In the spring/summer 2020 Visual Arts Journal, SVA's magazine, we spotlighted six SVA alumni who have made their homes and found their niche in the Midwestern metropolis; over the next few weeks, we'll be presenting versions of these features online.

Recently, we featured Latoya Flowers (MFA 2012 Social Documentary Film) and Kelly King (MFA 2013 Computer Art). Next up is Richmond Jones (1961 Advertising), who resides in Chicago's Lincoln Square neighborhood.

Richmond Jones enrolled at SVA in the late 1950s, studying with several of the College’s original instructors, including founders Silas H. Rhodes and Burne Hogarth, both of whom he remembers making an effort to get to know students, "dragging stories out of them over coffee" and having them over for dinner. After a post-graduation, two-year stint in the U.S. Army and almost 10 years as an art director in New York, Jones returned to his native Chicago, where he spent the next 31 years running his own, eponymous graphic design shop, serving clients like IBM, the Illinois Central Railroad and Miller Brewing Company. That work is now in the archives of the University of Illinois at Chicago University Library’s Special Collections, which, upon receiving the gift, declared it to be “a testament to the important, but all too neglected, work of Black graphic designers, both in Chicago and at the national level.”

Features

After a 40-year career in graphic design, this SVA alumnus began painting watercolors during retirement.