School of the Art Institute of Chicago

William Henry "Bill" Mauldin was a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist from the United States. He was most famous for his World War... II cartoons depicting American soldiers, as represented by the archetypal characters "Willie and Joe", two weary and bedraggled infantry troopers who stoically endure the difficulties and dangers of duty in the field. These cartoons were broadly published and distributed in the American army abroad and in the United States. Mauldin was born in Mountain Park, New Mexico. His grandfather had been a civilian cavalry scout in the Apache Wars and his father was an artilleryman in World War I. After growing up there and in Phoenix, Arizona, Mauldin took courses at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts under the tutoring of Ruth VanSickle Ford. While in Chicago, Mauldin met Will Lang Jr. and became fast friends with him. Mauldin entered the US Army via the Arizona National Guard in 1940. While in the 45th Infantry Division, Mauldin volunteered to work for the unit's newspaper, drawing cartoons about regular soldiers or "dogfaces".
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Herbert Lawrence Block, commonly known as Herblock , was an American editorial cartoonist and author best known for his commentary on national... domestic and foreign policy from a liberal perspective. Block was born in Chicago to a Catholic mother, Theresa Lupe Block, and a father of Jewish descent, David Julian Block, a chemist and electrical engineer. He started drawing at a precocious age, began taking classes at the Art Institute of Chicago when he was eleven. He adopted the "Herblock" signature in high school. After graduating in 1927, he attended Lake Forest College for almost two years. Block moved to Cleveland in 1933 to become the staff cartoonist for Newspaper Enterprise Association, a feature syndicate that distributed his cartoons nationally. He won his first Pulitzer in 1942, then spent two years in the Army doing cartoons and press releases. Upon discharge Block was hired as the chief editorial cartoonist for the Washington Post; he worked there until his death 55 years later. His personal assistant for 44 years was Jean Rickard, who was Executive Director of the Herb Block Foundation for its first 10 years.
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Apichatpong "Joe" Weerasethakul is a Thai independent film director, screenwriter, and film producer. His feature films include Uncle Boonmee Who... Can Recall His Past Lives, winner of the prestigious 2010 Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or prize; Tropical Malady, which won a jury prize at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival; Blissfully Yours, which won the top prize in the Un Certain Regard program at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival; and Syndromes and a Century, which premiered at the 63rd Venice Film Festival and was the first Thai film to be entered in competition there. Working outside the strict confines of the Thai film studio system, Weerasethakul has directed several features and dozens of short films. Themes reflected in his films include dreams, nature, sexuality , and Western perceptions of Thailand and Asia, and his films display a preference for unconventional narrative structures and for working with non-actors.
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David Sedaris is a Grammy Award-nominated American humorist, comedian, bestselling author, and radio contributor. Sedaris has been described as 'the... rock star of writers'. He was first publicly recognized in 1992 when National Public Radio broadcast his essay "SantaLand Diaries". He published his first collection of essays and short stories, Barrel Fever, in 1994. His next five subsequent essay collections, Naked , Holidays on Ice , Me Talk Pretty One Day , Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim , and When You Are Engulfed in Flames , have become New York Times Best Sellers. In 2010, he released an anthropomorphic collection of stories, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary. As of 2008, his books have collectively sold seven million copies. Much of Sedaris's humor is autobiographical and self-deprecating, and often concerns his family life, his middle class upbringing in the suburbs of Raleigh, North Carolina, Greek heritage, various jobs, education, drug use, and his life in France, and most recently in London and the South Downs.
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