Faculty Biographies
Interim Department Chair
Associate Professor Jacob Kohn
Jacob Kohn is a professional fine artist, exhibiting locally and regionally, and producing many studio commissions for private, public and corporate spaces. Some major commissions have included 8 mural paintings for the Seattle Aquarium outside walls, a 9' x 12' canvas mural for Childrens' Hospital, a large (9' x 18') canvas mural for a Seattle corporate law firm, a private on site mural for a castle in Madrona, and smaller oil on canvas paintings for many of the regions' hospitals, banks and corporate offices. His paintings are in many public and private collections, some of which are: the Bill and Melinda Gates collection, the Hughes Aircraft Corporation, Boeing Corporate Headquarters, Westin Hotels, Nordstroms, Salish Lodge, Microsoft, the Sheraton Hotel, and the Milwaukee Art Center. He has presented solo painting exhibitions at such venues as the Foster White gallery, William Traver gallery, Matsge Runnings, and The American Art Company. Jacob has exhibited locally at the Seattle Art Museum, Bellingham Art Museum, The Center on Contemporary art, and the Bellevue Art Museum. His national exhibitions have included museums and galleries in Los Angeles, Chicago, Scottsdale Arizona, Wisconsin, and New York. In his many years of teaching at Cornish, Jacob has been instrumental in developing the Design department Foundations Program in drawing and design as well as creating studio courses in watercolor and illustration technique. He has received the Outstanding Faculty Award in the Design Department and has been recently honored for his 20 years of service at Cornish. Jacob holds a B.S. in Art and Art Education from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and an M.F.A. in Painting and Drawing from the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
Core Faculty
Professor Susan Boye
Susan Boye was born and raised in Denmark As a professional artist and printmaker, Susan has shown her work locally at Stone Press Gallery and in numerous cities in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Recently Susan was a finalist for the Washington State Arts Commission Portable Works Collection 2001 and mounted a solo exhibition at the Fountainhead Gallery in Seattle. She has taught at the University of Idaho, Washington State University, and Ithaca College. Susan earned both a BA in Fine Arts and an MFA from Washington State University.
Assistant Professor Emilie Burnham
Emilie Burnham has been a graphic designer working professionally as both fulltime art director as well as running her own design business for the past 13 years. She got her start working in smaller design houses and eventually became entrenched in the Los Angeles music industry Art Directing at such places as Motown and IRS Records (eventually freelancing for most of the other music labels) and now runs her own design business here in Seattle. Her projects have covered the gamut from cd packaging, marketing campaign materials, posters, logo design, specialty invitations, packaging, ski graphics, and more. Her diverse client list includes: Maverick Records, Sony, MCA Records, Bob Dylan, Capitol Records, Nordstrom, K2, Starbucks, and more. Emilie holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.
Assistant Professor Tiffany Laine De Mott
Tiffany began her career nearly twenty years ago, designing window displays for local, retail shops. From there she became a visual merchandiser and buyer for several home furnishings companies including Pottery Barn and Anthropologie. As a corporate merchandising trainer, she developed a passion for teaching, which inspired her to pursue her MFA. She has exhibited as a photographer, graphic designer, book artist, sculptor, painter and filmmaker. In 2004 she founded her dual design studio, consisting of nibblemarkdesign, which focuses on photography and print design, and fontfilms, a production company that focuses on multiple aspects of filmmaking. Tiffany has worked in the arts professionally as a teacher, photographer, print designer, jewelry designer, interior designer, exhibition designer, online editor, cinematographer, film director, production designer, screenwriter, film score composer and visual/digital effects supervisor. She holds a BFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in photography with a focus on narrative, artist books. At the Rhode Island School of Design she earned her MFA in graphic design with an emphasis on digital media, while fulfilling a teaching fellowship. She has a Collegiate Teaching Certification from Brown University.
Professor Jon Gierlich
Jon Gierlich is an artist/designer who has exhibited widely in the region. Francine Seders Gallery Ltd. Seattle represents his artwork. His history of working with other design professionals on art projects in complex public settings lends breadth to the basic issues of how we navigate our cities, our neighborhoods, and our homes. Gierlich is currently a commissioner with the King County Public Arts Commission, and has recently designed "Interrupted Journey", the World War II Memorial plaza on the University of Washington campus and "Meeting Place," an interior architecture in a corporate office building. "Lodge" an interior architecture commission from studio Jaso was selected as an A.I.A. Project of the Month Jon received his BFA from the University of Kansas, studied in the graduate program of the University of Nebraska, and for many years worked as a manager/tradesman in the construction industry.
