eyraan online gallery

dedicated to the show and sale of illustration.

Sara Barnes, MFA Illustration Practice 2013

The internet I speak of made you choose between talking on your land-line tele-phone and surfing the web. Napster was the only way to pirate music. AOL, MSN, and ICQ were how you’d chat online. Now, by contrast, your entire career can be built on the web. You can conduct business around the world from the comfort of your own home. I was lucky enough to experience the shift from web 1.0 to web 2.0. I owe much of this to my parents; they were early adopters. My dad, especially, was not afraid to experiment with fledgling technologies. This attitude shaped my personality in a profound way. I learned how to code HTML when I was 10 years old and have been interested in the web ever since. It shaped the nature of my thesis project, eyra, which would not have been possible without a deep-rooted passion for the web.

I graduated from MICA in 2008 with a degree in Illustration. My focus in school was not on the web, but collage and mixed media illustration. In late 2009, I refreshed myself on HTML and CSS by taking a class at a local university. This reignited my love of web design. At this time, I had recently started a desk job that wasn’t cre-atively fulfilling and had a lot of down time. I spent these excess horus clicking around the web - reading blogs, perusing social media, and looking at the artwork of other people. As a struggling freelance illustrator, I was inspired by not only the work

I am a child of the internet. Not the internet we’re famil-iar with today, but one that is a distant memory.

that people were making, but their initiative in promoting themselves online. I wanted to share the amazing work that I was finding. I decided to start a blog dedicated to cataloging my findings. The Brown Paper Bag art blog began in 2010 and continues today.

Blogging is very fulfilling for me. People are inspired by the work they see on Brown Paper Bag, and my readership extends around the globe. Early in my blogging, I took advantage of this. I love to collaborate and saw this as an opportunity to work with readers and artists on special projects. After starting Brown Paper Bag, I began a collaborative interview, called Art Together. An artist and I would create a piece of artwork, and from that artwork a dialogue would emerge. The results were posted on Brown Paper Bag. Collaboration became integral in my first year of graduate school. It was during this time that I began the Collage Scrap Exchange, a global project which pairs collage artists all around the world to trade scraps.

As I began to plan my thesis project, I knew I wanted it to involve the efforts of other people. I also knew that the critical dialogue on illustration was lacking. Illustration is often considered a fine art, but I believe that it is not. Instead, it is a very accessible and democratic form of art that everyone can enjoy regardless of their background. I wanted to make this distinction through writing. Additionally, I was interested in the intersection of illustration with other areas of culture, like literature and sociology.

My thesis project, I decided, would be an online illustration gallery. Initially, I didn’t have it flushed out more than that. I was inspired by a site I had viewed, Remote Space, which was an online gallery. It had images that the user could click through, putting you in a virtual space where you made the decisions of what to look at. I was intrigued by this notion, and although I wasn’t that impressed with the website as a whole, it gave me a starting point for tackling my project.

I named my gallery eyra. The name is to reference the all seeing eye (Eye of Provi-dence) and the Eye of Ra, the feminine counterpart to the sun god. It also in refer-ence to my belief that illustration is everywhere and is intimately tied to our visual culture. As an illustrator, you must be engaged with society to understand and com-ment on it in a meaningful way.

Illustration and the web have a lot in common. They are both platforms that allow for the democracy of information and images. Both illustrators and authors of content on the web must have the same desire for their work to appear in many places and be seen by many different eyes. Illustration and websites level the playing field for information and how it is obtained. Anyone can visit the same website, see the same content, but be affected in a different way. eyra, an online gallery dedicated to illus-tration, highlights this by its very existence.

The trajectory of eyra as a thesis project had a few bumps in the road, mostly from my constant desire to redesign and refine the website.

