About the Designer

Jesse Merandy is the Director of Digital Humanities/Digital Exhibitions (DH/DX) at Bard Graduate Center. His research interests include interactive technology and pedagogy, digital exhibition design, Walt Whitman, and nineteenth-century New York City. He holds a PhD in English from the Graduate Center at CUNY, where he completed the institution’s first all-digital dissertation, Vanishing Leaves, a location-based mobile experience which brings users to Brooklyn Heights to learn about the life and work of Whitman. He is a founding and current board member of the Walt Whitman Initiative.

An honorable mention goes to artist John Gutoskey, who sent in this beautiful and meaningful poster idea. Thanks John!

John Gutoskey: my artwork looks critically at & comments upon the personal, political, & social issues affecting the LGBTQ community. I ground a lot of my work in queer theory to shine a spotlight on queerness, queer culture & history, and what it means to be queer in contemporary society. My need to respond to current events is what keeps me going back into my studio to make new work. My subjects over the past 15 years have included marriage equality, queer families, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, liminality & queer space, Walt Whitman, the Pulse Nightclub massacre, HIV-AIDS, queer spirituality, the Pansy Craze, & queer identity. My work has been shown in galleries, museums, & art fairs around the US. BFA, Webster University in St. Louis in theater design (minor in sculpture). MFA, University of Michigan School of Art & Design in printmaking (certificate in LGBTQ Studies). I am the owner of JG Studio and the A2 Print Studio in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Find my entire series of Whitman prints here and prints for sale here.