Professor Claudia Meyer-Newman
Designer, creative director, fine art photographer, and educator, Claudia has been an active member of the design community for the past 25 years. She recently held the position as senior designer and creative director at Methodologie, developing corporate communications, Websites, brand and identity. Claudia has received numerous awards, grants, and honors acknowledging her design and photography. With seventeen years of tenured teaching experience she holds a MFA in photography from the San Francisco Art Institute and a BA from the Evergreen State College. She is a graduate of the Burnley School of Art.
Associate Professor Julie Myers
Julie holds a MFA and BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Additional studies include: Parsons School of Design, Whitney Museum of American Art (with Alex Katz, Bill Viola, Nam June-Paik, Joel Shapiro, Susan Rothenberg, and more), Cooper Hewitt Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and Graham Foundation Studies.
Julie is President of JMD Consultants, Inc. Awards include: American Society of Interior Designers, Award of Excellence, SAIC Marya Lilien Foundation Award, All-Steel Manufacturer Award. Clients include: Pike Place Market, Washington State Convention and Trade Center, Marriott, Marriott International, Inc., The Levy Restaurants, Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority of Chicago. Recent projects included international design and manufacturing in South East Asia, where she continues her research, "Cultural Sustainability with High-technology Environments: A Designer's Field Notes on Southeast Asian Post-Modernism Era of Product Manufacturing and Development." She received the International Furniture and Design Association, 2005 Carolyn Thomas Teacher Education Grant. Julie is also a photographer, artist, and Master Birder.
Professor John Miller
John has exhibited as painter and photographer. His professional experience also includes stage design, interior design, puppetry, and illustration. He has studied at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and Art Students' League of New York. He earned a BFA in Painting from Wayne State University and an MFA in Theater from State University of New York.
Adjunct Faculty
Adjunct Instructor Fred Andrews
A member of the Cornish Design faculty for 16 years, Fred Andrews works as a designer, art director and photographer for Heckler Associates, a communication design firm and as a freelancer. Fred also has extensive experience in film, theater and publishing. He was art director for the Seattle Weekly, Skid Road Theater and Fred Levine productions. His work has been exhibited, published and collected in Japan, Europe and North America, including his books My Dog and Naive Photography. Fred graduated from the Burnley School of Art and earned an MFA from the Instituto Allende in Mexico. He is currently a commissioner on the Normandy Park Arts Commission.
Adjunct Instructor Joshua Brantley
Adjunct Instructor Ricky Castro
Ricky's work has spanned the gamut from fine art to print and packaging and most recently, interactive media. In 1999 he established the design arm of ZAAZ, a web design and development agency in Seattle. Through his leadership, the company grew from 5 people to a nationally recognized firm of 40 developing ground-breaking work for Fortune 100 companies. Clients include National Geographic, Washington Mutual, Converse, KCTS, and Starbucks. Ricky Castro has received multiple awards from Communication Arts. His most recent independent project will be published in AIGA:365, celebrating the year's best design. Ricky studied sculpture at L'Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence and received his BFA with honors from California State University, Fullerton where he studied photography and installation art. His work and exhibitions there dealt primarily with the intersection between art, experience, and machines.
Adjunct Instructor Jim Catel
Jim has more than seventeen years of professional experience in graphic design and art direction and is one of the co-founders of the interactive design agency IF/THEN. His work ranges from interactive media, brand identity, and motion graphics to package design, type design, and print design. He has worked with such clients as National Geographic, PBS, Microsoft XBox and Game Studios, Nintendo, Oxygen, KING5-TV, Bill Nye the Science Guy, The Walt Disney Company, Amazon.com, T-Mobile, AT&T Wireless, Converse, Façonnable, Tommy Bahama, Columbia Sportswear, and Helly-Hansen. Jim holds a BFA in Graphic Design from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and has pursued postgraduate work through the Art Institute of Chicago / Eastern Michigan University in the Netherlands.
