Know the Artist: Jim McNeill  

                   American: born 1967

     Biography      Featured Works     Timeline       Internet Links

Jim McNeill's animated logo at left

See North Texas Institute for Educators and Visual Artists)

Find out more about Jim McNeill! On-line Interview with 5th grade students.

Biography from North Texas Institute for Educators of the Visual Arts 

Note: North Texas Institute for Educators and Visual Artists has redesigned their website all links on this page to NTIEVA are broken. This page will be redone.

Click here to read answers to Middle School students' questions. This page was done as a sample research page for "Know the Artist". Several email were exchanged with the artist. The sixth grade students did tessellations using the poster set and video from Crystal Productions. They had many questions for the artist.

See Escher Bowl student page for brief biography, description and student activities.

 
    ESCHCALIBUR 1996       TEXALLATION 1998-Trends Cover   DOWNSIZING  1995

See these other works on Jim's site: Escher Bowl; Escher Kungfu; Paul LeGonn and Tess E. Lation; The Mosh Pit (Punks); and Symmetrical Steers  
(images copyrighted by Jim McNeill - used here with his permission)

1967 - Born in Rahway, New Jersey but lived in Edison, NJ

1986 - Graduated from High School J.P. Stevens H.S. in Edison, NJ

1990 - Graduated from School of Visual Arts in New York a BFA in Media Arts (Illustration
             Major)

1990 -1994 - Worked for New York Magazine. --The Big Apple Parents' Paper (1990-1994). 
            Did traditional paste-up and layouts for them, with occasional illustrations. Did
            freelance illustration (in oil) for KSF Medical Publishing, Risk Management
            Magazine, The British/U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Macy's and Egghead Software
            during this time.

1992 - Began Desk top Publishing. Taught self how to use a computer on the job
            using PageMaker for the Big Apple Parents' Paper.

1992 - Electronic Illustration (self-taught) using copy of Adobe Illustrator at BAPP

1993/1994 -  Bought own computer (used) and started trying to figure
            out how to make illustrations with it instead of the headings and graphic design-type
            things he was doing with it at BAPP. Did 3 pieces, sent copies to Metro Creative
            Graphics and Popular Science, and started working for both of them immediately.
            Metro continues to be my main client.

1995 -Book Dream Patrol - wrote and illustrated children's book (unpublished - was online
           1996)  

1998 -"Escher Bowl" collaboration with Crystal Productions (Escher Bowl created 1996)

1999 - Production of Tessellation video and Tessellation posters (2000) for Crystal Productions.

2000-01 - Collaboration with Pam Stephen- Tessellation book The History and Making of 
           Symmetrical Designs

2001 - Flash animations (see some online) and collaboration of an animated video series of 
           artist biographies, another collaboration with Pam Stephens for Crystal Productions
           (see "Dropping in on Rousseau") Now lives in Glendale, Arizona.

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST, JIM McNEILL: Online interview with fifth grade students. North Texas Institute for Educators on the Visual Arts (NTIEVA). The same interview is in the January 2000 issue of "School Arts" Magazine.

Biographical information and description of "Escher Bowl": Study Mr. McNeill's fascinating Escher Bowl and read his brief biography (included above on this page). Then go to the Student page for activities.  Student Reproducible page (NTIEVA)

More on Integrating Art and Mathematics from the NTIEVA. Biography of M. C. Escher (NTIEVA) 

Tessellation Demo: Jim McNeill has created an interactive
"how to" website for creating tessellations. A must see site! See Flash animation "how to" Se this background demo for Flash animation. Jim McNeill's web site

JimPlex Movies:Be sure to check out my favorite-- "Lap Dance" . See his latest video: Changing of the Guides more to come - so be sure to check back.

More on Tessellation and M.C Escher: M. C. Escher Interlocking Shapes and Tessellation by David Chow (who, by the way, is only 14 years old at the time this page was updated) Some helpful hints on making tessellations from Mr. Chow. 
Read about Technology and Culture -also by Mr.Chow

Be sure to check these math/art activities! Investigating Patterns: Symmetry and Tessellations . Lots of activities to explore. These links are coordinated with the chapters and activities of " Investigating Patterns: Symmetry and Tessellations"
Jill Britton (Grades 5-8)

Math Forum: Tessellation Tutorials by Suzanne Alejandre Tutorials and templates for
making your own tessellations

If you are interested in learning about M.C. Escher and Tessellations --Try Mrs. Decker's Links page.

Tessellations by Marjorie Rice: See her love of nature, drawing, the patterns found in nature and their mathematical relationships. Click on Tessellations to see the patterns she used--then click to see her images. Beautiful work! Check these Links

Here are some activities you can try-- Written by retired art teacher Woody Duncan from Rosedale Middle School, Kansas.  Lesson plan for Tessellations and another lesson plan for Kaleidocycles.  Some very interesting and colorful Tessellations were done by Mrs. Bunki Kramer's middle school students from Los Cerros Middle School -- Be sure to look at them all! See some more student tessellation work using Mr. Duncan's lesson on Sharon Kennedy's Art-Rageous web page.

The background image for this Web page is adapted from Mr.    McNeill's Steers tessellation.  When Mr. McNeill gave me liberties to add his images to an educational Web page-- he probably had no idea I would change his colors! In looking at his tessellations, the only one I could figure out how to turn into a tile background was Steers. I opened the GIF image into PhotoDeluxe® - then cut out the white space. I copied an pasted the image several times until I got an image I cut crop-- but would match up when tiled. The neutral colors didn't look good with Mr. McNeill's logo - so I took liberty to change the color using hue and saturation feature of PhotoDeluxe®. The image is watermarked to make the text easier to read. Thank you Mr. McNeill for allowing me to have fun while I teach.

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