Author Archives: Anna Macaulay

Artist Ming Wong at Art Center

“In Italy a location in not just a backdrop, it’s a character, a famous co-star even.” Ming Wong

Ming Wong will speak at Art Center College of Design on the occasion of the debut of his Making Chinatown at REDCAT gallery Tuesday, January 31st at 7:30 pm in the L.A. Times Media Center.

Dominic Eichler, Frieze, September 2010

From the REDCAT press release:

Wong has been recognized internationally for his ambitious performance and video works that engage with the history of world cinema and popular forms of entertainment. Working through the visual styles and tropes of such iconic film directors as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wong Kar-wai and Ingmar Bergman, Wong’s practice considers the means through which subjectivity and geographic location are constructed by motion pictures. Making Chinatown … draws upon Polanski’s iconic film for its use of Los Angeles as a versatile and malleable character.

Shot on location in the Gallery at REDCAT, Wong’s reinterpretation, Making Chinatown, transforms the exhibition space into a studio backlot and examines the original film’s constructions of language, performance and identity. With the artist cast in the roles originally played by Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston and Belinda Palmer, key scenes are reenacted in front of printed backdrops that are digitally rendered from film stills and kept intact within the video installation. The wall flats adhere to the conventions of theatrical and filmic staging while taking on qualities of large-scale painting and sculpture.

Ming Wong’s (b. 1971, Singapore) recent solo exhibitions have taken place at the Museum of Moving Image, Queens, New York, as part of Performa 11; Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou, China; the Frye Art Museum, Seattle; the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; and the Singapore Art Museum. He has been included in such notable exhibitions as based in Berlin at Atelierhaus Monbijoupark in Berlin; the 2010 Gwangju and Sydney Biennial; and in 2009 at the Singapore Pavilion for the 53rd Venice Biennale, for which he was awarded a Special Mention. Wong currently lives and works between Berlin and Singapore. For more information, see www.mingwong.org.

Student Jessee Torres Exhibits Her Work and Produces On-Site Collodion Prints

Photography + Imaging student Jessee Torres’s work is included in the 25th Annual Hearts & Flowers Exhibition currently on view at The Folk Tree in Pasadena. Torres specializes in wet plate collodion prints, the prevalent photographic method used through the end of the 19th Century.

Collodion Print (c) Jessee Torres

The collodion process requires the photographic material to be coated, sensitized, exposed and developed within the span of about fifteen minutes, necessitating a portable darkroom for use in the field. In the following video, she describes her progression from digital to collodion photography. Torres credits Art Center faculty Stephen Berkman, Ken Merfeld and Steve LaVoie as influencing her work.

Torres will be at The Folk Tree this weekend photographing portraits using the wet plate collodion process. Participants who reserve a time will receive a varnished tintype/ferrotype, an 8×10 archival print a digital image, all for the reasonable price of $75. To sign up, call Gail Mishkin at 626.793.4828 or call The Folk Tree at 626.795.8733.

The Pasadena Star-News recently spoke with Torres about her participation in the exhibition. For excerpts from the article, read more after the break.

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Vote for Art Center finalists in the IxDA People’s Choice Awards

Three Art Center student projects are finalists for Interaction Design Association’s (IxDA) Interaction Awards People’s Choice Award. Support our students, vote now! Every member of IxDA’s online community gets three votes for their favorite project. You must register on the Interaction Awards site specifically to vote. Voting closes February 3rd at 12 pm GMT.

The winner of the People’s Choice Award will be announced at the Interaction Awards Celebration on Friday, February 3rd, at Interaction12 in Dublin.

Sound Noodles, by Jessie Kawata, are mobile electronic music instruments that enable kids to explore the relationship between sound and movement through their own physical activity and the collaborative efforts of music creation.

Sound Noodles by Jessie Kawata

Go here to vote for Sound Noodles.

Hotdog, by Scott Schenone, is a dog harness design that keeps track of a dog’s body temperature and relays the information back to the owner.

Hotdog by Scott Schenone

Go here to vote for Hotdog.

Steps, by Kevin Kwok, Nancy Chui, Rachel Thai, Winnie Yuen and Wayne Tang, are interactive tools and encouragement for 21st century teacher to use 21st century social interaction. The Steps project is also a finalist for the 2012 Interaction Award in the field of Connecting (facilitating communication between people and communities).

