Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

Nationally speaking, high school-level courses in graphic design, as opposed to general art or special projects such as yearbooks or student newspapers, are surprisingly rare. So when venerable University City High School, 7401 Balson Ave., launched a new graphics class last year, a group of visual communications majors from Washington University’s School of Art readily agreed to help tutor students in the fledgling program.

Philip TidwellArchitecture junior Philip Tidwell has won the 2003 Berkeley Undergraduate Prize for Architectural Design Excellence. Tidwell’s essay was selected from a field of 130 entries by students representing 31 countries and 81 undergraduate architecture programs on six continents.

A page from *Selected Poems* by MorrisAmerican poet John N. Morris never achieved widespread public acclaim in his lifetime, but those who knew him well — including some of the nation’s most distinguished poets and critics — expect his star to rise with publication of two books showcasing both his life and his life’s work. “Read him and you cannot live your own life innocently again,” suggests Helen Vendler, one of the nation’s leading literary critics. Morris, who died in 1997, was a professor of English literature in Arts & Sciences for 30 years at Washington University in St. Louis.

Photo by Joe AngelesFashion Show May 4Art in Motion, the 74th annual School of Art Fashion Show, will take to the catwalk at 8 p.m. Sunday, May 4, at Saint Louis Galleria. The fully choreographed, Paris-style extravaganza features dozens of professional and volunteer models wearing more than 100 outfits created by the School of Art’s 11 senior and nine junior fashion design majors.

A still from *Having a Ball*, one of three circus-themed e-cards by Kristine Ng.For the estimated 7 to10 million blind and visually impaired Americans, the Internet has proven to be the most powerful — and most empowering — tool since Braille. Widely available software programs such as JAWS for Windows and Windows-Eyes can read aloud online newspapers and magazines and other previously inaccessible materials. Yet as bandwidth and memory improve, businesses have increasingly sought to drive customers to glitzy, graphics-heavy Web sites that are more difficult, if not impossible, for blind users to navigate. Thanks to a group of senior design students at Washington University in St. Louis, blind and visually impaired Web users can now experience some of the Internet’s increasingly expansive potential. The 23 students — design, illustration and advertising majors in the School of Art — have created some of the first Web sites showcasing new accessibility components of Macromedia Flash MX, the increasingly popular authoring tool for Web interfaces, interactive video, Web-based games, streaming music and other multimedia content.

The Gallery of Art will host “An Evening With Comic Artists Charles Burns and Gary Panter” at 7 p.m. Sept. 27 in Steinberg Auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public and is organized in conjunction with the St. Louis Comic Art Show, a one-day event held downtown at the City Museum, 701 […]

Distinguished scholar Iain Boyd Whyte, professor of architectural history at the University of Edinburgh and a senior visiting program officer for the Getty Grant Program, will speak on “Expressionist Architecture” at 7 p.m. Oct. 2 for the Gallery of Art. The lecture is free and open to the public and will take place in Steinberg […]

Also opening are complementary exhibitions Painting America in the 19th Century and American Art on Paper From the 1960s to the Present.

Tamotsu Edo will work with School of Architecture students to construct and install a “koshikake machiai” in the Elizabeth Danforth Butterfly Garden.

The School of Art is welcoming the new year with its Danforth Scholars Show. The exhibition, on view at the school’s Des Lee Gallery through Jan. 30, showcases the work of five current or recent graduate students: Jill Downen, Brandon Anschultz, Grant Miller, Yoshihiro Kitai and Alison Bates. A reception for the artists will be […]