Talking to college students about artists’ collaboration

Taking to students is such an amazing honor, and it’s especially awesome to do it in the classroom of a friend. I met Professor Kristin Gjerdset (bottom left in first photo) when she signed up for my speedskating class. When I learned she taught art at Wisconsin Lutheran College,  a gem of a school, I told her about my illustrator husband, Jeff. She soon asked him to speak her students. He had the best time.

This year, Kristin invited both of us to speak to her class, specifically about creative collaborations. Jeff and I have collaborated on so much, even more than I realized before preparing for this talk. We support each another in our respective fields in a ton of ways, like brainstorming projects, reference modeling, critiquing, story ideation, copyediting each others’ writing, publishing together, and, our biggest collaboration by far, creating Fantasy Art Workshop, our week-long illustration retreat.