Merrimack Valley Magazine

UML Professor Ingrid Hess’ Vibrant Designs Inspire Change.

For Ingrid Hess, an author-illustrator of children’s books and assistant professor of graphic design at UMass Lowell, an ethical mission has long been intertwined with her work as an artist and teacher. When Hess left a high-pressure publishing job in 1999, she had to decide whether she wanted to stay in the design field. After a long meeting with herself, Hess arrived at a conclusion: If she could find ways to incorporate her core values into design work, a proper balance would be struck.

In the years since, Hess has encouraged her students to design with ethics in mind. She says design is a tool like any other: “You can use a hammer for good or you can use a hammer for bad. The hammer itself is neutral.”

Hess sees designing for children as one of the most effective ways to seed change. During the summer of 2018, she traveled to Ireland as a Fulbright Scholar and created visual teaching materials at Mary Immaculate College in Limerick. The college educates 40% of Ireland’s elementary school teachers. She realized the use of her materials by teachers was a great way to inspire kids. There, she designed banners to convey messages on the topics of diversity and immigration in Ireland, while weaving in the history of Irish immigration to America.

Hess’ recent book, “Mr. Magnificent’s Magical Merrimack Adventure,” incorporates the Irish heritage of one of the kid characters with his three friends of Cambodian, Greek and Kenyan descent. As they gaze upon the Merrimack Valley from Mr. Magnificent’s hot-air balloon, the children peer into the past at images ranging from Native American ways of life pre-contact to 19th century immigrant mill workers fighting for fair wages. A reminder of the journeys undertaken by their own ancestors ties together their new perspective. Hess sought insight from UMass Lowell history professors in the creation of the book, and that kind of collaboration is part of what she cherishes about working at a university.

In a related project, a new website is expected to go live by Jan. 1 that involves the efforts of Hess, UMass Lowell history professor Robert Forrant, and student researchers and designers. The site, which will be called the Library of New England Immigration, will be the first of its kind. The purpose of the database is to compile in one location the information from several different reservoirs of immigration history.

Hess is a proponent of integrating the arts into school curricula, as well as using creative expression as a way to foster social change. Her 2017 book, “Mister Magnificent’s Magical Merrimack Adventure,” is set in the Merrimack Valley. To expand her sense of the region’s history, she collaborated with colleagues at UMass Lowell during the writing process.

While Forrant’s history students gather research, some of Hess’ students will design motion graphics to bring stories to life. “I couldn’t make that website; he provided 100% of the content,” Hess says. “But he couldn’t make that website; he had all this content and nothing to do with it. And so, it was really in the collaboration that something magic happened.”

Hess is also excited about another upcoming project, in which she’ll work with UMass Lowell Kennedy College of Sciences Dean Noureddine Melikechi to create an illustrated book on the science of color.

And there’s more. This summer, Hess will fly to Australia for an artist’s residency at Wollemi National Park. She’ll be synthesizing her love of the STEAM ethic (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) with her mission to affect change by designing for kids with materials that teach proper environmental stewardship.

Ingrid Hess (above) is an author, illustrator and educator. She has published multiple books for children, including two that won national awards. Her colorful yet understated work is inspired by her Amish/Mennonite heritage and the years she spent in Costa Rica as a child.

On a typically gray afternoon, the sky “perpetually spitting” upon our heads, we rolled our bags from the Queen’s Road aboveground along the bumpy and narrow streets of Peckham Rye to our daughter’s flat. We had completed the initial leg of our journey. After a proper power nap and delighting in a favorite game of “What’s for dinner?” we were off again. Tara Plath M.A. guided the three of us onto the number 136 double-decker bus to the Camberwell district’s Zeret Kitchen — a clandestine Ethiopian restaurant, and a first for me. Carol, her Spanish friend of the past year, joined us before we all reveled in the homemade injera flatbread and the dipping, blending, folding and otherwise scooping up of the exotic flavors on the beautifully displayed platter — the evening a metaphor for our days ahead, internationally-diverse London as backdrop.

The inspiration for our trip was Tara’s dissertation — and those of her co-researcher classmates from Turkey, Italy, Lebanon, Portugal, Canada, Greece, Russia, England and beyond — this past year of globally-inspired projects culminating in a three-day themed: “Lines of Inquiry.” Tara presented “Smoke/Signals,” a workshop of “open source investigation practices” in order to document “conditions of border violence” and “the construction of (il)legality in undocumented migration” along the Mexico-Arizona border. Her thesis investigated the true intent of the 56 or so light beacons placed throughout Arizona’s desert. What are the results? What is legal vs. not in terms of humanitarian efforts to spare the lives of those who have been (mis)directed into the harshest of conditions? Conditions she witnessed in actual boots-on-the-ground exploration. She spent days accompanying humanitarian groups known as the Armadillos and No More Deaths/No Mas Muertes, clothed head to toe in protection from triple-digit heat and the cactus-laden terrain, seeking human remains in one small area of over 20,000 square miles of desert — wanting to bring closure to families missing loved ones.

Yeah, “it’s a lot” — one phrase of many that I have gleaned from her over the years. Her Greek workshop partner, Dimitra Andritsou, performed a similar investigation in the Mediterranean, studying the anti-immigration political narrative relative to fires in Lesvos, Greece, where thousands of asylum seekers live in overcrowded, highly flammable tents with hopes of one day being granted the freedom to leave the containment of the detention camps.

This one-of-a-kind international research program leaves me hopeful that our world might one day become better united in valuing people’s health and freedom ahead of profits and power.

To say these three days were awe-inspiring would be an understatement, if that’s possible. The genesis and genius, the ethics — all so deep, so intense. The complexity was dizzying. They researched atrocities in the form of state-sponsored violence, dispossession in the quest for corporate profits in both the Amazon and Louisiana, traumas caused in a war-torn city’s reconstruction … a seemingly endless list of worldwide distress. The intensity rose to the level that one woman reported upon Russian colonialism while using an alias and wearing a mask in fear of government retribution.

Three days later, filled with pride and new perspectives on old global politics, we are back at Gatwick Airport, destination next: Portugal.

With seat belt clasped, I continue this column from row 14 on a delayed British Airways 747, typing short-armed as we wait for a fog to lift over Porto’s airport. I can’t help but wonder if the weather relates to the Category 5 hurricane forming in the “easternmost location of the Atlantic on record,” which leads me further to ponder any possible connection to the overall deforestation and “land violence” that threatens indigenous populations in South America — recently learned realities now haunting my brain! We have just come from lunch at Persepolis — aka “Snackistan” — a tiny Persian vegetarian restaurant and Tara’s favorite during her master’s work in forensic architecture at Goldsmiths University. This one-of-a-kind international research program leaves me hopeful that our world might one day become better united in valuing people’s health and freedom ahead of profits and power. Our daughter? She’s less optimistic, but committed nonetheless — her circle of contemporaries shining beacons of hope.

We are thrilled that she is joining us for this final leg of travel with a lighter research agenda planned. Port wine and Portuguese preparations of coastal seafood topping the list.* “Tray tables up,” I close my eyes near giddy with happy thoughts as we transition to sunnier days ahead. For a few days, at least.

*Should you be interested in reading about that perspective, please visit splath.com.

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