Director
Story & Material is a design research and making initiative founded and directed by Gaby Hernández, Associate Professor and Endowed Chair of Graphic Design in the School of Art at the University of Arkansas. Prof. Hernández, born and raised in Costa Rica, has over 15 years of teaching and research experience in design and culture, entrepreneurship, and equity, as well as multidisciplinary, decolonial, and horizontal design practices and methods.
Her current subjects of interest characterize the focus of Story & Material: the relation between material culture, heritage, and design, visual storytelling, memory, and identity. She explores ways to facilitate visual expression that results in the discovery of individuals' unique visual languages. For her, the particularities of these visual languages exemplify how the decolonial design project must recognize the novel ways in which each person builds their identity and legacy through spontaneous art making and designerly activities, outside of canonical frameworks and aside from their collective.
2023 Summer Fellow
Sumi Limbu, from Nepal, is a second year student in the Master of Design program at the School of Art. She is also the first Story & Material Summer Fellow, currently studying the visual culture of her Limbu tribe inheritance.
Research Affiliate
mike durkin (he/him/y’all) is a large-bodied multidisciplinary social practice performance artist residing in Philadelphia and New York City. The intersection between art and the everyday guides mike (lowercase to de-center himself for the process). He has created site-responsive social practice productions exploring houselessness, food access, place, and gentrification.
durkin is currently collaborating with Gaby Hernández in a series of visual storytelling toolkits that facilitate the documentation of memory through food traditions.
Prof. Hernández' collaborations go beyond Story & Material. Her collaborators in Arkansas and the School of Art include: Professors Angela LaPorte, Christopher Schulte, and Jean Schmitt (Art Education & Art Foundations), her Graphic Design Area colleagues, CACHE, Thrive Inc., and her dynamic MDES students.
