This year we are pleased to announce that award winning photographer, illustrator, and videographer Matt Mahurin will be joining the MADFEST to share his talents. View his website by clicking here.
Matt Mahurin is an American illustrator, photographer and film director. Mahurin’s illustrations appear in Time, Newsweek, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Forbes, and The New York Times.
Mahurin’s work as a photo essayist has dealt with subjects such as homelessness, people with AIDS, the Texas prison system, abortion clinics, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Belfast. His extensive work directing music videos since 1986 have resulted in directing music videos for U2, Metallica, Tom Waits, Peter Gabriel, REM, Tracy Chapman, Sting, Ice-T, David Byrne, and Joni Mitchell.
His documentary “I Like Killing Flies” debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and was also released theatrically.
Photographs by Mahurin are included in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Recently Mahurin has been developing a tour dé force resource for novice as well as professional people interested in design and image – The Imagemakers Handbook. Matt will be presenting aspects of the handbook throughout our MAD Festival. For a sneak preview take a look at the Imagemakers Handbook website.
Lisa Desimini (lisadesimini.com) graduated from The School of Visual Arts in 1986. Since then, she has written and
illustrated over thirty books for children. Her book My House was a New York Times Best Illustrated Book of the Year. I Am Running Away Today won an honorable mention at the Bologna Book Fair in a category judged by children. Love Letters by Arnold Adoff was a Publisher’s Weekly Best Picture Book of the Year, a BCCB Blue Ribbon Book and a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year. A video adaptation of Dot the Fire Dog was produced by Weston Woods.
Her work has also graced the covers of many book jackets, including Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees, Pigs In Heaven, and Animal Dreams, the John Nichols trilogy, Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech and the new Southern Vampire series by Charlaine Harris.
Lisa is known for exploring new mediums. She has worked with oil paints, acrylic, collage, photography and sculpture. Sometimes she combines all of these techniques on the computer; scanning paper, fabric, fresh fruit, her hair, wigs, marbles, her paintings and photos, pipe cleaners, Popsicle sticks, dish towels, coconuts, and just about anything else she can think of. Then with a Wacom tablet and Photoshop, she can draw and paint, change size and shape and color, create shadows…there’s no limit!
Lisa loves to visit schools and universities to talk about her books and techniques. She and her husband Matt Mahurin are working on their second collaboration. My Beautiful Child was their first book.