It went something like this:

thesis proposal (Aug. ‘12)

naming and branding (Sept. ‘12)

website (Sept. - Nov, ‘12)

develop 1st show: Strangers in a Strange Land

redesign of eyra logo/branding (Oct ‘12 - Dec ‘12)

website redesign #1 (Dec. ‘12)

developing online shop

Launch of Strangers in a Strange Land (Dec. 6, 2012)

redesign shop(Dec. ‘12)

develop 2nd show: Don’t Call Me Honney

website redesign #2 (Jan. - Feb. ‘13)

Launch of Don’t Call Me Honney (Feb. 14, 2013)

develop 3nd show: Long Form

website redesign #3 (Feb. ‘13 - Mar. ‘13)

Launch of Long Form(April 25, 2013)

develop 3nd show: Long Form

Developing an exhibition for eyra takes three components into con-sideration: showing, selling, and writing about illustration.

The first step I take when planning an exhibition is establishing a theme. This will dictate who to contact, what I’ll write about, and ultimately, what kind of work will be fore sale. I am not interested in fitting fine artists into an illustrator’s box. It’s important that each illustrator in my exhibitions identify themselves as an illustrator.

The work that appears in an exhibition is made exclusively for the show. The illus-trator produces a new illustration, and agrees to have it sold in some form (either originals or prints) in eyra’s online shop.

After a theme has been introduced and illustrations produced, it is teased out in catalog form. Each exhibition has its own point of view. It contains topics that not only pertain to illustration, but to culture in general. I’ve given these catalogs a special name - eyrapports - which are a combination of the gallery’s namesake and rapport, meaning conversation.

I’m not a trained graphic designer, but I played the role with eyra.

Since eyra’s first show was set to open on December 6th, 2012 (a mere three months after school started), I had to hit the ground running. Illustrators needed to be con-tacted, a website needed to be built. Before I could do that, I needed to establish a name and brand. It was the first way I could legitimize my gallery and give potential illustrators the feeling that eyra was a project to be trusted.

Establishing a name was easy in comparison to creating an identity. I needed to brand myself so that eyra was recognizable, but did not detract from the focus of the gallery. After all, it wasn’t my work I was showing. eyra shows a variety of illustrators with varying styles. I had read about the non-brands, like Muji, who relies on a mini-malist aesthetic and lets their products do the talking. For eyra, I felt that minimalist was the right direction.

I mentioned earlier that the inspiration behind eyra’s name came from the Eye of Ra and the Eye of Providence. Using the eye motif, I created my first logo. It was pain-fully literal and felt too specific. From there, I added the name and kept with the eye motif. While it was an improvement, it was still too particular. It also didn’t speak to the kind of work I was interested in. With the muted colors, it didn’t feel “hip enough.” It didn’t stand out.

I extracted the pupil shape out of the eyeball and placed it on a textured back-ground. Eventually, I added a bright chartreuse color, which I have since deemed as eyra’s “color.” The typeface changed from Gotham (san serif) to Lubalin Graph (seif) to Museo Slab (slab serif), a web-friendly font. The eyra name and the logo don’t ap-pear together, but are interchangeable based on situation. I got rid of the texture all together and tightened up the shape by placing the almond eye in a cricle. The final result is a vector-based logo that is easy to resize and still remain viewable.

Building the eyra website was my favorite part of creating the gallery. It was like I was trying to solve a giant puzzle.

Given my background, I was comfortable with HTML and CSS. I did not, however, have any understanding of Javascript or jQuery, although I had heard them bandied about. Concurrent with my thesis, I was enrolled in a class titled Interactive Media I. It was dedicated to the web. We started from scratch and learned HTML and CSS, which gave me the opportunity to refine my skills and write more elegant code. But, with the new skills I was learning, it was hard to stay satisfied with eyra’s website. Over the course of the school year, I continually refined and redesigned eyra.co.

I had a vision for the website. I had imagined it to be interactive and dynamic. I wanted large images and attractive text. Above all, it had to be easy to navigate. The initial website was a failure, but with each revision I inched closer to my goal.