Adjunct Instructor Elizabeth Darrow
Elizabeth Darrow received a Ph.D in art history from the University of Washington in 2000 and has taught at Trinity University, University of Colorado at Boulder, University of Washington and Montana State University. Dr. Darrow studied restoration of painting and art history in Italy and her research & scholarly interests emphasize early modern art history from the Renaissance into the nineteenth century. She is a pioneer in the study of the effects of restoration of art on art interpretation and was a Guest Scholar in Residence at the J.P. Getty Museum & Research Institute in 2005-06, completing a manuscript about the restorer in 18 th century Venice for the Getty Trust entitled Restoring the Myth of Venice (2008). Her discovery of a lost Renaissance altarpiece, Madonna & Child with Six Saints (1456), by Neri di Bicci at St James Cathedral in Seattle generated world-wide attention, an exhibition and she was co-author of Focus On the Renaissance (Seattle, 2004).
Adjunct Instructor Linda Davidson
Linda is a painter who began her career as a fashion illustrator in NYC drawing print ads for Bergdorf Goodman. A move to London precipitated a decision to focus on fine art. She exhibited work at the Royal Academy, Barbican, South bank Center, and The Mall in London. From London she moved to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and stayed for nearly 5 years before settling in Seattle. Locally she has exhibited work at the Whatcom Museum, Central Oregon University, Gallery 4Culture, SAM gallery and is currently represented in Seattle by Catherine Person Gallery. Her work can be found in the collections of the University of Washington Medical Center, Swedish Hospital, Harborview Medical Center, King County Portable works collection, Bailey Boushay House, and the collection of Nelson Rockefeller Junior. Linda received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design.
Adjunct Instructor Gary Dickson
Over the course of the past 16 years Gary has worked in nearly every aspect of the design industry - from production assistant to creative director. After several years of doing production design and color prepress in the Seattle area Gary moved to California to earn his BFA in Graphic Design from California College of the Arts in San Francisco. He worked with John Bielenberg as a design intern and briefly taught Art at Antioch High School before returning to Seattle to work as a graphic designer for Horton Lantz Marocco. In 2000 Gary left the "big firm" environment to open his own studio - Epidemic Design. In pursuit of true multidisciplinary status he and his studio have worked on a broad range of projects for a diverse group of clients. Along the way Gary has won a few design awards and written numerous articles about art, design and culture.
Adjunct Instructor Joel Egan
Joel, a Seattle native, graduated from Western Washington University with degrees in Experiential & Environmental Psychology and Cultural Anthropology in 1994. After a year building homes in the Methow Valley of North Central Washington, he found his calling and pursued a Masters Degree in Architecture at the University of Oregon in 2000, specializing in green architecture and energy-conscious design. In Seattle since then he has involved himself in community activism and improvement, campaigning for Monorail Board in 2003. That year he also formed HyBrid, a multi-disciplinary team of artists, architects, environmental scientists, landscape architects, historians, and urban planners, to directly influence the debate of what to do with Seattle's waterfront and the Viaduct. He has practiced mixed-use, commercial, and residential architecture with Callison and small residential firms, and continues to lead HyBrid in its goal to support temporal land use with movable built works that contribute to urban density, more affordable and vibrant neighborhoods, helping to develop the cargotecture building system to address these issues. HyBrid is a firm now specializing in all prefabricated building systems (not just containers), sustainable development, and emerging technologies. Joel also is well traveled, and speaks Italian and French fluently.
Adjunct Instructor Jules Faye
Jules Faye established the Street of Crocodiles Printery in 1990. Since 1992 Jules and her partner Christopher Stern have pursued their interests in typography, letterpress printing and hand bookmaking together under the aegis of Stern & Faye, Printers. They have exhibited numerous books, broadsides and prints in galleries throughout the country. Awards for their work include HOW's Perfect Ten Award; the AIGA 50 Books/50 Covers Award; The Washington State Book Award; Northwest Bookfest’s Best Typography and First Choice Fine Press Book Awards; and The Silver Medal Award for Cover Design from the Society of Publication Designers 34th Competition. They’ve offered classes, workshops and presentations at Oregon College of Art & Craft in Portland, Oregon; The School of Visual Concepts in Seattle; Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, The Richard Hugo House in Seattle, the Bainbridge Arts & Crafts Gallery on Bainbridge Island, the La Conner Poetry Festival in La Conner and at Northwest Bookfest in Seattle.
