Illustration Senior Hannah Summers Artwork Added as Café Nerman Window Coverings
11.04.2026
Summers conceptualized, designed, and illustrated a new oversized, partial window covering that serves as a highly visible, welcoming work of art at the campus's main entrance. The project was completed in collaboration with the KCAI Marketing Department.
“I feel like I have a lot of edge in my art, like, edginess. So it was finding a really good balance to make something welcoming."
Whimsical Fantasy
Summers' work often centers on monsters, people in bulky suits, and fantasy settings.
The window covering leans into these strengths, featuring an astronaut and her animal companions exploring a wavy, dreamlike landscape. Drawing from campus iconography, gestural ginkgo leaves form the rising tide, composed in standout shades of purple, pink, orange, and yellow. Summers also considered how those colors would interact with the greens of the surrounding grass and the red brick of nearby Vanderslice Hall.
“I really wanted the water to feel like it was maybe pushing the person. Or maybe they were, like, kind of going against it. I don’t know, people just really like something whimsical and creative, and there’s a sketchbook in [Café Nerman], and sometimes I go through it, and it’s just always full of fantasy. And I feel like fantasy is not something that you usually see whenever you come to the school,” Summers says.
For Summers, bringing an illustration-focused work to such a prominent location on campus was an opportunity to introduce something distinctly fantastical and playful to the KCAI experience.
“And I’ve never seen my work up on such a massive scale,” she says.
Currently, Summers is working on her thesis project, a comic featuring gargoyles battling monsters. She says there is currently a strong push toward traditional art, which is how she approaches much of her own work, with a focus on big, bold lines and vibrant colors.