Before the first exhibition, there were two version of the website. The first one (next featured a large background image, but demonstrated that I still had a lot to learn. The second website was created in early December, one week before the launch of Strangers in a Strange Land. I had just learned how to implement jQuery plugins, and was excited at the features of a particular plugin, jQuery Curtains, and quickly redesigned eyra’s website to reflect my new-found knowledge.

First website (September, 2012 - early December 2012)This site included background images that scaled with your screen resolution, as well as a top navigation bar that stayed pinned to the top of the browser window. Aside from that, the website itself was not very innovative and required that the user click through a lot of pages.

When I first built the architecture for the site, I was still fumbling through a lot of code. I first learned CSS back in 2009, which was the cusp of CSS 2 and CSS 3. A lot had changed, and the way I had been schooled in 2009 was now outdated.

Second website (December 2012 - February 2013)For most of the semester, I was pretty unhappy with my website. So, when my Interactive Media class covered jQuery, I leapt at the opportunity to implement the Curtains plugin. Essentially, it uses paralax scrolling, which is when the con-tent on a website moves at a different speed than its background. This creates the unusual feeling of depth on the web. With Curtains, new information was revealed in a smooth scroll that mimicked the lifting of curtains.

The second website, while having to be completed in less than a week’s time, was more sucessful than its predecessor. It was attractive and concise with minimal click-ing. I felt that it made for a good user experience.

While this website was great for the official launch of eyra, I knew that I’d eventually have to redesign the site before I was to launch my second show in February of 2013.

The idea for Strangers in a Strange Land was inspired by my brother, Chris. He is working on his PhD in English and focuses a portion of his research on Post Colonial literary theory. This discipline views creative works through the idea of the Other, which, in short, is whoever we are not. With this in mind, I became very interested in this idea of the Other, a newcomer ... a stranger. I asked myself the following ques-tions: What does a stranger really mean? Who is a stranger? Aren’t we a stranger? How does this translate to illustration? How could this be depicted by illustrators?

Full of questions, I decided that this robust theme was perfect for my first exhibition. I contacted 15 illustrators with information about my gallery and a creative brief of the show. Out of those 15, I had 12 illustrators agree to participate. I was elated.

Illustrators for the show included: Aya Kakeda, Aart-Jan Venema, Bruna Canepa, Eleanor Taylor, Flann Banni, Inca Pan, Javier Olivares, Patrick Gildersleeves, Sarah Mazzetti

I selected illustrators who were story tellers. When I conceived of this show, I imag-ined that there would be some sort of interaction and conflict between characters. And, while this holds true, you can’t always tell who is the protagonist and who is the

Strangers in a Strange Land was the first show by eyra, and one that was embedded in my subconcious.

antagonist.

Strangers in a Strange Land was not only the first exhibition of eyra, but also the first publication from the gallery, too. An eyrapport accompanied the exhibition. In it, I wrote a series of short essays that all revolved around the stranger. The first essay posited that stranger is a relative term, and that, at times, we are the stranger. The second spoke of a stranger in nature, a virus, an unknown species. The third essay compared illustrating to a stranger. If you aren’t the author, then you are a stranger to text. My final essay noted that the none of the illustrators were actually from the United States.

In eyrapports, I want to get other people in on the conversation. I want other writers to lend their perspective on themes in the show. For Strangers in a Strange Land, I had my brother showcase his expertise and write about the idea of the Other, . It brought the show full circle.

I wanted large images for my website. I found Supersized slider, which was a jQuery plugin that was easy for me to implement. Images automatically resize based on the user’s screen resolution. You can customize the amount of time each slide stays on the screen, and have thumbnails that preview the rest of the show.

For Strangers in a Strange Land, I didn’t make that many changes - I wasn’t entirely sure how. I was mostly concerned with how the slider looked and that it was capable of producing a quality slide show, giving each image the attention that it deserved.

