As the coordinator of graphics at Southern for more than 25 years, Marylou Ready Conley, ’83, has created countless communications and marketing materials. Her work includes billboards, marketing campaigns, campus bus and police car wraps, logos, and more — including every issue of Southern Alumni Magazine — all dedicated to showcasing the university.
Nature and family are lifelong sources of inspiration. Conley spent summers at her grandfather’s shore-side cottage in Milford, Conn., walking the beach with her sister Kathleen and their many cousins. The shifting tides revealed treasures: shells, seaweed, snails, smalls crabs, and sea glass.
She was equally drawn to the nearby woods. “We spent a lot of time mushrooming with my dad,” Conley says. “He taught us to identify different types — to see the differences between those that are edible and those that are deadly. Focusing on the details obviously is incredibly important. I have strong memories of looking at my dad’s beautiful books on mushrooming and being awed by the illustrations.”
Today, Conley channels that same detailed focus into her art, highlighting the intricacies of the natural world. She took her first course in natural science illustration at the Creative Arts Workshop in New Haven in the early 1990s (on scholarship) and has been honing her skills ever since. Working in graphite, colored pencil, pen and ink, and watercolors, she’s studied with artist Graziella Patrucco de Solodow and through the Yale Peabody Natural Science Illustration Program.
Her piece — “Violet-tailed sylph hummingbird (Aglaiocercus coelestis)” (below) — was published in the Journal of Natural Science Illustration (November 2024), produced by the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators. In a fitting twist, Conley also designed an exhibit sign for the Yale Peabody Museum, which reopened in 2024 following a complete renovation of the historic 159-year-old building.
At Southern, Conley majored in studio art with a concentration in graphic design, supplementing her studies with art history and computer science courses. The dual focus on science and art is a family trait. Her father, the late William Ready, was a purchasing agent and research scientist at Olin Manufacturing for 34 years before retiring in 1986. He also ran a letterpress business — Ready Press — from the basement of their home.
“There were racks and racks of wooden type cases — so many sizes and styles of type, which was fun when I was a kid,” Conley says. She vividly remembers the printing process: her dad placing the type, loading the paper, and pushing levers. He would sometimes use thermography to create raised type; heat fuses a powdered resin to the ink. The steps, she recalls, were “almost like a dance,” a perfect, tactile blend of science and art.
Conley and four Southern colleagues, past and present, are exhibiting their work at the Lyman Center gallery from April 2 through May 22, 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m., with a reception on April 14, 4-6 p.m. All are welcome.
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