Steps by Kevin Kwok, Nancy Chui, Rachel Thai, Winnie Yuen and Wayne Tang

Go here to vote for Steps.

Art Center will be offering a new degree program towards a B.S. in Interaction Design beginning in Fall 2012. Interaction Design students at Art Center will learn to think deeply about the user’s experience, apply technology creatively and invent new approaches to interaction and design, whether designing a mobile app or a gestural interface for an exhibition, a new consumer electronics product or a rich informational website. For more information, see http://www.artcenter.edu/ixd

Be Part of Pacific Standard Time

Grad Art Faculty Member Seeks Bodies to be Part of Performance Art Event This Sunday

Grad Art core faculty Lita Albuquerque is creating a large scale performance for the Pacific Standard Time Public Art and Performance Festival and is looking for students, faculty and alumni from the Art Center community to sign up to participate this coming Sunday, January 22nd at noon at the Baldwin Hills Scenic Outlook in Culver City.

Spine of the Earth, Lita Albuquerque, 1980. Ephemeral installation at El Mirage Dry Lake Bed, CA. Lita Albuquerque © Lita Albuquerque Studio, 1980.

As described on the Pacific Standard Time website, Spine of the Earth 2012 is taking place this Sunday and is a recreation of Albuquerque’s 1980 Spine of the Earth, where the artist created a land based work at the bed of the El Mirage Dry Lake. The piece created a giant “geometric pattern over six-hundred feet in diameter” and turned the Earth into a artist’s canvas. In Albuquerque’s recreation twenty two years later, she won’t be painting the earth but will be making a “performative sculpture” that requires at least five hundred people.

As part of the open call to artists, designers and the general public, Albuquerque is looking for students, faculty and alumni from the Art Center community to participate in the performance. Sign up is easy at spineoftheearth2012.com. According to the site, participants will be involved in a very simple walking based movement (choreographed by LA-based choreographers WIFE) and will receive a signed, limited-edition artifact of the performance.

Kyle Fitzpatrick, who blogged about the upcoming event, wrote that he received the following details after signing up to participate:

  • The event is this Sunday between 12PM and 2PM. If you are participating, you need to be on site no later than 8AM.
  • This actually will not be in the desert (phew), but in Baldwin Hills Scene Overlook in Culver City, between Jefferson and La Cienega.
  • All participants will be involved in a very simple walking-based movement that will take place outdoors
  • What will you be wearing? A red jump suit! You should wear dark clothing and “comfortable walking shoes” in neutral colors to go underneath, though. You’ll also be keeping your red jumpsuit, which Lita will be signing as a thank you for participating.
  • Don’t bring your kids: all participants must be 16 and over.
  • Bring food money, as they will have food trucks there for eating. You’ll also be getting free coconut water!

The piece is a part of Pacific Standard Time’s Performance and Public Art Festival, which begins Thursday, January 19, continuing through Saturday, January 29. Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-80 is a collaboration of cultural institutions across Southern California coming together to celebrate the birth of the L.A. art scene.

San Marino League Docents Invest in Art Center

Did you happen to notice a large group of women listening carefully, taking notes and following Williamson Gallery Director Stephen Nowlin around the student gallery? If you ever wondered who these women are who turn up the first Tuesday of every term, they are volunteers and members of the San Marino League on campus for a half-day of docent training.

Student Gallery. Photo © Crystal Jean Photography/Art Center College of Design

The San Marino League in California is a nonprofit organization of women committed to philanthropic work in the community as well as furthering their own knowledge of fine arts. Its purpose is exclusively charitable, educational and all volunteer.

According to its website, “The League’s association with Art Center College of Design began in 1976 when the League funded the opening of the student gallery and began conducting tours. The association continues to this day, enhancing knowledge of and interest in one of the most renowned art and design education centers in the world.”

Today, docents from the San Marino League conduct tours for community groups interested in visiting Art Center. They also volunteer in the library and help staff the registration desk for Grad Show Preview. In addition to the many volunteer hours they invest in the college, they fund a Fine Art Scholarship helping countless students attend Art Center.

More information about the San Marino League can be found here.

For more information on scholarship giving opportunities, and joining Art Center support groups, contact Director of Annual Giving Amy Swain at amy.swain@artcenter.edu or 626.396.2427.

