A mentor, a teacher, a lifelong learner, May reminded us all to let go and create, and to embrace the changing Visual Communications field.

Students of Eric May were encouraged to discover, to explore fresh creative avenues. May, through his quiet humor and positive attitude, inspired designers at all levels to learn, and to never stop learning.

A professor emeritus at Kent State University, May was known for his passion for typography and letterpress. He was recognized in 2007 as an AIGA Fellow, which honors designers who have made a significant contribution to raising the standards of excellence in practice and conduct within the design community.

In every sense, May was an admired mentor who stoked the creative spirit.

May once said: “The best teaching I ever received as a student was from those who allowed me to discover to learn.” He applied this philosophy in this own classroom for more than 35 years, teaching at Murray State University in Kentucky and the University of Iowa at Iowa City. He joined Kent State University in 1971 and led a variety of courses, including: three-dimensional design, drawing, illustration, calligraphy, lettering, letterpress printing and typography.

“I try to encourage students toward that freedom of discovery," May said. It sometimes meant a simple demonstration of hand skills on my part, or perhaps an intellectual nudge in a certain direction.”

May embraced the dynamic field of Visual Communications and its constant change. And he celebrated the history of printing and honed an on-going interest in the operation of the Type High Press. Further, he spread his enthusiasm for visual communications as a resident faculty at Kent Blossom Summer Art program, the Nebraska Book Arts Center, The Paper and Book Intensive in Seattle, Wash., The University and College Designers Annual Meeting at Kiawah Island, S.C., and the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina.

At home, May allowed himself the type of creative discovery he demonstrated in the classroom. May was an active exhibiting wood engraver whose work was included in a recent edition of Endgrain: Contemporary Wood Engraving in North America (Barbarian Press, Mission, B.C.). He was invited to exhibit in Contemporary Wood Engravers at the Davidson Galleries in Seattle, Washington.

Christine Wisnieski, Art Director, Twist Creative
In celebration of Eric’s life and creative spirit, I would like to contribute thanks.
“Eric, thank you for all the years of sunshine. Your smile was truly worth a thousand words.”

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John P. Forrest Jr., Associate Professor, Sacramento State
"Patience. Most of all I think of patience. I did not excel at craft. I excelled at making things come to life on the computer not in paper and ink and lead. Eric had the patience and understanding to let me find my own way in his world. He embraced my imperfections and showed me how to make them strengths. Everyday I take that lesson to the classroom. Everyday."

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Lee Zelenak, TWIST Creative, AIGA Cleveland board member
"Eric's classes were always favorites at Kent State. A meticulous devotion to his craft inspired students, and his humble, genuine personality endeared him to students long after they graduated, myself included."

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Jennifer Visocky O'Grady, Associate Professor, CSU, Principal, Enspace
My undergraduate education was, in many ways, creative boot camp. ("I don't know, but I've been told, Univers 65 is bold!") Picture 20 bright-eyed freshmen told to introduce themselves to the people on their left and right, now watch those doe eyes when "only one of you will make it," follows. We lived by the grid, pledged our allegiance to the Swiss flag, and approached our Rubylith (look it up, kids) with special forces training. And The Program followed through with its promises, by sophomore year we were dropping like flies - those left mostly creative sinew. Take tension you can cut with an X-acto, multiply it by The Dreaded Sophomore Review (more than a few grown men cried), and you're in the right frame of mind.

Enter Eric May. And like Luke discovering Yoda in the Dagobah swamps (or insert whatever religious motif works for you), I encountered balance. After hours spent hand-rendering a perfect lower case Garamond "a," or drawing a photo-realistic saltine cracker, or squaring the edges of an inked corner with a blade, I was suddenly allowed - heck, encouraged - to make stuff again. And wasn't that the driver in the first place? Wasn't I, at heart, an art school kid with parents whose wishes included her gainful employment?

