Yesterday Art Center students, faculty and staff celebrated autumn at the ACSG Hillside Harvest. The event featured a barbecue lunch, pie-eating contest, trunk sale, e-waste recycling drive and more.
Enjoy this slideshow of photos of the fun:
Monthly Archives: October 2010
Graphic Design Department Hosts Upcoming Events
Each term Art Center’s Graphic Design Department brings together three LA-based design professionals to discuss a particular topic of interest to their students. This term, 3×3 will look into the issues surrounding graduate school.
Speakers include Chair of Graduate Media Design Anne Burdick, Art Center professor and alum Ramone Muñoz and Mike Neal, freelance design writer and recent graduate of the School of Visual Arts with an MFA in design criticism.
The group will address:
- What are the philosophical and creative differences in graduate and undergraduate programs?
- What are the unique characteristics of the top graduate programs?
- How have graduates from particular schools shaped our field?
- How one can best prepare for a graduate education?
It’s a must-attend event for all Art Center Graphic Design students.
3×3: WHY GRAD SCHOOL?
Thursday, Nov. 4, 7:30 pm
Los Angeles Times Media Center
Also next week, the Graphic Design Department is holding an internship preparation workshop for Graphic Design students with faculty member Petrula Vrontikis, a designer, author and educator and creative director and owner of Vrontikis Design Office.
Internship Preparation Workshop
Monday, Nov. 1, 1-2 pm
Boardroom, Hillside Campus
Graphic Design students, don’t miss either of these great events!
Victoria Ying Talks Art Center
Entertainment Design alumna Victoria Ying is a Pasadena-based concept illustrator currently working at Walt Disney Imagineering R&D. Her previous experience includes working as a concept artist for Object 8 and Big Fish Games. She graduated from Art Center in 2007.
In the video below, Ying discusses her time at Art Center and some of the lessons learned here:
Magonelli: The Long, Strange Trip from Gas Pump to Tank
“You are going to spend your entire career in a wind tunnel.”
Magonelli
This was Lisa Magonelli’s words of advice for those in attendance of her talk for Monday’s Big Picture Lecture Series. Magonelli was referring to the accelerating pace of change in the world, and how we are will have to innovate at a pace about three times the speed of the industrial revolution just to keep up. She noted that things are going to change so rapidly that “it will be powerfully disorienting.”
Margonelli directs the energy policy initiative at the New America Foundation, a non-partisan think tank based in Washington, D.C. She spent four years following the oil supply chain to write Oil on the Brain: Petroleum’s Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank, published in 2008. Recognized as one of the 25 Notable Books of 2007 by the American Library Association, Oil On the Brain also won a 2008 Northern California Book Award for general nonfiction.
Her talk Monday was a cautionary tale. She spoke about America’s dependence on oil, and how that shapes our communities and lives—as well as the challenges we will face as we move away from oil dependence.
Margonelli on gas pump design: “Gas pumps are now designed to look and feel like ATM machines because studies have shown that we feel warmly towards them. As consumers, we want to feel better about buying gasoline.”
On our dependence on oil: “We are creating this very lasting and complicated relationship with the Middle East.”
Big Picture Lecture Series: Lisa Margonelli
Don’t miss today’s Big Picture Lecture Series featuring Lisa Margonelli.
Margonelli directs the energy policy initiative at the New America Foundation, a non-partisan think tank based in Washington, D.C. She spent four years following the oil supply chain to write Oil on the Brain: Petroleum’s Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank , published in 2008. Recognized as one of the 25 Notable Books of 2007 by the American Library Association, Oil On the Brain also won a 2008 Northern California Book Award for general nonfiction.
And don’t forget—podcasts of the lectures are up at Art Center’s iTunes U site.
Big Picture Lecture Series: Lisa Margonelli
Monday, October 25, 1 pm
Ahmanson Auditorium
Celebrating the Creative Spirit Through Scholarships
On Saturday, October 16, the College celebrated its 80th anniversary with a special event raising money for scholarships.