Pay Tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. by Being of Service

“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham City Jail

Art Center is closed? What should you do?

There are many things you can do to honor the life and legacy of the civil rights leader while campus is closed in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day was first signed into law as a national holiday in 1986 to mark Dr. King’s transformative leadership in advancing civil rights through non-violent activism. Less than a decade later in 1994, Congress further designated Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a national day of service that asks all Americans to actively improve the lives of others in their community.

Check out laworks.com for local MLK Jr. Day volunteer opportunities. This year’s projects includes a group that will be revitalizing the campus of a Title I elementary school in the Los Feliz neighborhood. Volunteers will spend the morning creating colorful murals in the playground space; painting school buildings and grounds; planting flowers, shrubs and landscaping to create an outdoor literacy space; renovating an unused blacktop area to create a community garden; and assisting the teachers in organizing and beautifying the interior classroom areas. Also, back by popular demand, Zumba instructor Wilson Williams will be warming up the volunteers in the morning.

As part of the day, L.A. Works is also collecting toiletries for veterans to donate to the local Veteran Affairs facility. They are asking all volunteers to consider bringing shampoo, conditioner, toothbrushes, toothpaste, disposable razors, shaving cream, deodorant, and/or soap with them.

The Warm Coats and Warm Hearts Coat drive, sponsored by Burlington Coat Factory, runs through Martin Luther King Jr. Day. They encourage donations of new and gently worn coats. See onewarmcoat.org for more information and find your nearest story by visiting the Burlington Coat Factory Store Locator.

Visit mlkday.org for other local day of service opportunities.

In addition to serving, there are many celebrations held locally. The Kingdom Day Parade in Los Angeles is held today, beginning at 11 am at Martin Luther King Blvd and Western Ave, traveling west on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd to Crenshaw Blvd, south on Crenshaw Blvd to Vernon Ave and ending with a festival at Leimert Park.

Come Hear Artist Jeff Wall Speak

Tuesday, January 17, 7:30 pm, L.A. Times Media Center

Vancouver-based artist, Jeff Wall (b. 1946), widely recognized for both his pioneering photography and his trenchant writing on the medium and its place in contemporary art, will be speaking at Art Center Tuesday, January 17 at 7:30 pm in the L. A. Times Media Center. The event, sponsored by the Graduate Art program, is open to the entire Art Center community.

Wall has exhibited regularly at the Marian Goodman Gallery in New York since 1989, and he has been the subject of numerous museum shows, including a comprehensive 2005 European survey, “Jeff Wall, Photographs 1978-2004,” which opened at the Schaulager Museum, Basel, Switzerland, before traveling in a reduced version to London’s Tate Modern as “Photographs 1978-2004.” “Jeff Wall,” a retrospective organized by New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the San Francisco Museum of Art, opened two years later, in 2007, and subsequently traveled to The Art Institute of Chicago. To mark the occasion, MoMA published “Jeff Wall: Selected Essays and Interviews,” a collection bringing together 25 years of the artist’s words. This past summer, the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, mounted an exhibition entitled “Jeff Wall: The Crooked Path,” a selection of his own work together with that of a broad range of artists with whom he has felt affinities.

Wall earned his Masters of Arts at the University of British Columbia, where he graduated in 1970 with a thesis entitled: “Berlin Dada and the Notion of Context”. He subsequently traveled to London in pursuit of his doctorate at The Courtland Institute (1970-73), where he studied with noted art historian T.J. Clark. Returning to Canada, Wall served as assistant professor at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (1974-5), and at Simon Frasier University (1976-87), and went on to lecture at the University of British Columbia.

A galvanizing figure in the Canadian art world since the early 1970s, Wall has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement (2008). In 2006 Wall was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and named an Officer of the Order of Canada the following year.

WORLDS Exhibition Extended

If you haven’t had a chance to view WORLDS, currently showing at the Williamson Gallery, you are in luck. The exhibition has been extended through January 29, 2012.

Galileo Spacecraft IO, Satellite of Jupiter, 1999, NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

WORLDS continues the theme of superimposing two domains traditionally imagined to be distant and estranged—art and science. The exhibition is a medley of objects, images, sounds and videos exploring celestial phenomena by examining the products of art and science.

