Jim Escalante

American, b. 1954 in Mexico City; MFA 1981; taught at UW-Madison 1989-2019
Lives and works in Madison, Wisconsin

Jim Escalante considers his birthplace of Mexico City, Mexico, where he spent his formative years, to be the place that shaped him. His parents, who grew up in Texas, sent him there for his secondary education. He became interested in taking photos in high school and later earned his BFA in photography from North Texas State University. Escalante enrolled at the University of Wisconsin—Madison after meeting Cavalliere Ketchum and seeing the letterpress shop. He studied with Phil Hamilton and Walter Hamady and went on to found Iguana Press, printing fine press books featuring the work of Naomi Shihab Nye, Mary Moss Escalante, and Mary Louise Laird. He received an MFA in typography and photography and then accepted a professorship in graphic design at Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield, Mo. In 1989, after eight years in Missouri, Escalante returned to the UW, where he taught book arts, graphic design, and photography until his retirement in 2019. His bicultural, bilingual background proved helpful in his career: “I used my comfort in balancing duality when I was in a fine art program teaching design, because I valued important components of both,” he says. Similarly, he encouraged his students to play with old technology and new, using handmade paper, laser cutters, a Vandercook press, and 3-D printers.