Eleanor Taylor Aart-Jan Venema

It wasn’t until the show was about to launch that I realized that none of these illustrators are actually from the United States. Aya Kakeda was the only one living in the US, but originally hails from Japan. I felt that this brought up several interesting points about the show and about myself. The internet has made us globally connected and allowed view work from all over the world without havign to leave

Aart-Jan Venema Inca Pan our desks. Personally, I have never travelled outside of North America, so this show is a way of ex-pressing my desire to experience cultures that are unlike my own.

Sarah Mazzetti

Javier Olivares

Aya Kakeda

Patrick Gildersleeves

Bruna Canepa

Flann Banni

eyrapports are available to view online and available for sale, too. This is the first printed copy. It is a perfect-bound soft cover.

I created the cover image, referencing a stranger in the dark. Since I design the cover, it is a way to secretly illustrate something in the show.

Everything in an eyra exhibition is for sale. So far, this includes original illustrations, high-quality prints, and illustrated accessories. It is preferable that I have original works for sale, but for the time being I am mostly stocking prints. Janna Morton, whose work appear in Don’t Call Me Honney created a series of Baltimore brooches which are for sale, too.

To sell work in the shop, I’ve drafted up a couple of contracts that illustrators sign prior to a show being launched. This allows me to sell their work and provides guide-lines for payment, including percentage of payment. Currently, if an original piece of illustration is sold, the illustrator gets 70% of the selling price. If a print is sold, they receive 30% of the selling price. Items are exclusive to the gallery for six months.

Before eyra, I had never run an online shop and needed to do my homework. My big-gest concerns were selling percentages and the ability to customize the storefront. After weighing my options, I finally decided to use the site Storenvy. At the time, it was a fairly new e-marketplace with 0% selling and listing fees. I was also able to strip the default interface and use CSS to completely customize my store.

It was important to me that people be able to buy something from the eyra shop

I’ve worked retail in real life, but I was never an online shop owner until eyra.

using the least amount of clicks necessary. I organized the store by types of products (original illustrations, prints, and accessories), as well as specific exhibitions. That way, the shopper wouldn’t waste their time looking at items they weren’t interested in.

I discovered that running an online shop is more than just listing items, I was stunned when I sold my first piece (a print of Inca Pan’s illustration, Strange People) and was unprepared to actually ship an item. I didn’t have any mailers, backing boards, or plastic sleeves to protect the print. It was a mistake that I won’t repeat.

The Curtains plugin was great for eyra’s website when there was only one show. It was all about Strangers in a Strange Land, and that was fine. Curtains, however, lends itself well to a single narrative and linear story. The drawing of the “curtains” felt like you were watching different acts of the same play.

But, eyra was more than just Strangers in a Strange Land. A mere two months after the first show launched, another one was set to open. Don’t Call Me Honney, an exhi-bition about Baltimore, had a totally different look and feel to Strangers in a Strange Land. I wanted them to both feel distinct.

The design of the site at that time revolved around the colors, textures, and imagery of Strangers. It was the same issue I had with my branding. eyra.co needed to be re-designed to support an array of exhibitions that eyra was sure to have in the future. The site needed to exist separately from them.

My solution for this was to base it on it on portfolio sites I had seen which showcase a variety of projects. There was navigation at the top of the page, which now made the logo a much more prominent player on the site. (Before this redesign, the logo didn’t make an appearance!) The introduction copy was left the same, and the tall

While ultimately happy with the current iteration of my site, I knew that another redesign loomed.

green stripe informed the user what the site was about. Below that, an batch of im-ages led the user to different exhibitions and areas of the site. Mousing over each picture would explain what each link was

While I could now comfortably display more eyra content, I wasn’t in love with this design. It felt less dynamic than my previous iteration, and wasn’t very bold. The site didn’t immediately tell someone that they were about to see some amazing illustra-tion; the design didn’t say much at all.

I’ve never really had the desire to move to New York City. I grew up in a medium-sized city and was spoiled by living space. Baltimore isn’t that different than my hometown. I live in an apartment that’s huge by New York City standards and would like to keep it that way.

