“What is the use of a book,” my fictional namesake famously asked, “without pictures or conversations?” It’s still a fair question. While the world is now awash in images in a way it certainly wasn’t when Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published in the 1860s, illustrations have a unique capacity to capture our attention and imagination — and can provoke the important personal and political conversations once considered too unserious for print.
Sparking public dialogue is one of the impulses behind “The World in Our Mind,” an exhibition of works by eight Vermont illustrators currently on view at the South Burlington Public Art Gallery. It’s the first show organized by Maedeh Asgharpour, South Burlington’s new city curator.
Asgharpour, who was appointed by the city’s Public Art Committee in September, moved to Vermont last year when her husband started a job at GlobalFoundries. She grew up in Iran, where she trained in graphic design and illustration before making an international leap to earn her master’s of fine art at the University of Texas at Dallas.
Her new role, which is not salaried but includes a stipend, currently involves running the city’s art gallery and working closely with the committee on city art initiatives. “I enjoy every part of the process: working with artists, planning exhibitions and connecting with the public,” Asgharpour said. Outside of those duties, she plans to teach printmaking at BCA Studios in Burlington and focus on her own practice.
Her portfolio includes everything from videos to ceramics to handmade books, but it’s clear she has a particular love of illustration. So for her first show in the space, Asgharpour said, she thought it would be a good idea “to start with what I know.”
The exhibition brings together established illustrators such as Caldecott Medal winner Jason Chin, who has written and illustrated numerous award-laden children’s books, with artists whose work is more often seen in galleries, such as Misoo Bang and Athena Petra Tasiopoulos. Mediums in the show include everything from encaustic to Risograph (a kind of Japanese photocopy popular among zine makers).
If the mix seems eclectic, “What connects them is a shared interest in imagination and inner experiences,” Asgharpour said, “and how those invisible ideas take visual form.”
Chin’s work seamlessly bridges that boundary between inner curiosity and the wonders of the real world. In the cover illustration for his 2012 book, Island, about the Galápagos, tortoises stretch their necks to survey a scene of birds and blooming cacti as a marine iguana watches a smoking volcano in the distance. In another painting, a girl hovers over an underwater reef teeming with creatures. The sunken public library in the background tells us that she’s learning about the ocean from the book she’s holding. Given that the gallery is just outside South Burlington’s own public library, the message is clear: More than a few young visitors will undoubtedly be inspired to go choose their own book.
Chin’s wife, Deirdre Gill, is also included in the show, presenting illustrations from her book Outside. It’s the simple story of a bored kid going outside to play in the snow, but her oil-on-paper paintings are luminous and soft, conveying the hush of a winter landscape. Even without the text of the story, we see a narrative progression as the main character’s snowy creations come to life in “Snowday” and grow into giant magical dragons in “Over the House” and “When the Dragon Comes.”
Matt deForest Jenkins’ screen prints are less linear but no less narrative. The printmaker, a freelancer for Seven Days, presents scenes full of quirky details — people and creatures doing simultaneous stuff with Richard Scarry-like busyness. “Somewhere Between the Screens (Brain Rot)” gives us tubes, switches and tiny scientists running through a network of devices like hamsters in a Habitrail. “Somewhere on the Express Train (Hurry Up and Wait)” shows a subway snaking through a city: People play badminton on one rooftop and watch aliens from another; someone’s fishing between cars while a couple paddle their canoe atop the train. His images are inventive and fun to get lost in.
Bang presents three paintings in the show — the earliest works in her “Giant Asian Girl” series, all from 2015. Where newer pieces in the series situate portraits of real people as giants in all sorts of landscapes, these reimagine characters such as Sleeping Beauty and Alice in Wonderland as Asian women, posing among collaged storybook pages.
Bang tells viewers in her artist’s statement that when making these early works, “I realized I was still repeating stereotypes placed on Asian women. My figures were large in scale but avoided eye contact, posed politely, and appeared ornamental — reflecting the Western gaze I hoped to resist.” Maybe so, but by raising a difficult conversation in an approachable style, Bang’s giantesses still do a fine job of subversion.
That’s also true of the characters in Asgharpour’s own paintings and prints. They aren’t part of the show, but some are on view next door on the second floor of the library. Her work has to do with the psychological effects of migration, she said — the loneliness and longing that can come from being displaced. In the two brightly colored paintings displayed in the library, migratory birds sit on wires, recalling musical notation. In “Symphony,” a figure bikes happily along the underside of the wires. In “Backpack!” the same figure has her back to us, a cat perched cozily on her shoulder. The short poem on the label reads, “I took everything I have to take with me, / The sun was setting, / You did not fit in my backpack!”
Despite the subject, Asgharpour’s work is joyful and fun — a badly needed addition to the grim conversations about migration that permeate our current zeitgeist. Uprooted though they may be, her characters seem to find escape through imagination. Viewing a show like this one — and undoubtedly South Burlington Public Art Gallery exhibitions to come — we may perhaps all be so lucky.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Picture Perfect | New city curator Maedeh Asgharpour brings a show of illustration to South Burlington”
“The World in Our Mind,” on view through January 29 at the South Burlington Public Art Gallery.
This article appears in The Wellness Issue • 2026.
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