My most recent illustration for the Modern Money Network was a lesson in history and art history. They found me through my Hire an Illustrator portfolio when I was a featured member about a month ago. Their thought was to have an illustration style that “blends the seriousness of Constructivism (think Soviet ’20s and abstract New Deal art) and the hyperbolic playfulness of present superhero aesthetics like X-Men. The idea is to conjure a sense of great meaning and purpose without lapsing into plain nostalgia or socialistic earnestness.”

I was in heaven! Mixing Russian Constructivism with Depression-era murals with comics? I was hooked. The client was very pleased: “The contemporary visual culture surrounding full employment politics is narrow and impoverished. Case in point: even pro-Job Guarantee articles tend to only feature pictures of white men in hard hats or nostalgic images from the WPA. Montgomery’s banner, by contrast, conjures myriad types of persons and professions, while pointing to multiple forms of socially useful work.”