Still, I can’t deny that New York City has the glitz and glamour that’s lacking from the rust belt city of Baltimore. And, while I lament that there’s not more shiney here, I see city as tool for inspiration.

With this in mind, eyra’s second exhibition was titled Don’t Call Me Honney, a love letter to Baltimore. The misspelling of “Honney” refers to a couple of Baltimore-specific quirks. “Hon” is the favored term of endearment around the city. It is a part of the Baltimore dialect, Balwmerese, which can unintelligable to outsiders. The show featured six Baltimore-based illustrators who are living and working in the city. Illustrations included in the show featured Baltimore in some way.

Illustrators for the show included: Andrew Liang, Christopher Adams, Cornel Rubino, Julianna Brion, Janna Morton, and Jun Cen

Don’t Call Me Honney was my love letter to Baltimore, my home of the last eight years (and foreseeable future).

I was interested in the different facets of Baltimore, as well as the illustrators who were creating them. I purposely chose people who were recent and not-so-recent transplants, as well as an illustrator who had spent her whole life in the city.

Like Strangers in a Strange Land, I went into this show with questions. Where do we find inspiration? How do we become inspired? And, most importantly, how does where we live affect us in the most minute ways?

The eyrapport for this exhibition included a few short essays written by me. I discuss the fractured personalities of Baltimore; the way the city is depicted on television show The Wire (gritty and depressing), compared with community festivals like the Hon Fest (where women wear their hair in beehives and don cat eye glasses). I also spoke of the way low income neighborhoods can be adjacent to affluent neighbor-hoods but never integrate. In a later essay, I consider that our surroundings give us a frame of reference. Especially Baltimore, with its memorable icons like a giant pink flamingo, Washington Monuments, or dragon boats that grace the Inner Harbor. I posit the question, “If you were to draw a house, would it be a row house?” This issue of the eyrapport also included a lot of writing from the illustrators themselves. Both Cornel Rubino and Andrew Liang used the opportunity to talk about their connec-tion to Baltimore.

The show was a homage to the city that I now call my home.

I used the Supersized slider for Don’t Call Me Honney. By this time I was more knowledgeable on jQuery plugins. I tweaked little things like the amount of time a slide would stay on the screen and at what slide played when you loaded the player.

After using the slider a second time, it occured to me that this solution was expected at this point, and that I should use abilities to create a unique experience for the viewer for my next show.

Cornel Rubino

Andrew Liang

Andrew Liang

Christopher Adams

Jun Cen Janna Morton

Julianna Brion

Janna Morton

Jan

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Mo

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This is the printed eyrapport for Don’t Call Me Honney. It was produced as a hard-cover book with a dust jacket.

Again, I designed the cover. Window screen paintings and formstone concrete are two defining features of a Baltimore rowhouse. This is a digital painting paying hom-age to this these tacky yet cherished traditions.

Finally, the final redesign.

I was bored by the latest redesign of eyra.co. It was launched and immediately felt stale. There had to be a better solution! I continued to scour the internet for inspira-tion. Parallax scrolling was still on my mind, and I found another jQuery plugin that utilized it in a different way. Instead of drawing curtains and telling us a story, the new plugin, Scrolly, simply controlled the speed of scrolling. Finally, something that I could use!

For inspiration, I looked beyond artists’ portfolio to the websites of fashion designers, car companies, and Victoria Beckham. These were sites with a purpose (to inform and sell), but they also celebrated the web. On some level, I wanted eyra to feel the same way.

I returned back to the core values of my website. Large images, attractive text, and above all, easy to use. By this time, I had completed my Interactive Media I course and moved on to Interactive Media II. My knowledge of jQuery was growing, and I felt that I was finally able to do some interesting things with the web.

