Working closely with Debra Simon, Dylan’s tasks span scheduling and arranging travel, graphic design, managing social media and the company website, public relations, writing press releases, new business development, photo assisting, and distributing marketing materials. Her experience at Debra Simon Art Consulting has not only honed her professional skills but also fostered a valuable mentorship relationship with Debra Simon herself.

Since joining the team, Dylan has played an instrumental role in installing public art across major cities, including Chicago, Philadelphia, New York City, and Washington, DC. She also co-curated a significant art project at Chicago Union Station, featuring licensed images from Science Photo Library on barricade walls. Dylan’s work has expanded to include assisting in public dance performances, including an all-day event with artists in residence at Baryshnikov Arts Center, where she had the remarkable opportunity to meet Mikhail Baryshnikov.

“The main thing is that I am learning a lot!” Dylan shared. “�ǿ����޴�ý University prepared me for this opportunity by instilling confidence in myself and my work ethic. Advocating for my own practice made it easier to advocate for myself professionally and connect with other professionals and artists.”

Her position also allows her to travel frequently, with business trips to Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC, and prospective installations in Lancaster, PA, and Wilmington, DE. Dylan’s relocation to Brooklyn in July has been another major life change, where she’s focusing on personal creative projects, such as drawing, digital collages, and planning long-term works while exploring local community art spaces.

Dylan emphasizes the importance of continuing creative practices post-graduation. “Keep making art. It’s hard to maintain momentum without critiques or deadlines, but finding a community of creative people can hold you accountable and keep you inspired,” she advises. “See a lot of art and connect with like minded individuals. And keep in touch with your professors—they care about your success.”

�ǿ����޴�ý University’s emphasis on fostering confidence and networking helped Dylan develop the tools to thrive in her career. Her story is a testament to the power of mentorship, community, and perseverance in building a fulfilling and impactful career in the arts. We celebrate Dylan’s accomplishments and look forward to her continued contributions to the art world.

After the pupils won a virtual��Shark Tank-style pitch competition, Principal Harold Abraham ’13 MEd invited recent alumni from the University’s Fashion Studies program to continue working with his students to create a prototype of a mask infused with essential oils. The idea, the students say, is to help the wearer “feel safe, comfortable and calm.”

It’s much like what Abraham did in preparing his school for the return of students in the fall at Sandyston-Walpack School in Sussex County, New Jersey.

“I can’t tell you how many vendors for PPE we met with, measuring our classrooms, measuring our hallways, our cafeteria and the outdoor spaces, working with facilities and grounds to make sure that students would be socially distanced at all times, figuring out how many students we could have in a classroom, how many we could have in a lunch period,” Abraham says. Students on rotating days attend school on Zoom or in class wearing masks and studying at desks with plexiglass tri-fold barriers.

“My goal is creating experiences for kids that they’ll never forget,” he says.

But the coronavirus has made creating opportunities for the extraordinary especially challenging. “Now is really more of an important time than ever to kind of think outside the box,” Abraham says.

When the principal learned of the SuitUp New Jersey Business competition, a program that matches company employees with students to solve real corporate challenges, Abraham entered the school as a way to expose the students to other forms of learning.

Competing against middle schools from throughout the state, students designed products, developed a marketing strategy and financing, and pitched their idea to a panel of judges.

Members of “Team superMASK” came up with the idea for a Dri-FIT fabric face covering infused with essential oils. The judges called the students’ innovation “overwhelmingly relevant for today’s day and age” and praised its potential as a viable product for consumers.

The success made a huge impact. “I learned today I can be a CEO,” remarked a Sandyston-Walpack fifth grader, Emma McEvilly.

“The students wanted to develop something that would make a lasting impact on the people around them,” Abraham says. “It’s one thing to design a beautiful garment that people will admire from an aesthetic perspective, but if you create something that is going to help people, and can also look aesthetically pleasing, then you’re really on to something.”

Enter �ǿ����޴�ý’s Fashion Studies program. Meeting over Zoom, Hannah Salvaryn ’20 and Vincent Villapando ’20, have been leading the students through the creative process and helping them understand all the decisions that come into play – from sizing and fabric choices to where to place the pocket for oils. They say they have enjoyed the experience.

“It reminds me that anything is possible, even the impossible,” says Salvaryn, “because talking with the students makes me believe their idea can come to life. Younger children have an ‘I can do it’ type of attitude. It’s something I hope they can keep with them as they grow older.”

On a recent call, the students started thinking even more about marketing and how to promote the product. They asked one of their teammates to sing and write a jingle. They worried about the costs of materials and who holds the rights to their design. They wondered if a major company would ultimately buy the idea.

Fifth grader Dustin Slyman suggested a slogan, adapting Nike’s legendary “Just Do It” to pitch their masks, “Just Wear It.”

“The students are a testament to the community we have,” Abraham says. “Our students, even in fifth grade, had the wherewithal to go beyond that, to develop something that I think most would consider valuable to the community because it’s so needed. I think that’s the greatest takeaway from the competition.”

Story by staff writer��Marilyn Joyce Lehren

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Butler, who graduated with a Master of Arts in Teaching in 2005, called the exhibit a “dream come true” and said the last few months have been “a whirlwind.”

In March, Butler’s portrait of 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner����was featured as one of 100 covers produced as part of��Time’s 100 Women of the Year. In July, the Toledo Museum of Art����of Butler’s portrait of Frederick Douglass, titled��The Storm, the Whirlwind, and The Earthquake.

Her first major museum show,��, had a delayed opening at the Katonah Museum of Art due to the pandemic but has now traveled to the����where her quilts are on exhibit from November 16, 2020, to April 19, 2021.

Butler’s unique technique involves reappropriating vintage photographs and giving them new life through a unique folkloric medium – quilting. Her portraits include famous people but often feature the unnamed, the forgotten. The man in��I Am Not Your Negro��is as regal and deeply layered as Frederick Douglass in��The Storm, the Whirlwind, and the Earthquake. Her work engages with themes of family, community, migration, history, creativity and promise using a variety of material including velvet, cotton wool, silk and West African kente cloth.

The beloved art educator (she was inducted into the Columbia High School Hall of Fame when she left teaching at her alma mater in Maplewood, New Jersey, to focus full-time on her burgeoning art career) has indeed been “having her moment,” reported����in April. And that moment looks like it is stretching into a long career of recognition and achievement.

“My exhibit at the Art Institute Of Chicago is a dream come true,” she wrote in a recent email. “I have been a big fan and admirer of Charles White, Margaret Burroughs and Kerry James Marshall for so long, and to be able to exhibit at one of the finest art museums in the world where their work is hanging lets me know that my art ancestors are looking out for me.”

Story by Staff Writer��Mary Barr Mann