Author Archives: Jered Gold

Three Boys From Pasadena Opening Tonight in NYC

Tonight is the New York opening of Three Boys From Pasadena: A Tribute to Helmut Newton, featuring the photographs of Art Center alumni Mark Arbeit, Just Loomis and George Holz. The exhibit will run through Jan. 30 at Clic Gallery in New York.

Helmut Newton (1920-2004), a native of Berlin, was known for his provocative and erotically charged black-and-white photography, especially of female nudes. His shocking and later much-imitated style was a constant in the pages of US Vogue and Vogue Paris.

Arbeit, Holz and Loomis first met Newton in 1979 while students at Art Center. Eventually all three became Newton’s assistants during one of the most exciting and prolific times in his career. For 30 years, they kept in touch, sharing their personal work with Newton and his wife, June.

In June of this year, Three Boys from Pasadena, curated by June Newton, premiered at the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin. The exhibit consists of each photographer’s individual work, as well as several memorabilia panels consisting of never-before-seen snapshots, handwritten notes, journal pages, contact sheets and other souvenirs of Newton’s life. Three Boys from Pasadena is an exceptional memorial to one of the 20th century’s most iconic photographers, and an unusually revealing look at personal and professional relationships among artists and protégés.

The accompanying book, published by Factory/LeJoker, is available as well. There will be a book signing at tonight’s event.

Three Boys from Pasadena: A Tribute to Helmut Newton
Dec. 7, 6 to 8 p.m.
Clic Gallery, New York

Public Programs: The Gift That Lasts a Lifetime

It’s that time of year where many of us agonize over finding those perfect, unique gifts for our loved ones. Don’t fret—we’ve got the perfect idea for you.

Photo © Steven A. Heller / Art Center College of Design

Did you know that you can buy them a gift certificate for Art Center at Night, Saturday High or Art Center for Kids?

Perfect for those interested in exploring a creative passion, learning a new skill, or taking their current practice to the next level, a gift certificate for one of Art Center’s Public Programs courses will teach skills that will last your loved one a lifetime.

  • Art Center at Night is for adults of all levels and experience interested in acquiring new skills, developing portfolios, personal enrichment and more.
  • Saturday High offers a variety of engaging courses that explore art and design as well as career opportunities for teens in grades 9 through 12.
  • Art Center for Kids features unique art and design courses for children in grades 4 through 8 that foster new ways of thinking, seeing and doing.

To purchase a gift certificate, stop by the Art Center’s Public Programs office, located at Art Center’s South Campus, before 5 p.m. on Tuesday, December 21.  Registration for Art Center at Night’s Spring Term is now open. Saturday High registration opens Jan. 4, and Art Center for Kids begins Jan. 24.

Art Center’s Design Office Work Among Year’s Best

Art Center’s in-house Design Office has been featured in Print magazine’s Regional Design Annual 2010, with two pieces included among the best American designs of the year.

TOOLS brochure

The most comprehensive survey of graphic design in the United States, entries are divided by region (ours falling into the “Far West.”)

The winning entries are Art Center’s Williamson Gallery TOOLS exhibition brochure (page 65), designed/art directed by Graphic Design alumna and Winnie Li, and the Spring 2010 Art Center at Night Catalog (page 67), designed/art directed by Li and illustrated by Miguel Ramirez.

They’re in good company – the entries from this region ranged from a TEDIndia brochure to (RED)NIGHTS benefit posters to editorial illustrations for The New York Times Magazine.

Art Center at Night Spring 2010 Catalog

“Good design makes the ordinary extraordinary,” said Lucille Tanazas, judge for the Far West category.

“Good design is smart and thoughtful. Good design is provocative. Inventive. Good design enlightens and enhances our understanding of the world; has the capacity to elevate the spirit. A good designer is a catalyst; he or she makes all of the above happen and is able to inspire others to do the same.”

Congrats on a well-deserved honor!

Your BlackBerry Can Do What?!

The BlackBerry Empathy concept phone has received a great deal of online buzz this week. Not only is the design striking, but the idea behind the device is quite interesting—it’s designed with an interface that can interpret and respond to the user’s emotions.

The concept was created by two Art Center Product Design students, Kiki Tang and Daniel Yoon (they’ve since graduated), for a RIM BlackBerry sponsored project at the College.

The user wears a ring that collects emotional data and graphically displays the user’s emotional state to their personal connections.

According to Yoon: “Each contact has an avatar that is encompassed by two colored rings.

The inner colored ring shows the contact’s previous emotional state, and the outer ring represents the contact’s current emotional state. It is important to show the shift in emotions in order to see how an event has affected that contact.”

The phone also features an “Emotional Health Chart,” monitoring the user’s emotions over time, and finds patterns in behavior and emotions (for instance, a person’s mood may repeatedly plummet after phone calls from a certain individual).

So what do you think? Revolutionary … or just plain creepy?

(Thanks to Yanko Design for breaking the story. More images on their site.)

Everyone Deserves a Roof—And You Can Help

It was while bicycling from Westwood to the beach in Santa Monica that film producer Peter Samuelson began noticing something disturbing—the number of homeless he passed regularly. He started counting. Sixty-two homeless. Just eight miles.

He began interviewing the homeless to find out more about them, how they lived, and what they needed. He conceptualized a mobile, single-person device that would facilitate recycling (a principal source of income for many homeless) by day, and at night convert into a tent-like enclosure for sleeping, with privacy and storage space. It would be called EDAR, short for Everyone Deserves A Roof.

