My name is Denny Schmickle. I am an artist, designer, and educator. I earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Art & Design from The College of the Ozarks in Point Lookout, Missouri, and MFA in Graphic Design from The University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I like to think about how decoration, ornamentation, and pattern intersect with concepts of culture, identity, and anxiety. My hand-printed silkscreen concert posters for local and internationally touring bands have been featured in a number of exhibitions and publications. I work with a handful of clients, designing book covers, identities, band merchandise, animated album covers, and more.

In 2014, I represented the state of Oklahoma in the Four by Four 2014: Midwest Invitationalat the Springfield Art Museum in Springfield, Missouri. One artist was selected from Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. I installed hand-printed wallpapers, as well as furniture with custom upholstery, featuring patterns designed to subvert common understanding of ornamental design. The bus you see above is an unexpected outcome from that body of work. Tulsa Transit partnered with a local advertising agency to sponsor a bus covered with art for 2015 in an initiative called Art In Transit Tulsa. My submission, “Visual Overload,” was chosen and rolled around Tulsa for a year, in one case rescuing a group of kids from a gas leak.

In 2015 I joined Lindenwood University as Assistant Professor of Graphic Design, where I teach Typography, Imaging & Illustration, and Capstone amongst other courses. As the pandemic changed how we think about and deliver course material, I had already started developing purely online asynchronous course delivery. This lead me to design and develop eight of our studio courses as available fully-online and asynchronous, hybrid online and on-campus, and of course fully on-campus. Finding the opportunities in online delivery wasn’t easy at first, but as things evolved, it was nice to be able to connect with students whom we might not have otherwise. I started by writing and writing and writing. I tried to imagine all the things I would say to introduce a course or a project in the classroom, and wrote it down. Then I recorded hours and hours of footage of me introducing course content and demonstrating how to perform the various objectives required in the project. I’m still not quite comfortable seeing myself on camera, or hearing my recorded voice. But it gets easier with practice!

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