LIFE IS SPEEDING UP. The world is shrinking. As a result, people everywhere find themselves exploring a rapidly expanding frontier of information and opportunity. Illustration, in this intrepid, wild-west context, has become more important and powerful than ever.

Illustration can do things other forms of communication can't: with a single image in a mere instant’s encounter, it can illuminate the ideas, inventions, and zeitgeists of our day. Illustration is a public art and meets people on the street, where we live. It has the power to make our in-between places come alive, to cause people to re-vision the ordinary. It has the power to redirect societal flows and jumpstart new ones, to change our perceptions and, in that, to alter our experiences.

The PNCA Illustration curriculum aims to equip ambitious students with every tool a modern visual communicator needs. The idealist who seeks to see, understand, and reshape individual and collective visions. The fun-lover who rides crazy new ideas like a surfer rides forty-foot swells. The artisan, the analytic, the future gaming mogul: Everyone learns the field’s classic technical disciplines, everyone learns the complex entrepreneurial skills needed to thrive, and everyone is pressed to discover the compelling personal vision that will sustain a lifetime of vibrant work and a strong client base.

But getting back to the modern world as Wild West 2.0: Being about as far west as you can get, we like to think there’s something in the Portland air (and coffee) that helps artists grok what it means to step out into the big bad world and, as they say, paint the town red.

Or blue. Yeah - or whatever color matches your ten-gallon hat.