Adjunct Instructor Ellen Forney
Ellen Forney has been a professional cartoonist since 1992, and began teaching Comics at Cornish in 2002. Her work appears regularly in many publications, including Bust Magazine, Nickelodeon Magazine, LA Weekly, and The Stranger. Her book of autobiographical comic strips Monkey Food: The Complete "I Was Seven in '75" Collection (Fantagraphics Books) was nominated for several national comics awards, and she received a Xeric Foundation grant to self-publish a collection of her work. Her comic artwork was exhibited in She Draws Comics: Great Women Cartoonists (Cartoon Art Museum, SF), Off the Page (SOIL, Seattle), and Bizarro World! The Parallel Universes of Comics and Fine Art (Rollins College, FL). She was an invited participant in XI Salão Internacional de Banda Desenhada do Porto, Portugal in 2001.
Adjunct Assistant Professor Julie Gaskill
Drawing Applications, Life Drawing
Julie Gaskill's work has been exhibited in Lyons, France, in Shenzhen, China, at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, WA, the Lancaster Museum of Art in Lancaster, PA, the Tweed Museum of Art in Duluth, Minnesota, the Janet Turner Print Museum in Chico, CA, in the 9th, 10th, and 12th Biennials of Pacific Prints of Palo Alto, CA, the LA Printmaking Society's 18th National Biennial Exhibition, Pasadena, CA, the Seattle Art Museum Gallery, and at Davidson Galleries in Seattle.
Julie was invited to be an Artist-in-Residence in August 2006 at the Artists' Enclave at I-Park in East Haddam, Connecticut. Julie was also an Artist-in- Residence at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy in August 2002, and a recipient of the 1996-97 PONCHO Artist-in-Residency Award at Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle.
Julie studied at Webster University, Missouri and at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France, where she lived for ten years.
Julie has prints and sculpture in the permanent collections of the Mulvane Art Museum of Topeka, Kansas, the State of Washington, the cities of Seattle and Shoreline, WA, and in the Alice B. Cooley Print Collection of Cornish College of the Arts, where she has taught drawing since 1994.
Adjunct Instructor Hovie Hawk
Hovie has been working professionally in graphic design since 1993, designing for both print and web environments. Since 1998 he has served as President/Creative Director at Design Hovie Studios, growing the company into a firm with an international presence. In January of 2001 he opened the studio's Milan, Italy office and began a series of ongoing collaborations with Winsome Italia, Qwentes Italia, and Giorgio Galli and Partners.
Hovie holds a BFA in Graphic Design and a BA in Art from the University of Washington. He has served on the board of directors for Arts Ballard, and is a member of the American Institute of Graphic Arts and the Ballard Chamber of Commerce. Hovie's work has been displayed at the Paris and Milan Fashion Weeks, the Super Bowl, the NBA finals, the Paris Air Show, the Rose Bowl, and the E3 Electronic Entertainment Expo. His awards include those from the Best of Italy, Logo Lounge, Neenah Paper, HOW Magazine, Bookbuilders West and the Southern California Exposition. In addition, Hovie was a keynote speaker at the Los Alamos National Laboratory for Interlab 2007.
Adjunct Instructor David Helton
With over twenty five years of experience in the practice of architecture and interior design, David has worked for nationally recognized architecture firms such as NBBJ, Zimmer Gunsul Frasca, Space, JPC Architects and is currently Principal of his own design firm, dbhelton design. He has led design and planning efforts for clients such as AT&T Wireless, Microsoft, Realnetworks, Classmates.com, Merrill Lynch, Zillow.com and Wizards of the Coast, in locations throughout the U.S. and Canada. His diverse professional career has focused on corporate, residential, hospitality and retail design as well as historic preservation and strategic planning. David received his Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Arizona and is a registered Architect in the states of WA & MA.
