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I met with Jill via Zoom in December 2020. She had recently curated the 5th Annual SciVizNYC conference featuring an extraordinary program of speakers and presentations demonstrating the power and possibility of “sciart,” from interactive visualizations to guide surgeons in the operating room, to paintings referencing the impact of climate change on wildlife, to data-informed game design, to the illustrations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus “spike protein.”
We talked about her career, the methods and processes she uses to create her work, and the role of illustration in research, the delivery of healthcare, and medical education.
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SR:What interested you about becoming a medical illustrator, and how did you get started in the field?
JG: When I was in high school, I participated in a summer internship at Case Western Reserve where we learned about careers for people who are interested in science but do not want to become doctors. I loved drawing and I was curious about science, so I knew this was right for me. At The College of Wooster in Ohio, I double majored in Studio Art and Biology, and during my junior year, I came to New York to intern with freelance medical illustrator Bob Margulies. In college, we were only learning traditional fine art methods, such as drawing, oil painting and photography. Bob introduced me to media that were then the standard for medical illustration: airbrush, watercolor wash, and carbon dust; through him, I learned a new set of methods that were important in our field in the 1990s. At that time, I was caught at the crossroads between analog and computer methods. I first learned digital drawing during my graduate school training at the University of Michigan. Now, of course, nearly all of our work is done digitally and today, students learn to draw on the computer beginning in undergraduate school. [See https://www.robertmargulies.com/ for more about Jill’s early mentor, Robert Margulies.]