Samuelson approached Art Center to sponsor a studio to design the EDAR. Students Eric Lindeman and Jason Zasa designed the product, and have been working pro bono on the project since. EDARs are given free of charge to homeless individuals who are best able to benefit from their recycling and shelter capabilities. But EDARs don’t come cheap. Each one costs around $500 to produce.

For the next four days, Tonic.com is sponsoring a campaign to raise funds for 10 EDARs. That’s a roof over 10 homeless Angelenos.

Watch the L.A. Times video below to see the EDAR out in the field.

From Tonic.com’s article: The final EDAR design boasts a 7-foot-long mattress among an interior high enough for residents to sit up. The EDAR units live at shelters, soup kitchens, day centers, churches, mosques or vacant scraps of land throughout the Los Angeles area and are distributed free of charge, as resources allow. “We give the units to shelters and they give them to specific clients,” explains Samuelson. “The benefit is that they have an ongoing social services. You can push it wherever you want and you can sleep in it wherever you want, and you have to come back once a week, have a shower, have lunch, meet with your supervisor, etc. there’s ongoing counseling.”

Donate to the Tonic.com campaign.

Learn more:

Distinguished Filmmakers Series: Richard Rush

Film Department instructor Dan Perri will host director, producer and writer Richard Rush today for a lively Q&A session as part of the Distinguished Filmmakers Series.

Rush’s credits include Thunder Alley, Hell’s Angels on Wheels, Psych-Out, Freebie & The Bean, Color of Night, and one of the greatest movies ever made about making movies: The Stunt Man starring Peter O’Toole.

The event begins promptly at 1 p.m. and is open to all Art Center students, faculty and staff.

Distinguished Filmmakers Series:
Richard Rush
Tuesday, November 30, 1 p.m.
L.A. Times Media Center

Grant to Create New Demonstration Shop

The Model Shop is one of the busiest areas of campus, buzzing with activity around the clock. The shops are where virtually all our students—from Product Design to Fine Art—learn to build models and use a variety of skills such as woodworking, metal fabrication, vacuum forming, plastic sheet fabrication, fiberglass and composite skills.

Work is already underway on the new shop

As Art Center’s student population has grown, however, space in the Model Shop has become more limited.

Luckily, a generous $100,000 grant from The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation is creating a demonstration shop, where students from all majors will have their first experience with power tools under the watchful eyes of their instructors.

The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation Demonstration Shop will be equipped with miniature and model-scale tools, and having this additional shop will enable the Model Shop to be used primarily as a production facility.

“The Parsons Demo Shop will further enhance Art Center’s level of instruction, allowing us to provide students with greater knowledge and flexibility in the types of projects they’re tackling in earlier terms,” explained Wendy Adest, Chair of Art Center’s Integrated Studies Department.

“When the Demo Shop is not in use as a classroom, Industrial Design and other students may use it as an additional shop and work space. The purchase of model-scale tools compliments the current array of equipment we already have, and will allow all students access to appropriate tools for their projects, regardless of major. The Parsons grant also funds needed upgrades to classroom 229, as well as creating a clean space for our popular rapid prototyping equipment. We are all very grateful to The Parsons Foundation for their generosity and for recognizing the value of such a venture.”

Work is already underway on the new shop, which is expected to be functional in January with a formal dedication to take place in the spring.

All Roads Lead Back to Art Center

Photo © 2010 Art Center College of Design/Chris Hatcher

Alumnus and Trustee Doug Boyd has spent time across the map: he was born in Canada, went to high school in Phoenix, moved to Los Angeles to study Transportation Design at Art Center, then to Detroit for work. But he found himself returning to Southern California—the warm climate and creative energy drew him back. More than a decade after graduating from the College, he found it calling as well, and became reconnected with his alma mater and fellow alumni.

The founder and president of integrated marketing firm Boyd Communications, he was recently appointed to the Art Center Board of Trustees. We sat down with him to find out a little more about our new Board member.

Dotted Line: Any fond memories that you’d like to share about your time at Art Center?
Doug Boyd: How much time do you have? There are so many. The classes I had with Strother MacMinn are memorable to this day. Fine art instructor Lorser Feitelson had some of the most remarkable people stop by his Saturday morning classes. One morning, we came in and Edward G. Robinson was standing there smoking a cigarette in the auditorium with Lorser. They were talking about having lunch with Picasso in Paris, and all the affairs he was having with women. It was fantastic! I have countless memories like this.

Dotted Line: Have you remained active with the College over the years?
Boyd: I have, since returning to Southern California. I’ve been actively involved with alumni groups over the years. Occasionally I’ve helped instructors, coming in to a class and giving special assignments, or sometimes just sitting in on a class and observing. I love being involved and I love being around the students. Their creative energy is contagious.

Click here for a video interview with Doug Boyd

Dotted Line: You’ve witnessed the evolution of the College over the decades first-hand. How is it different from when you were a student?
Boyd: The differences from when I was a student at the campus on Third Street are extraordinary and quite significant. The world has also changed a great deal–students that were in the school then had a much smaller world to deal with. As the Board, College administration, faculty and alumni look at how to prepare our students for tomorrow, we realize that the world is much more complex, and far more demanding. Therefore, it’s the responsibility of the school to provide an environment and instruction and vision for students to thrive in this new world. 

Continue reading →