Former faculty member and current doyen of all things imaginative and miraculous, Maira Kalman, is hosting the SVA MFAD first year students at her studio in New York.

Artist, designer, printmaker, author, Kalman was born in Tel Aviv and moved to New York with her family at the age of four. Her work is a narrative journal of her life and all its absurdities. She has written and illustrated children’s books including Ooh-la-la-Max in Love, What Pete Ate, and Swami on Rye. She often illustrates for The New Yorker magazine, and is well known for her collaboration with Rick Meyerowitz on the New Yorker cover in 2001. Recent projects include Weather, Weather and Beloved Dog. She has also published The Elements of Style (illustrated) and two monthly on-line columns entitled Principles of Uncertainty (2006-07) and The Pursuit of Happiness (2008-09) for The New York Times. During 2010-12 she authored or illustrated four books including Michael Pollan’s Food Rules, and Daniel Handler’s Why We Broke Up.

Here is her 2007 TED talk, “The Illustrated Woman.”