Pascal Staub Visits

The man of many styles dropped by during the cocktail hour last Thursday. Pascal Staub was visiting New York from Bern—one of his many trips to the US and New York and brought along his good friend, photographer and soon-to-be graphic designer, Jada Vogt. Pascal and Jada went to school together in Minneapolis before Pascal headed for Boston to work as a graphic designer for a few years before returning to his native Switzerland. And Jada worked in Minneapolis before she headed to New York and is now studying graphic design at Parsons The New School for Design—in the same program I used to teach in!
Pascal is unique in that he has any number of styles on his site--and all good ones! I gravitate towards a single focus in illustrators but when I first saw Pascal's work on his Grafilu site I thought he was actually an artist rep firm since his flyer had so many different portraits in different styles. When I invited his "group" to be in our next issue of 3x3 he quickly told me that no, he was the sole illustrator on all the work I'd seen.
In our talk on Thursday he related that both his parents and his teachers always pressed him to concentrate on one type of drawing. But he couldn't and hasn't. And shouldn't. Trained as a graphic designer he's only been a full-time illustrator since 2004 and will have his first major US assignment in the upcoming New Yorker summer fiction issue—portraits naturally. He's been sending Chris Curry work for some years now and as luck would have it one of his mailers reached her desk just as she was assigning the fiction issue!
We had a wonderful discussion about illustration here and there, students, young illustrators, New York and why he needed to move here. He shares a wonderful studio is in an old Toblerone chocolate factory in Bern so the chances of him migrating here are slim. But you never know.


COCKTAILS: Lillet spritzers, Lillet with homemade seltzer with a twist of lime and Pimm's Cups, Pimm's, ginger ale with a twist of lime.