Design Lecture Series

Jerome Harris is a graphic designer, educator, writer, and curator from New Haven, CT, and currently based out of New York City. He holds an MFA in graphic design from Yale University and a BA in Communications from Temple University. 

Harris’ research into the exclusion of African-American graphic designers has manifested as an exhibition which is showing at multiple universities and arts organizations throughout 2019. The exhibition, As, For Not: Dethroning Our Absolutes: an incomplete historical survey of work created by African-American graphic designers over the last century, was originally mounted at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and went on to show at RISD,and at the Jacob Lawrence Gallery and Non-Breaking Space in Seattle, Washington in Spring 2020.

Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes is an artist, filmmaker, writer, and designer who explores the resonance of genetic cultural memory through the mystical and the mundane. The child of two prolific creators, he developed his practice under the tutelage of his parents, Curtis R. Barnes and Royal Alley-Barnes. He is part of the Black Constellation, a collective that also includes Shabazz Palaces, THEESatisfaction, and Nep Sidhu. Alley-Barnes has exhibited sculpture and films in numerous traditional and new-media-based settings. He has been and continues to be, instrumental in the creation of seminal cultural spaces in Seattle, including the influential mixed-use space pun(c)tuation, among others.