Adjunct Instructor Michael Herbert
Michael Herbert has been involved in exploring the impact of communication through 2-D and 3-D spaces since the 1980’s. With a BFA in Interior Environmental Design from Ball State University and a MFA in Graphic Design from the University of Illinois Michael has perused the noted explorations within the professional realm in various roles including architectural illustrator, interior designer, print graphic designer, environmental graphic designer, and Illustrator. He is currently a Senior Designer/Design Associate with the Midwest design firm Rowland Design, Inc. - a multidisciplinary firm involved in architecture, interior design, and environmental graphic design. Specific professional areas of focus include museum/corporate exhibit design, signage & wayfinding, along with spatial and print branding systems for non-profit and academic institutions. Clients include the University of Louisville, Purdue University, Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, The City of Charleston, SC, the Chicago Historical Society, the Louisville Science Center, Brown-Forman Corporation, Lilly Pharmaceuticals, and the Simon Property Group. While committing time to design practice Michael has also held graphic design and interior design faculty positions with the University of Illinois, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Ball State University, and the University of Louisville.
Adjunct Instructor BeAnne Hull
A graduate from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, in Graphic Design, BeAnne arrived in the United States in 1977. Her career in graphic arts includes design work for the City of Seattle, King County, Metro, Seattle Chapter AIA, commissions for Bumbershoot, the Pike Place Market, Bellevue Art Museum, the Frye Art Museum and numerous private companies. She has taught art and design since 1975 in schools and colleges, and coordinated design work for many Seattle institutions including the Woodland Park Zoo. A member of the Northwest Watercolor Society, she has also exhibited and sold her work both locally and internationally.
Adjunct Instructor Robert Humble
Robert is a local architect who is among a small group of professionals at the vanguard of architectural innovation. Robert received his Bachelor of Architecture from Texas Tech University in 1993 and after a self-initiated European architectural tour relocated to Seattle to begin his architectural career. After 5 years interning with local design firms both large and small, he obtained his architectural license in 1998 and immediately began his own practice, Robert Humble Architects. In 2003 he co-founded the art and architectural collaborative HyBrid to explore opportunities in environmentally conscience, prefabricated building systems. The results of this investigation have been published widely in both print and digital media including Residential Architect, The Chicago Tribune, Business Week, Metropolis, and Vogue. As recent chair of the Capitol Hill Design Review Board and current Vice-President of the Seattle chapter of Architects Without Borders, Robert continues to advocate for socially and environmentally responsible architecture, both locally and globally.
Adjunct Instructor David Kutsunai
David has over twenty years of experience in the practice of interior design and architecture. He has worked for nationally recognized architecture firms such as NBBJ, Space, Gensler, and is currently a Principal and Director of Design at IA Interior Architects. He has led design and strategic planning efforts for clients such as Amazon.com, Microsoft, Starbucks, Washington Mutual, Verizon, Merrill Lynch, and Chicos, in locations throughout the U.S., China, and England. His diverse professional career has also included working for various firms specializing in structural engineering, mechanical engineering, residential architecture, and historic preservation. David received Bachelor of Arts and Master degrees in Architecture from the University of Washington.
Adjunct Instructor Tamara Moats
Tamara has been curator of education at the Henry Art Gallery since 1988 where she has built the department to include a wide variety of programs for adults, university students, and children, as well as K-12 tours, teacher-training institutes and curriculum guides, and the Henry's noted museum-school partnership, the Artlink program. She regularly teaches for the UW School of Art, the College of Education, Museology program, and Cornish College of the Arts. Moats is also a faculty member of the Bush School upper school where she teaches art and music history. She has published in Art Educator magazine and presented papers at NAEA and CAA. Tamara holds a BA degree in art history from the University of Puget Sound and an MA in Asian Studies from the Claremont Graduate School. She has lived and traveled in Europe and Asia, including a study tour with the late mythologist Joseph Campbell to Southeast Asia and Indonesia in 1977, and a sabbatical in Paris in 1998.
Adjunct Instructor Marisa Mangum
Marisa (LEED AP) received a BA in Psychology from the University of Texas and an AA in Interior Design from the Colorado Institute of Art. However, her most influential education came from the year she spent abroad in Chile living, studying and collaborating with the professors from the School of Architecture at the Catholic University of Valparaiso. This unconventional group of artists, architects, industrial designers and poets founded their own community on the Chilean coast, the Open City. In Seattle, Marisa has worked since 1989 as an interior designer on commercial interior projects primarily for public and municipal clients. In 2001 she started her own Interiors firm, 33 design. Recent projects include the Pierce County Environmental Services Building in University Place, WA (an AIA/COTE 2004 Top Ten Green Project), Sea-Tac International Airport Satellite Transit Stations, and the City of Seattle Southwest Precinct Police Station, designed for LEED silver.
