Author Archives: Jered Gold

Countdown to 4 Hours Solid

Join us Wednesday evening for 4 Hours Solid, an evening of work and ideas from Art Center’s graduate programs. Art Center’s Art, Broadcast Cinema, Industrial Design and Media Design departments will offer four jam-packed hours of exhibitions, screenings, discussions and presentations.

The event will feature “Screen/Culture,” a panel discussion of the ubiquity of screens in our everyday lives and their impact on makers of design, art and film. Panelists include Scott Watson, chief technology officer of Walt Disney Imagineering R&D; Kevin Mack, artist and Academy Award-winning visual effects supervisor of What Dreams May Come; Mackenzie Wark, chair of culture and media at Eugene Lang College and author of Gamer Theory and Hacker Manifesto; and Anne Bray, founding director of Freewaves, a global arts organization dedicated to collecting and connecting innovative and culturally relevant independent new media.

The free event will offer an array of programming throughout the evening along with food from the Flying Pig Truck, Grilled Cheese Truck and Coolhaus. Yum! Find out more at the 4 Hours Solid Facebook page. See you there!

4 Hours Solid
Wednesday, April 21, 6-10 pm
South Campus

In Case You Missed It

As you know, there’s always something going on when it comes to Art Center alumni, students and faculty. Some of the latest:

  • Catch the final days of Illustration alum Edwin Ushiro’s solo show, At Night, Lights Fell and Loved Ones returned Home, at Sloan Fine Art in New York. Arrested Motion
  • The Armory Center for the Arts presents Stitches, a group exhibition exploring contemporary art approaches to the techniques of sewing, knitting and weaving. Participating artists include Art Center Admissions staff member Nicola Vruwink. Armory Center for the Arts
  • Illustration alum Nathan Ota discusses painting, graffiti and spray paint. Graphics.com
  • Schools are working to develop creative MBAs. The Independent
  • Alum Mack King TRANS ’67 received honorable mention for a mixed media illustration at the Fine Arts Show featuring Cumberland County Artists at the Plateau Creative Arts Center in Fairfield Glade, Tenn. The catch? Mack says it was a homework assignment that he created at Art Center years ago! The Art Guild at Fairfield Glade

(Image: The Secret Life of a Rustling Brush by Edwin Ushiro)

Film Students Bring Home College Television Emmy

Film student Francis Pollara, along with fellow students Saman Keshavarz, Y-C Tom Lee and Romson Niega, recently won a College Television Emmy Award for a commercial they produced. “Trigger Happy” is a spot about friends playing freeze tag with cameras, filmed at Hillside Campus.

Pollara also won best music video award at South by Southwest last month for his work producing the band Cinnamon Chaser’s “Luv Deluxe” music video. The video wasn’t even submitted for South by Southwest; instead festival organizers asked for it to be submitted after seeing it online.

Read more about Pollara in the La Cañada Valley Sun: Prodigal son takes home two awards, and watch the commercial below. Congrats on a job well done!

Saturday High Participates in Humanitas Arts Festival

Art Center’s Saturday High program is collaborating with the Los Angeles Education Partnership’s Humanitas program in support of a student arts festival this Friday, April 16, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown L.A.

The Humanitas Arts Festival, developed in conjunction with the Los Angeles Opera’s Ring Festival LA, brings 270 students from nine Los Angeles schools into direct collaboration with local artists. The students created work engaging in an interdisciplinary, arts-integrated exploration of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, including contemporary responses to Wagner’s work in mediums ranging from film to fashion to fine art.

Saturday High instructors worked with fashion students at Downtown Magnets High School and photography students at Fremont High School for the event. Fashion students responded to Wagner’s classic opera by designing, and with the help of a seamstress, sewing outfits reflecting themes from the classic opera. Other students documented their lives by taking photographs reflecting personal struggles with friendship, love, betrayal and identity. These creative pieces, well as work from more than 200 other students, will be exhibited April 16. The event is free and open to the public, with a  suggested donation of $5.

Humanitas Arts Festival
Friday, April 16, 6-9 pm
Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles
213.622.5237

We’re a Webby Honoree!

Great news: Art Center’s website has been selected as an Official Honoree for the 2010 Webby Awards in the School/University category!

Out of the nearly 10,000 entries submitted to the 14th Annual Webby Awards, less than 15% are awarded the status of Official Honorees.

Established in 1996 during the Web’s infancy, the Webbys are presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, which includes an executive 750-member body of leading Web experts, business figures, luminaries, visionaries and creative celebrities, and Associate Members who are former Webby Award Winners and Nominees and other Internet professionals.

We’re so excited about this huge honor. Thanks to all students, staff and faculty who helped create our new site—we couldn’t have done this without you!

Envisioning the Next 80 Years

The Pasadena Star-News ran a nice piece on Art Center and our upcoming 80th anniversary over the weekend. Art Center President Lorne Buchman and Chairman of the Board of Trustees Bob Davidson discussed their vision and plans for Art Center’s future in the article, which ran Saturday.

Janette Williams writes: “President Lorne M. Buchman, who will be inaugurated April 22, and Robert C. Davidson Jr., the first African-American chairman of the college’s board of trustees, agree: There will be a renewed focus on students, faculty, curriculum and scholarships, and on building diversity at every level as the college looks toward the next 80 years.”

Read more: Everything old new again as Art Center College marks its 80th anniversary

Open Market Sunday

Don’t miss Sunday’s Pasadena Art & Design Open Market at One Colorado. This bi-annual outdoor art market is devoted to selling work by emerging and established artists from Art Center and Pasadena City College. This great event features work by Art Center students, faculty and staff, and is sponsored by Center for the Student Experience, One Colorado and Pasadena City College. Don’t miss it!

Open Market
Sunday, April 11, 10 am-5 pm
One Colorado, Old Town Pasadena

Cinematographer John Toll on Campus Today

Film Department instructor Allen Daviau will host a screening of The Thin Red Line, followed by a Q&A with cinematographer John Toll. Toll’s credits include Almost Famous, Gone Baby Gone, The Last Samurai, Tropic Thunder, It’s Complicated and many others. Toll one of just three cinematographers to win consecutive Oscars for Best Cinematography, for Legends of the Fall (1994) and Braveheart (1995).

The event starts promptly at 1 pm and is open to all Art Center students, faculty, alumni and staff.

John Toll
Thursday, April 8, 1 pm
Ahmanson Auditorium

Jeunes Talents 2010 Opens in WeHo

A group show featuring photographs of contemporary French life by American art school students premieres at Louis Stern Fine Arts in West Hollywood this week before moving to galleries in New Orleans and New York.

Jeunes Talents 2010, French Impressions: New Photographic Perspectives was conceived in the spirit of photographer Robert Frank. Eight American art students, including Art Center Photography and Imaging student David Holden Smith, were sent to France to capture the essence of French life and culture with fresh sensibilities, unsullied eyes and new perspectives. The cities of Aix-en-Provence, Arles (where Smith stayed), Marseille and Toulon were among the cities hosting photographers for 10 days.

Art Center is proud to have participated in the exchange program since its inception. To view the results of previous editions of Jeunes Talents visit franceguide.com/jeunestalents or the Jeunes Talents page on Facebook.

Jeunes Talents 2010, French Impressions: New Photographic Perspectives
April 7-21
Louis Stern Fine Arts
9002 Melrose Avenue
West Hollywood

(Featured image by David Holden Smith)