I kept some attributes of the last redesign. Navigation is the same, as is the introduc-tory chartreuse stripe. Beyond this, everything is different. With the exception of the

exhibition pages, all of the information can be accessed on the index page. Every-thing is organized into sections. The background is now both a decorative element and the branding for a particular section. Important information is front and center, contained within white circles and rectangles. Extra information is hidden using jQuery tools to save space while scrolling, but easily accessible if you want to read more. Smooth, animated scrolling graces the links.

It took me six months to finally figure out what is best for eyra, and I’m finally happy with this version of the site. The journey to get here feels much like the stumbling I did when trying to brand eyra. I knew what I wanted, but the path to get there was full of bumps.

For the past several months, I’ve been contacting illustrators about eyra. I reach out to anyone that I’m interested in working with. John Chae and I had been cor-responding since last fall. I was excited by his work and featured it on Brown Paper Bag. He emailed me about the post, thanking me for such a kind write-up. I took this opportunity to tell him about eyra and inquired if he’d ever be interested in partici-pating. After much back and forth, including talk of a creating an accordion fold print, he revealed a very tall illustration he was working on. It sparked my imagination, and I suddenly had the idea for Long Form. Inspired by John’s piece, I would curate a show that revolved around works that unusually long or tall.

I contacted illustrators that worked in a variety of ways; I wanted a mixture of illustra-tors that worked digitally as well as traditionally. I wanted some visual tension. Also of interest were illustrators that don’t normally work in extended formats. What would their work look like if this was the case? Who would be up for the challenge?

Illustrators for this show included: Ana Benaroya, Andrea Rossi, Jessi Noonan, John Chae, Kyle Pellet, Rand Renfrow, Seo Kim, and Wai Wai Pang

Out of the three shows I have curated so far, Long Form has been my favorite. With

Long Form is long.

this show I wanted to display the illustrations differently than in the past. Since they were either going to be long or tall, viewing them on the Supersized slider wasn’t go-ing to be the best solution. These images were detailed and required a careful view-ing. I discovered a jQuery plugin, oriDomi, that folded elements up like paper. The user use their cursor to unfold them. This concept guided the branding of the show, which replicates folded paper, as well.

This show is a work in progress. While the images are up for all to see and you can purchase work from the shop, the eyrapport for Long Form is currently on hold. Physically, it will be of a disproportionate size like the works in the show. I am cur-rently researching the Bayeux Tapestry, which I feel informs the long form works be-ing made today. Aside from research, this eyrapport will have a paper toy element to it. You’ll be able to make a Chinese finger trap by cutting out part of the publication.

Long Form represents a way of thinking that differentiates eyra from so many other things on the internet (and beyond). Instead of finding a formula that works, I am in-terested in creating unique projects that require me to dismiss what is conventional and safe.

On the Long Form website, you use your mouse to un-fold Kyle’s work. The act of doing this is not only interac-tive, but forces you to slow down and look at the details of each piece.

Kyle Pellet

Se

o K

im

Ana Benaroya

Andrea Rossi

Ana Benaroya

Wai

Wai

Pan

g

Je

ssi N

oo

nan

Jo

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Ch

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Ran

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en

fro

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There is a fan base, and I’ve done a bit of work getting in touch with bloggers and websites who would be interested in eyra. As I move forward with this gallery, I don’t see it as having an end date. I see it as a sustainable business venture.

eyra is my playground. I can use it to explore and experiment with things that interest me. When I look back at the first few shows, I see them as trying to find my footing. Subsequent exhibitions on eyra.co will be innovative and push the boundaries of illustration. The concept of an online show is somewhat new, and through my re-search, not very interactive. Buy Some Damn Art, for instance, is a website dedicated to selling original art that features new artists each week. But, the format is very static. The site which doesn’t make the experience of viewing the work any differ-ent than just looking at someone’s Facebook photos. I want to really consider the user when I craft my shows. What is their viewing experience like? How can I make it dynamic? Alternatively, how can I craft exhibitions that are interesting and innovative in their very construct?