Adjunct Instructor Heather Mathews
Heather received her Master’s and Doctoral degrees in Art History from the University of Texas at Austin. Her research deals with the relationship between art and politics, especially in Germany during the Cold War, but also in contemporary, post-socialist central Europe. Heather has lived and worked in Germany as a Fulbright grantee, as a teaching assistant at the International Women’s University, and most recently as a fellow at the Berlin Program for German and Central European Studies. She has taught art history at the University of Texas at Austin and at Southwestern University.
Adjunct Instructor Scott Mayhew
Scott received his Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz where he studied oil painting and printmaking. Afterwards, he went on to get two Masters Degrees, one in Sequential Art and the other in Computer Art, from the Savannah College of Art and Design and earned an "Outstanding Achievement Award in Computer Art." Since then, he has worked at numerous Game companies in Oregon and Washington, including Dark Horse Interactive, Boss Games, Beep Industries, and Cranky Pants Games where he is the Lead Animator. Some of the titles that he has worked on include HellBoy, Voodoo Vince, and the as yet released, Evil Dead: Regeneration. Scott has used Alias/Wavefront's Maya since its inception and before that, its predecessor, Alias PowerAnimator.
Adjunct Instructor Sharon Mentyka
Sharon is a graphic designer, writer, and educator who has worked in the design field for the past 22 years. She began her career in New York City where she worked first with Peter Bradford, Robert Gersin and Ralph Appelbaum before starting her own business with her husband & design partner. They moved their office to Seattle in 1991, while continuing to collaborate with clients in New York, including Central Park, INTIX and The New York Public Library. Significant projects in Seattle have included graphic identity, marketing, and exhibit and signage systems for the Bellevue Botanical Gardens, the Cedar River Watershed Education Center, Seattle City Light's Energy Smart Services, the San Juan County Land Bank, Seattle Symphony Learning Center and the Alliance for Education. Underlying all her projects is a commitment to integrate sustainable design practices into the design process. She holds a BFA in Communications Design from Pratt Institute, New York.
Adjunct Instructor Anna McAllister
Anna's experiences in many different creative working environments makes her uniquely qualified to teach the Professional Practices in Graphic Design course. A copywriter for over ten years, Anna began her career in the Nordstrom corporate marketing department, then co-founded a small advertising studio, returned to Nordstrom for a short stint as the corporate copy director, and finally went on to become the sole proprietor of her own business. She relishes the opportunity to focus on the written elements of a successful career in graphic design, and is rabid in her insistence on a near-constant use of spell check. Anna holds a cum laude B.A. in English from the University of Washington.
Adjunct Instructor Cameron Neat
Adjunct Instructor Robynne Raye
Since co-founding the internationally notorious design studio Modern Dog in 1987, Robynne has continued to do work for theatre and entertainment companies - both local and national - and counts poster design as some of her favorite work. She routinely ignores the boundaries between illustration, design and typography. Her recent projects include packaging design for Blue Q; Lotto logo design for Washington State Lottery; hang tag design for Express Jeans; and music posters for House of Blues. For over 10 years, she has lectured and taught workshops, both nationally and internationally. Her posters are represented in the permanent archives of the Library of Congress, Experience Music Project, Bibliotheque National de France in Paris, Museum Fur Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg, and the Smithsonian Institute's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, among others.
Adjunct Associate Professor Jeffrey Robbins
After receiving his degree in Drama from the University of Washington in 1975, Jeff spent 14 years as a technical director, with the Empty Space Theatre in Seattle, and with The Oregon Shakespearean Theatre in Ashland. He has also designed lighting for over 50 productions, most notably at The Empty Space, ACT, The Seattle Repertory, The Seattle Children's Theatre, The Bathhouse, and The Perseverance Theatre in Juneau. He has been teaching at Cornish since 1985, both in the Performance Production and in the Design departments. In 1989, he began a career as a lighting and theater consultant, a practice which he maintains to this day. He designed the lighting and rigging systems for Meadowvale High School in Lynnwood, and is the award-winning lighting designer for the Climbing Rock at the new REI headquarters store in Seattle. He recently earned the distinction of professional certification by the National Council on Qualifications for the Lighting Professions.