Art Center at 80: Celebrating the Creative Spirit commemorated Art Center’s distinguished 80-year history and celebrated the ingenuity and integrity of our many students, alumni and faculty.
The inaugural Creative Spirit Awards were awarded to four extraordinary alumni—industrial designer Yves Béhar, introduced by David De Rothschild; automotive designer Frank Stephenson, introduced by David Gooding; blockbuster filmmaker Zack Snyder, introduced by Graduate Broadcast Cinema Department Chair Robert Peterson; and contemporary artist Pae White, introduced by Jeffrey Deitch.
The funds raised from the event will be used to create named scholarships in recognition of the honored alumni, as well as support general scholarships for students in Art Center’s undergraduate, graduate and Public Programs. This support will enable our students to fully realize their potential, regardless of their financial means.
Enjoy the slideshow of images from the event below.
ENERGY: From Natural Forces to Human Emotion
The L.A. Times Culture Monster blog has a nice story today on the ENERGY exhibit at Williamson Gallery.
From the article: “Although ‘beautiful’ and ‘mesmerizing’ are words not often used to describe energy, this exhibition reveals the beauty within various energy sources while exploring the contentious nexus of science and art.”
ENERGY investigates how natural forces shape not only material things, but affect our emotions and intellect.
As part of the Williamson Gallery’s mission, students in Art Center’s Design for Sustainability 2 class will use a section of the gallery as their studio, studying and displaying their exploration of the question, “Where do energy and design intersect?
If you haven’t already seen the exhibit, stop by the Williamson Gallery and check it out. The gallery is open Tuesdays through Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. and Fridays noon to 9 p.m.
Silent Auction Benefits Gulf Wildlife
Just because the Deepwater Horizon oil spill isn’t dominating the headlines these days doesn’t mean that it’s not still wreaking havoc on wildlife along the Gulf Coast. 
Luckily, someone is doing something about it.
This Saturday, October 23, the American Society of Picture Professionals (ASPP) West Coast Chapter will hold a silent auction fundraiser to benefit the National Wildlife Federation’s Gulf Oil Spill Restoration Fund. The event will be held from 6:30 to 10 pm at Wildfire Studios in Los Angeles.
“The NWF’s Gulf Oil Spill Restoration Fund has declared this a wildlife emergency,” explains ASPP West Coast Chapter co-president and silent auction committee member Ellen Herbert. “The money we raise directly helps the Gulf’s wildlife and breeding grounds.”
The fundraiser and evening program aim to encourage others to see the importance of rebuilding and sustaining the fragile Gulf ecology.
More than 40 printed original photographs are being donated for the silent auction, including works by Ralph Clevenger, Norbert Wu and Frans Lanting. A preview of the photographs to be auctioned can be seen online at both Facebook and at the ASPP West Coast Silent Auction blog.
Tickets for the event can be purchased here. Those not able to attend in person are encouraged to donate or bid through a proxy, as all proceeds go to the NWF’s Gulf Oil Spill Restoration Fund.
Get Ready to Shake, Rattle and Roll
Today at 10:21 a.m., millions of people across California will drop, cover and hold on as part of the 2010 California ShakeOut.
ShakeOut—formerly the Great Southern California ShakeOut—was launched in 2008. The Designmatters project, The Los Angeles Earthquake: Get Ready, was launched in conjunction with the event. An integral part of the acclaimed project was a PSA directed by Art Center alumnus Theo Alexopoulos.
The short film, Preparedness Now, was commissioned by the USGS Multi-Hazard Demonstration Project to depict the physical, social and economic consequences of a massive earthquake. In 2010, Preparedness Now was one of three components of project recognized for groundbreaking design by inclusion in the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum-Smithsonian National Design Triennial exhibition, Why Design Now?
In honor of today’s ShakeOut, enjoy the film below:
Environmental Design Event Tonight
Tonight our Environmental Design Department is hosting an event for all Environmental Design students, faculty and alumni at Hillside Campus.
Three of the department’s newest faculty members, Ben Luddy, Yo Oshima and Jennifer Silbert, will be on hand to introduce themselves and provide presentations on their work.
Click on the flyer for more information.