She pops up on the set of “Friends.” Absolut Vodka earned millions because of her. She persuades you to use Xerox machines in commercials. And she welcomes you into the Medill dean’s office.

She is the Blue Dog.

Artist George Rodrigue, creator of the Blue Dog art icon, transformed a blank canvas into a piece of art Monday while Medill Dean Ken Bode interviewed Rodrigue and his wife, Wendy, in front of about 100 students and guests in Fisk Hall.

“We’re going to have some fun today, ” Bode said. The interview, part of the Crain Lecture Series, was intertwined with jokes from Bode and Rodrigue’s 18-year friendship and stories of the Blue Dog. Bode spoke to Wendy while Rodrigue painted on a canvas, which was raffled off to Medill graduate student Jennifer Wright at the end of the interview.

“I don’t see any Northwestern purple on there,” Bode told Rodrigue, who immediately painted a purple tie on the Blue Dog.

It took Rodrigue 15 years to develop the Blue Dog. The muse for the image was Tiffany, Rodrigue’s black-and-white terrier spaniel. Tiffany, along with Rodrigue’s pride in his ancestral Cajun roots, spawned an icon.

The idea of the Blue Dog sprung from Louisiana ghost stories Rodrigue’s grandmother use to tell him as a child, he said.

“I was made to believe the Cajun werewolf dog would come and eat me if I wasn’t good,” Rodrigue said.

The Blue Dog evolved from the mythical dog with burning red eyes and a matted blue-gray coat into the friendly dog with staring yellow eyes and defined edges that everyone knows today, Rodrigue said.

His paintings evoke the mood of searching and wandering experienced by Cajuns who were forcibly relocated in the 18th century to settle in the remote, geographically isolated region of South Louisiana.

“The Blue Dog is on a journey,” he said. “She is a free spirit, anything I want it to be. The Blue Dog unmoored herself from her origins, floating into ever-changing environments, always taking me along for the ride.”

After years of painting the Blue Dog, Rodrigue began to see his own identity intertwined with the dog. For example, Rodrigue’s wedding invitation had a painting of his bride-to-be and a tuxedo-clad Blue Dog.

“The Blue Dog, I’ve discovered, has become the story of my life,” Rodrigue said.

Collectors have made the Blue Dog part of their lives as well. Fans of the Blue Dog include Whoopi Goldberg, Harry Connick Jr., George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Bode said. The Blue Dog has created a craze that led collectors to wonder where the original Blue Dog, Tiffany, is buried.

Rodrigue tells fans that Tiffany is in a cemetery with a tombstone, but in reality she’s buried in his former house’s backyard.

“She was an itty-bitty mean dog,” Rodrigue said.

Rodrigue had a difficult time finding a fan base at first. Art critics initially ignored Rodrigue’s artwork.

“No one liked it, and he said, ‘Well, I like it,'” his wife said. “So he painted a gallery full of these Blue Dogs. It got people’s attention.”

Rodrigue said the Blue Dog is his journey in life. He is unsure where she is taking him, but he knows that he is not looking back on this lifetime journey.

“She is taking me all over the world, Mars and the moon,” he said.