Adjunct Instructor Andi Rusu
Andi Rusu is a true designer in every sense of the word currently working in web, print and motion graphics. Andi founded two design studios, Redoctober Industrie in 1996 and Cursivecode Inc. in 2001. Andi filled roles ranging from, Sr. Interactive Art Director for ZAAZ.com to Creative Director, Design Director at companies like Sierra on-Line, Cendant Interactive, Microsoft, Caribiner international, Mercata, etc . Clients Andi has served in the past include: Fox Television, Intel, Motorola, Citibank, Porsche, Schwab, eToys and locally Microsoft, Starbucks, Nintendo, Chateau Sainte Michelle, Eddie Bauer, Boeing, Real Networks, Safeco, Museum of Glass, Sierra Online, and the University of Washington. Andi teaches Graphic Design and Advanced Web Design at the School of Visual Concepts, and holds a European BFA Degree in Fine Art and a US BFA Degree in Graphic Design.
Adjunct Instructor Jennny Saphora
Adjunct Instructor Dan Shafer
Dan is a graphic designer and educator whose studio practice ranges from work for clients like UC Berkeley and the Kronos Quartet to self-initiated projects and hand-printed posters. He is most interested in exploring the nebulous territory that exists between a traditional understanding of "art" and "design," and how these forces intersect with people's everyday lives. He received a BA in graphic design and printmaking from Western Washington University and an MFA in design from California College of the Arts. He has worked in the Book Arts Program at Mills College in Oakland, CA and the Visual Communications Department at Las Positas College in Livermore, CA.
Adjunct Instructor Joseph Smith
Adjunct Instructor Michael Strassburger
Michael Strassburger has taught and lectured extensively over the past decade. He is considered to be one of the world's top digital designers by Publish Magazine, and is a featured artist in "Photoshop Masters" and "Photoshop Studio Secrets". As an original co-founder of Modern Dog Design, over the last 16 years Michael has worked with such clients as K2 Snowboards, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Warner Bros. Records, A&M Records, Showtime, Nordstrom, Target and Nike to name just a few. His recent work includes product development for Blue Q and consultation for Adobe Systems, Inc.
He has received hundreds of awards and recognition from every major U.S. design publication/organization, including Graphis, AIGA, Type Directors Club, American Center for Design 100 Show, and Communication Arts. His work is represented in the permanent archives of the Smithsonian Institute's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, the Library of Congress, Experience Music Project and the Museum Fur Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg Germany, among others.
Adjunct Instructor Daniel Thornton
Dan splits his schedule between making films for Alibi Pictures and industrial video and motion graphics for Home and Garden Creative. He is also a co-founder of the Northwest Documentary Association. He has taught at Bellevue Community College, 911 Media Arts and now at Cornish College of the Arts. Dan has produced productions for MTV, NBC Sports, A&E, Discovery Communications, SIFF and Al Gore (before he was famous as a film maker and merely the Vice President of the United States) among others. Aside from working in film and new media he is a working musician, a member of IATSE Local 15, and a WSU trained Master Gardener. He is often sleep-deprived and punchy.
Adjunct Instructor Junichi Tsuneoka
Junichi was born and raised in Japan where he earned his BFA in English Literature at Waseda University in Tokyo. By the end of the 20th century, he settled in the US. He then studied graphic design at Cornish College of the Arts and was hired by the internationally notorious Seattle-based design company, Modern Dog, as a designer/illustrator right after graduation. After working at Modern Dog for several years and receiving accolades from PRINT magazine, Step Inside magazine and many other design publications, he founded his own design/illustration studio, Studio Stubborn Sideburn. He works with clients nationally producing editorial illustrations, graphic novel covers, concert posters and more, as well as showing his work in various galleries. One of his music posters is in the permanent archives of the Experience Music Project in Seattle. Junichi also teaches graphic design at the School of Visual Concepts.