Jay Leno (right) interviews Tom Peters (left) and Peter Brock (center) at Car Classic
Art Center students, faculty, trustees, alumni and staff have been busy racking up awards, giving interviews and making news. Here is a selection of some recent coverage, including highlights from Car Classic and the recent announcement of a $15 million gift from Peter and Merle Mullin, the largest donation in the 83-year history of Art Center.
A new video by alum Erik Anderson — about the convening at Art Center of social innovation design students and educators, corporate and nonprofit leaders — has made Good’s 2013 Top 10 list. Illustration © 2013 Wendy MacNaughton for LEAP Symposium
“For all of you designers who need inspiration to conquer the wicked problems we face in the world today,” says Mariana Amatullo, “let’s remember that honesty, coupled with a good measure of bold determination and ingenuity, can help us leap forward.”
For Amatullo, Art Center vice president and co-founder of the social impact department Designmatters, honesty is an ethos that informs all of her work with her team at the College and with a growing cohort of young designers leading a global movement using “design thinking” to address seemingly intractable challenges—from homelessness and gun violence to water poverty and gender inequality—in ways that have never been tried before.
“We’re at a point where thousands of students across the country, in high school and college and graduate school, are joining [this] movement to participate in and impact the world around us,” says William Drenttel, an award-winning designer, publisher and design leader.
Along with Drenttel and like-minded colleagues at Art Center and around the country, Amatullo recently organized a national gathering of professionals and students to explore opportunities for strengthening the movement and shaping its future. A chief concern of the LEAP Symposium: How to make design for social innovation a viable career with navigable pathways, and how to prepare both students and potential employers for an era in which designers will be—must be—at the table in discussions large and small about solving the world’s “wicked problems.”
Here’s an idea. Try this out around your own Thanksgiving dinner table: When you’re sharing what you’re grateful for this year, be completely honest. Continue reading
Lou Danziger (center) with student and former Art Center instructor Roland Young (left) and student and former Advertising Department Chair Mikio Osaki (right).
Lou Danziger is a pillar of West Coast design. He has worked as a designer, art director and consultant since 1949, bringing his talents to a diverse list of institutions, from Microsoft to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Danziger studied at Art Center in the late 1940s and went on to become a legendary instructor at the College as well as at institutions like Chouinard, the California Institute of the Arts and Harvard University. And he recently turned 90 years old.
To celebrate the occasion, earlier this month at the Public Programs gallery at South Campus, Art Center held Danziger@90, an exhibition and appreciation of Danziger’s work and teaching, organized and curated by instructor and former Advertising Department Chair Elena Salij. In addition to Danziger himself, the event attracted more than 150 individuals–with some guests traveling from as far away as Hong Kong–former students of Danziger’s from Harvard, California Institute of the Arts and Art Center.
Past and present leaders and instructors from the Advertising department were at the event, including Chair Gary Goldsmith, former Chair Mikio Osaki and former instructor Roland Young. Other guests included former President David Brown, Provost Fred Fehlau, alumnus and JPL Visual Strategist Daniel Goods and Williamson Gallery director Stephen Nowlin.
The audience to this intimate event were treated to a presentation of Danziger’s work along with his singular philosophy and timeless insight.
We’re pleased to present to you a taste of the event below.
Artforum called Sharon Lockhart’s meditation on the visionary work of Israeli dance composer and textile artist Noa Eshkol (1924–2007) an “intimate conversation of ideas simulated across the gulf of history.” The New York Times hailed the five-channel film installation as a “subtle but virtuosic move.” And the Los Angeles Times described it as “a sensitive portrait of a formidable artist.”
If you didn’t get a chance to experience the Art Center alumna’s acclaimed exhibition in person at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 2012 or at The Jewish Museum in New York earlier this year, the catalog presents an opportunity to delve deeply into the two artists’ unusual “collaboration.” Edited by LACMA’s Stephanie Barron and Britt Salvesen, Sharon Lockhart | Noa Eshkol (Prestel Publishing) features an in-depth interview with Lockhart; photographs of the installation and of Eshkol-Wachman Movement Notation spherical models; a selection of Eshkol’s wall carpets, scores and drawings; as well as several essays.
It’s not the first time Lockhart, who completed her MFA in Fine Art/Painting in 1993, has trained her lens on the work — and sometimes literally the labors — of others. In this case, Lockhart says, she was drawn to Eshkol’s “radical” practice and the “labor of love” that Eshkol’s devoted students, many of them aging, enact in preserving and performing her rigorous compositions.
This story originally appeared in Art Center’s Fall 2013 Dot magazine, where you’ll find more images from Lockhart’s installation as well as profiles of other notable alumni at work.
Alumnus Stuart Fingerhut on the Toyota Live stage at the L.A. Auto Show.
Stuart Fingerhut, associate creative director at George P. Johnson experience marketing firm, is gushing over the thrill of seeing people engage with his first big car show exhibition for Toyota and Scion. We caught up with him during the L.A. Auto Show media preview days leading up to today’s public opening. “This is like completely bonkers for me,” he says. “As a designer, it feels like the pinnacle.”
