School of Visual Arts since 1979, and is on the Norman Rockwell Museum's Illustrator's Advisory Board.