Clare Ultimo

Place: Brooklyn

Born: 1950

Biography:

Clare Ultimo is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, writer and educator. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, of Neapolitan descent. Ultimo has always been passionate about exploring the boundaries between verbal and visual communication. As a serious student of metaphysics and cross-cultural spiritual thinking since the age of 14, she has also been an amateur researcher and advocate for 'all things alternative' for the past 30 years. She began an award-winning design studio in 1987 in the back of a typesetter's office on 34th street, right near Macy's. Ultimo Inc. has been awarded NY Art Directors Club, AIGA, and PROMAX awards and has twice been nominated for the Chrysler Innovation in Design Award by Milton Glaser. Clare presented her ideas about Guerrilla Marketing for the first time in 1994 at a Co-Op America conference in Washington DC. Ultimo has quietly been on the forefront with corporate clients as an advocate of socially and ecologically responsible design since 1991, long before it entered the mainstream. In 2000, she invented 'Poetry Dog Tags' and 'Friendship Tags', (poetry you can wear!) published by Chronicle Books, under the influence of her 'other' life – as a poet.