Hailed for his iconic art on the cover of Time and dubbed “America’s illustrator in chief” (Fast Company), Edel Rodriguez is among the most prominent political artists of our age. When Rodriguez was nine, Fidel Castro announced his surprising decision to let 125,000 traitors of the revolution, or “worms,” leave Cuba. Before they could leave, his family was imprisoned and then marched to a flotilla that miraculously deposited them, overnight, in Florida. Worm recounts the coming-of-age of an artist and activist, who, witnessing America’s turn from democracy to extremism, struggles to differentiate his adoptive country from the dictatorship he fled.
This conversation will be moderated by artist, designer, and educator, Maria Krasinski.
About the speakers:
Edel Rodriguez is a Cuban American artist who has exhibited internationally with shows in New York, Los Angeles, Havana, Berlin, La Paz, Cape Town, Prague, and London. A regular contributor to the New Yorker, the New York Times, and Time magazine, he has created more than two hundred magazine and book covers and illustrated several children’s books, including Sonia Sotomayor: A Judge Grows in the Bronx, and is the author of Sergio Jumps and Sergio Saves the Game. Rodriguez’s artwork is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution, among others, and he has received numerous awards from the Art Directors Club and the Society of Illustrators. Worm is his first graphic novel. He lives in New Jersey.
Maria Krasinski is an artist, designer, and multimedia educator. She is managing director of News Decoder, a Paris-based educational news platform that partners with schools around the world to build global citizenship through journalism. She is the illustrator of the books Art Hiding in New York and Art Hiding in Paris, and the forthcoming title, I’m Not Your Muse: Uncovering the Overshadowed Brilliance of Women Artists & Visionaries.
