Iowa Snowstorms and Beyond

Conference program booklet © 2005

Above It was fun to run across this recently, a reminder of a wonderful weekend from almost ten years ago. It's the program booklet (with an exquisite parody logo designed by Argentine architect Maria Buteler Tilliard, who was a student at the time) for the graphic design faculty's first non-funded conference at the University of Northern Iowa. It was an exhausting delightful success, so much that the following year it prompted us to improvise the first international conference on art and camouflage in 2006 (non-funded as well), which was as much or more a success.

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Alfredo Veiravé (Argentine poet), "Memories of Iowa City and the international Writing Program" in Paul Engle, et al., The World Comes to Iowa. Ames IA: Iowa State University Press, 1987, pp. 195-196—

Starting in September, I already began thinking about what snow in Iowa would be like. As autumn wore on and winter came, that promise was approaching…until one morning when I woke up I heard a noise at the bedroom window. It sounded like a bird lightly touching the glass. While I was coming fully awake I had memories of similar sounds, such as that of some strange animal rubbing against the glass. And suddenly I remembered the snow, and I jumped out of bed and went to the window. There it was: snow. During the night the whole countryside had changed to white as if by magic. I was so excited that we had to get dressed and run out into the street to feel the light, magical Iowa snow.