In Eric's class, caution (and occasionally glue sticks) were thrown to the wind. We made pop-ups, practiced hand-lettering, scattered carefully collected wood type (clean up your mess!). We inadvertently sniffed ink. If your project was really good, after a few minutes of quiet, contemplative folding and unfolding, he'd balance it on his head! Really good? The balancing might be accompanied by a most subtle giggle. And someone to giggle at your work? Well that might get you through just about anything, even an entire semester of cutting and pasting Helvetica. Eric taught us to take joy in the ephemeral, to delight in the unexpected, to thoughtfully present the downright wacky. Those themes appeared in his own work, brilliant, whimsical, emotive prints (critically acclaimed too, although I don't know how much that mattered to Eric). Urban legend around the building said he carved them into the hard side of a lino block, but you could have told me he carved them into kryptonite and I would've believed you. Upon graduation, one of his prints, "Rabbit in the Moon," was my first grown-up artwork purchase, and over the years my husband and I were occasionally lucky enough to be gifted with more. They hang like talismans around our house. They are fixed reminders to follow your passions, celebrate the details, and share your tricks.

Eric was a mentor, in the truest, and easiest sense of the word.

And please don't take my talk of programatic rigor the wrong way (although I may still question the fairness of the whole nine-circled-square-ink-pen-compass-Kobayashi-Maru). I have a big, giant, life crush on each KSUVCD faculty member with whom I studied. That group of men and women helped me along a path towards a career I truly love, and for that I remain deeply indebted. Somehow, in my mind, that magic, exhausting slice of time is frozen. It just happened and it's been a decade. I made friends who formed my adult persona, and haven't spoken to some of them in years. I can't quite absorb how rapidly it all plods forward.

I attended Eric's memorial this week with the best intentions of sharing these memories with his children. Instead I found myself overwhelmed by sadness, trapped in car, on a fittingly gray day, in the parking lot a funeral home that had no relation to my recollections of Kent. My husband, also a student of Eric's and lucky enough to have been his colleague too, tried to help me regain my cool by telling me that Eric was probably hanging out with Gutenberg now, folding the most elusive origami. Which got me as far as the receiving line, where the tears won out and my voice turned into Beaker's from The Muppet Show. I hope that they know how widely his absence is felt.

On the way home, I bought a linoleum block and some printing ink.

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Cece Bell, a grad student at Kent State University in the early to mid-1990's.
I first met Eric when I was touring KSU as a prospective design and illustration student (emphasis on the illustration). He showed me the press. I panicked. I couldn't hear or understand a word coming out of his mouth. I was, and am, deaf as a post -- and a pretty decent lip reader -- but Eric? I just couldn't do it. (And what would I have done if he still had that beard, as in his 1970's picture?) But Eric conveyed so much warmth and so much enthusiasm and so much rightness with design and the world, and did so without any volume, that I just knew that everything would be ok. After quite a few weeks, I had learned the language of Eric, and was talking to and hearing him with the best of them.

Eric was like my dad away from home. I was recently married when I started at Kent, and he was full of advice like, "Don't have kids. They'll just make you worry." (Liz, Kate, and Tom, he said this with nothing but love for the three of you.) I had come to the program with a super-loopy portfolio, and I definitely needed guidance, which the strict program provided. Eric helped me maintain the super-loopy side, though, and loved that side when it seemed like no one else much cared for it. And he encouraged my writing, telling me that it was funny and that I should add writing to every picture that I made. I have him to thank for my current life as a children's book writer and illustrator (and I probably should have taken his advice about those kids. They do make you worry.

Jennifer's description of that giggle -- oh, she is dead-on right -- getting that man to giggle was one of my main goals at Kent. I can't even remember how many times I would seek him out just to show him some crazy thing, either that I had made but more often some tacky thing I had found, just to get him to giggle. And I was always able to find him, because he was always there, on-site, making stuff. The other faculty made stuff, too, I reckon, at home or at their other jobs. But Eric was always right there, working all the time, sharing his talents and his skills and his love for art big and little, with whomever stopped by. You just had to listen extra-hard, and boy, was it worth it.

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