“We’re telling the story of the brand in a physical space,” the Art Center Environmental Design alumnus explained about the design that will travel to other car confabs including Detroit, Frankfurt and Tokyo in 2014.
Student Mathias Hintermann’s Aiguille short track speed skater headgear won a Spark! Award.
With designs ranging from a portable desk for low-income children in India to lighting inspired by the beauty found in Japanese metal craft, Art Center students and alumni brought home several awards last week from the 2013 Spark International Design Awards.
Students and professionals from more than 27 countries across the globe competed in the categories of Experience Design, Product Design, Spaces Design, Transport Design, Communication Design, App Design and Concept Design, with awards ranging from Bronze Awards to the highest award, the Spark! Award.
Meet the Clump-O-Lumps, designed by Max Knecht
The day Max Knecht pulled a squid, a walrus, a deer and a bunny out of a bright green vintage suitcase is the day he landed his first big deal as a designer.
“It was a formal meeting in [Knock Knock company founder and CEO] Jen Bilik’s office,” recalls Knecht PROD 11, who was still a student at the time. “But bringing all those animal body parts in a suitcase broke the seriousness.”
These were no ordinary plush toys. An imaginative take on swapping identities, Knecht’s bright-colored animals had a clever postmodern flair. Each one separated into three segments, and he demonstrated for Bilik how these “lumps” could be zipped together in any combination. She loved the crisscross-creature concept and offered Knecht a buyout on the spot. Today six different Clump-O-Lumps are available on Knock Knock’s website.
It’s tempting to call moments like this magic, the proverbial rabbit pulled out of a hat. Or a lucky break, all about who you know.
But it was none of these.
Each term, Art Center at Night holds an open house, offering current and prospective students a brief glimpse at what goes on within the walls of its open-air classrooms. It’s a fleeting, but essential, experience for career-changers and seasoned and aspiring artists preparing to make the leap into what’s arguably the city’s most high-intensity after-hours creative education. It’s also an opportunity likely missed by anyone with extended working hours or family obligations (i.e., those who need it most).
Don’t fret. We’ve got your back. At a recent open house, we asked students to get in front of the camera and share with us what Art Center’s continuing studies program has meant to them. The answers were as diverse as the individuals themselves. See for yourself in the video above.
Perhaps it’s time to contemplate what Art Center will mean to you.
Hey Jeff,
It’s Tyler. This letter is hard to write. On your last day as our Dean of Students, I’ve collected a few thoughts about the impact you’ve had on my life, the life of students and how much you’ll be missed by everyone.
When I first heard about you in the hallway most every person who mentioned you would remark, “Jeff? He’s great.” In the past few years I have seen how true this is, and how it doesn’t go far enough. Jeff, you’re wonderful. You’re compassionate and fair, steadfast and kind. The positive change you have made in the lives of students and everyone at Art Center has made a momentous difference and will not be forgotten.
Your energy inspires. Seeing the dedicated attention that you give every issue that comes across your desk and the grace and diligence with which you handle things big and small motivates me to be the kind of leader I have been so privileged to see you exemplify. The work you have done to ensure students’ health and happiness through the CSE has changed the school’s culture. The policy changes you have pushed for — being student-centered and seeing the learning opportunities at every step — modeled the generosity that we needed and continue to aspire towards as an institution. Your initiatives with the Council on Diversity and Inclusion and the environment you helped create have made for a truly safe space where everyone is heard, appreciated and empowered to act.
President Lorne M. Buchman moderating at “The Future of Knowledge” event. Photo: John Dlugolecki
Last week I had the pleasure of moderating an evening panel on “The Future of Knowledge” with the co-authors of Digital_Humanities, a recent publication from MIT Press. Introducing the Art Center Dialogues event in the Ahmanson Auditorium was one of the book’s co-authors: our very own Anne Burdick, Chair of Art Center’s Media Design Practices. In her remarks, she mused that “our bombastic title is actually a serious proposition,” and the presentations and discussion that followed were certainly provocative and opened several important questions about teaching and research in the humanities.
Digital Humanities replaces “the paper” with “the project,” looking to the multi-modal and project-based orientation that is at the heart of creative studio practice. The authors argue that our current ideas about knowledge, interpretation and the cultural record developed in tandem with our long history with print. The digital information age upends old ideas about author, archive, memory and knowledge itself. The book positions designers (and by implication what we teach here at Art Center) as having a major contribution to make as these notions reconfigure along with the technology.
The question of how best to integrate the humanities into Art Center’s curriculum is one I care about very much, and I thank the co-authors—who, in addition to Burdick, included Johanna Drucker, a professor in UCLA’s Department of Information Studies; Peter Lunenfeld, former Art Center instructor and professor at UCLA’s Design Media Arts; Todd Presner, chair of UCLA’s Digital Humanities program; and Jeffrey Schnapp, faculty director of metaLAB at Harvard—for a wonderfully engaging evening.