christopher darling

Tennessee Williams has a quote, “America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland”. The series is a response to this generalized attitude, and seeks to expose different parts of the culturally rich, often misunderstood, and diverse city. 

Images (top to bottom):

Bus Stop, East Cleveland

The Cleveland Orchestra Plays Respighi

Thirty-Three, Cumberland Park

Lake Erie & the Brantenahl Intercity Yacht Club

Picasso & Woman Reflect on Brancusi

Mural Project

International campaign for the UNHCR surrounding the current global refugee crisis.

Top & middle images: Clickable icons that appeared on the United Nations HRA website. When clicked, interactive information/research and videos appeared. 

Bottom Image: Single page editorial & poster calling to the website, www.forcedtoflee.com

Top image: Article about Fad diets

Middle image: Article about higher rates of infant mortality among minorities.

Bottom image: Artwork for an article about a doctor having trouble diagnosing a woman's headaches. 

Animation for the 100th anniversary of Robert Johnson's Crossroad Blues. Commissioned by Sony Music & Legacy Records. Animated by the award winning String Theory. More information here. 

Works created for ILLOZINE. Each issue is themed (from top to bottom): Dracula's Guest Issue, The EEK! Issue, and the Organic Machine Issue. 

Cover artwork for The L Magazine: Brooklyn's 50 Best Blocks issue. 

Top image: Cover Illustration of Summer Issue

Bottom image: Full-page illustration about educational obstacles students face

Cover illustration and exerpt of 8-page interior comic for Frieze Magazine. Story by Greg Sholette.

Over the summer of 2017, with the help of a grant from Kent State's College of Communication and Information and Oriana House, I designed educational classes that ran 6 weeks at Community Based Correctional Facility in Cleveland. In the classes 15 clients and I worked on portraits: self-portraits and portraits of those who might be found in the Hough neighborhood of Cleveland. Over another 6 weeks, those 15 clients and roughly 10-15 design students from Kent State painted a collaborative mural in Cleveland. Two Kent design alums, Evan Laisure and Alex Tharnish put in innumerable hours toward the project. The mural measures approx. 112 feet x 40 feet and received a silver medal from the New York Society of Illustrators in the Surface Design category. 

Collaborative mural in East Cleveland at the North Star Reentry Center. I worked with Akron's Oriana House, Kent State graduate student Terran Washington, and nine clients from Community Based Correctional Facility. The project was preceded by several weeks of art classes and lectures. 

2/3 Designs commissioned by the music group CAKE that were applied to all of their apparel.

Poster created for the Wick Poetry Center & Kent State University based off of the poem Testimonial by U.S. poet laureate, Rita Dove. The poem was from Dove's book, On the Bus with Rosa Parks, and the image was used as a poster, mailer, and animation coinciding with Dove's appearance and reading at Kent State University.  

Portrait of Otto Weininger for German philosophy magazine, Hohe Luft. 

Book cover redesign of SHREK! for Farrar Straus & Giroux (NYC). Artwork by William Steig.

Excerpt from A 40-page graphic narrative about a man in Manhattan who awakes to find himself transformed into a deer.