I am beginning to contact illustrators for an show in October 2013. It is titled Sampler, and features embroidered illustrations. In addition to contributing their own work, I also am organizing a large collaborative project, where each illustrator will work on a

By the end of my thesis year, eyra produced three shows, with more planned throughout the year 2013. I’ve crafted a website I’m proud of, and have developed a rhythm of how exhibitions are put together.

single piece of fabric that is passed throughout the participating group.

I have ideas and want more people to see them. Marketing is crucial if I expect to gain more audience for eyra. I’ve identified websites and blogs that sell advertising. They also have a readership that is eyra’s target market; those that enjoy illustra-tion and enjoy how it intersects with other parts of our culture. Pikaland, Doodlers Anonymous and Design Sponge, are just three of the blogs that I will be contacting about advertising. These blogs have large readerships with dedicated followers. Up-percase Magazine also does unique all-text ads in their magazine that is also on my advertising radar. Another form of advertising will be in premiums. On Brown Paper Bag, I will host a giveaway for readers to pick a print of their choice. Through eyra’s branding and advertising of its shop, it can attract more potential buyers and be-come a destination for original, interesting illustration.

Marketing will also come in the form of partnerships. These partnerships will be stra-tegic to websites, magazines, and companies that are an excellent fit for eyra as well as a great fit for the collaboration. Lifestyle magazines such as Lonny can integrate cool illustration from my gallery as a way to sell a lifestyle. For websites that more focused on the intersecting of culture, eyra can be spun to partner with them. Aes-thetica Magazine, based in the UK, and the newly-launched sister site of Pitchfork.com, Nothing Major, are other potential partners. eyra comments on visual culture through writing. In this case, eyra is more of a vessel for illustration thinking rather than selling it. I imagine that guest curators or collaborations could come from these partnerships.

To market eyra offline, additional partnerships will be established with local shops around Baltimore. Throve in Hampden is an example. They carry a lot of quirky and well-designed goods, targeting individuals with a disposable income and interested in decor that’s cut above the rest.

Finally, I see my blog Brown Paper Bag and eyra as having a symbiotic relationship. I’ve spent years cultivating an online presence on this blog. I’ve worked hard to gain Twitter followers and make connections with artists and bloggers. Entrepreneur Kelly Lynn Jones is an excellent example of this. She is the creator of Little Paper Planes, and online shop that sells work from artists. She’s allowed it to grow and integrate with other projects. Since the launch of the website, Kelly has created her own cloth-ing line, published a book through Chronicle Books, and has recently turned Little Paper Planes into a brick-and-mortar store.

Brown Paper Bag will be a way that I can advertise shows for eyra. I can create ad-ditional content, enriching my exhibitions by doing studio visits with the illustrators involved in my shows and posting excerpts from eyrapports. I can also use this as a platform to communicate ideas that relate to eyra, but are more suitable for a blog format. For instance, in the past I have featured the work of illustrators currently showing on eyra.co. Christopher Adams, one of the illustrators in Don’t Call Me Hon-ney, had also produced a comic book titled Period. I reviewed it on the blog, using the opportunity to cover part of the eyra exhibition.

Now that eyra has a solid base, it’s time for more people to know about it. I intend to pursue several paths when promoting my venture. Through conventional advertising, interesting partnerships, and my own blog, I will take every opportunity to showcase the gallery in a way that is true to its spirit.

That’s it! That’s the end! But before you close the book...

This is the thesis book of Sara Barnes’ thesis project, eyra. The type was set by me, Sara Barnes, and composed using Museo Slab and Neutra Text.

I’d like to give a special thanks to my professors, Whitney Sherman and Jaime Zollars, for all of their guidence through this project. I am grateful for their thoughtful com-ments and suggestions.

I also want to thank to my friends for keeping me sane over these past two years by reminding me that there is life outside of graduate school.

And, of course, none of this would be possible without the loving support and en-couragement from my parents, Alan and Kathy, and my brother Chris.

© 2013 Sara Barnes. All images © the respective illustrator.

Sara Barnes, MFA Illustration Practice 2013