Meteor rocks borrowed from UCLA’s Meteorite Collection, an illuminated manuscript from 1568, a Copernicus engraving and other scientific works (many borrowed from the rare books collection of the Huntington Library) are on display alongside more contemporary space-themed art by Jonathan Cecil, Richard Selesnick and Nicholas Kahn.

In the Los Angeles Times, WORLDS curator and Williamson director Stephen Nowlin explained the purpose of the exhibition, “We have an Earth focus. This show is about reinvestigating that perspective. It’s a space object we live on.”

According to Nowlin, exhibitions like WORLDS fit well with Art Center’s mission because the College trains artists and designers who innovate “at the boundary of art and science.”

The gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. and Friday, noon to 9 p.m.

Richard Selesnick and Nicholas Kahn Liftoff, from the "Apollo Prophecies" series, 2002-06. Courtesy: the artists

In Case You Missed It

As we return from break we thought it would be a good time to check in on what is going on with Art Center alumni, students and faculty.

The Williamson Gallery’s current exhibition, Worlds was featured in The Los Angeles Times. Haven’t seen it yet? You’re in luck. The exhibition has been extended through January 29, 2012.

Art Center was well represented in the December issue of THE Pasadena Foothills Magazine. The magazine’s cover story, 50 Creative People 2011, featured President Lorne Buchman and recognized faculty and staff members Mariana Amatullo, Dan Gottlieb, Penny Herscovitch, Karen Hofmann, Stephen Nowlin and Geoff Wardle; student Holly Wren Hofgaarden; and alumni Edgar Arceneaux, Dan Goods and Steve Roden. The issue can be read here.

Student Maria Meehan received a 2011 Bill Bernbach Scholarship, earning herself $5,000 to put towards tuition. The scholarships are made possible through the Bill Bernbach Diversity Scholarship Fund, established in 1998 by DDB Worldwide to provide financial assistance to creatively talented, culturally diverse students seeking an education in copywriting, art direction and design.

Jayne Vidheecharoen demonstrating her Portals project

Media Design student Jayne Vidheecharoen, whom we’ve covered previously,  is still creating an Internet buzz around her Portals alternate reality project, funded by Kickstarter. We found her project covered here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

Transportation Design Chair Stewart Reed participated as a jury member for The Michelin Challenge Design. The jury made final selections based on the theme, “City 2046: Art, Life and Ingenuity.” More than 200 projects, submitted by more than 1,700 registrants representing 88 countries, were reviewed. The jury selected the work of 27 participants for display at the 2012 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit.

Alumnus Christopher Chapman, formerly with BMW, was hired as chief designer of the Hyundai Design Center in Irvine, California.

Alumnus Eric Tu, co-founder and creative talent curator at F360, a studio with offices in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, was interviewed by Studio Daily.

Alumnus Matt Cunningham’s role as designer of the interior train car shots for the thriller “Source Code” was explored in the Aiken Standard.

Owen Roizman: The Craft Behind the Art

“You have to learn the craft in order to perform your art.”

Good advice from famed cinematographer Owen Roizman, speaking at Art Center last Thursday as part of the Film Department’s Distinguished Filmmaker Series.

Roizman got his start in the business at a young age. His father was a cinematographer for Fox Movietone News, and he spent summers working at a camera rental store, where he became adept at threading film, taking apart cameras and putting them back together, and understanding the uses of various lenses.

After college Roizman sought employment in his chosen field—physics—and was dismayed to find the profession paid so little. He discovered he could make much more money working as an assistant cameraman, and a career was launched.

He ended up filming some of the world’s favorite movies: The French Connection, The Exorcist, Network, Wyatt Earp, Tootsie, The Taking of Pelham 123, True Confessions and many more.

His first film, Stop, was shot in Puerto Rico with a meager budget of $300,000 and was never released. From that, he got the job shooting The French Connection. Subsequently, he was known as a “gritty New York street photographer” even though he had never shot in that style prior to working on that film.

He expounded on some cinematographer’s tricks he used during the filming of that film, including how he force developed and underexposed the film to thin out the blacks and make them more milky.

His advice to students?

  • “Always do your best work: When this is edited together, no one will know it is 3 a.m. and you’re exhausted.”
  • “You always have to do the best that you can. You can’t let yourself fall to tiredness.”
  • “Whatever is on the screen, that’s you. That’s what counts.”