Author Archives: Jered Gold

Seymour Chwast Visits Campus

International design legend Seymour Chwast will be on campus tomorrow, February 25.

Chwast’s award-winning work has influenced two generations of designers and illustrators. Recipient of the AIGA medal, he co-founded Pushpin studios, which rapidly gained an international reputation for innovative design and illustration. Pushpin’s visual language arose from a passion for historical design movements and helped revolutionize the way we look at design today. Come and see the work, now collected by the Museum of Modern Art, and hear the story behind a lifetime of innovation and ideas. A book signing will follow the lecture.

Seymour Chwast
Thursday, February 25, Noon
Ahmanson Auditorium

Catching Up with Karen Hofmann

Karen Hofmann, recently appointed Department Chair of Product Design, sat down with us to discuss the future of the department.

As an alumna and educator, Hofmann has developed innovative curriculum—such as DesignStorms,  immersive collaborations of students, faculty and professionals from sponsoring companies—and defined new strategies benefiting the entire College. She has served as director of the Color, Materials and Trends Exploration Laboratory (CMTEL) at Hillside Campus since 2006, and has been on the Art Center faculty since 2001. She was recently named one of the Most Admired Educators of 2010 by DesignIntelligence, published by the Design Futures Council.

Prior to joining Art Center’s faculty, Hofmann held leadership positions at o2studio and Johnson Controls. She graduated from Art Center in 1997 with a bachelor’s degree in product design and earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from California State University, Northridge. She served as Acting Chair of the department from 2008 to 2009.

Dotted Line: What do you bring to the Product Design Department as Chair?
Karen Hofmann: I am deeply committed to upholding the great legacy and strengths of the department. I feel a great sense of responsibility to prepare young designers as creative citizens of the 21st century, and will evolve the program to best prepare our students for meaningful careers that positively impact the world.

DL: What does the future hold for product design in general?
KH: It has gone beyond just producing objects. Today product design is about applying the design process to any number of problems in the world, from social impact challenges to redesigning organizations. The term “design thinking” is very in vogue right now—product designers have led these collaborative and iterative processes for years.  Product designers are responsible for bringing non-designers along in the creative process as they identify and solve problems.

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Can Context Be Counterproductive in Art?

Miller-McCune reports on some surprising new research that suggests that presenting contextual information alongside a work of modern art may lessen a viewer’s enjoyment or appreciation of the piece.

From the article: “‘Providing contextual information led to participants perceiving examples of the various styles of art as matching less well with their internal standards than when no contextual information was presented,’ Bordens writes. In other words, they were more likely to feel a piece conformed to their personal ideas about art — and thus more likely to enjoy or appreciate it — when it was presented without interpretation.”

Do you agree? Can context be counterproductive?

Read the article: Context May Diminish Art Appreciation

EcoCouncil Meets the President

Art Center President Lorne Buchman recently met with the EcoCouncil, a student-run organization which works closely with faculty and administration to find practical and creative solutions to reduce the College’s ecological impact. The group conducted a presentation for Buchman outlining their vision for sustainability initiatives at the College, including their desire for required courses in responsible design for all students, improved recycling efforts on campus during peak periods of the term, increasing accessibility to public transportation, and finding better ways to maintain and incorporate the Art Center community into our hillside environment.

ARCOmadrid Honors Los Angeles

The 29th edition of Spain’s leading contemporary art fair, ARCOmadrid, has opened its doors. For the first time, a city—Los Angeles—is the fair’s “honored guest,” rather than an entire country.

From this month’s issue of Art in America: “The switch, says the fair’s director, Lourdes Fernandez, reflects the fact that ‘contemporary meaning is not in countries but in cities.’ … It probably doesn’t hurt that L.A. is full of collectors and galleries, very few of which participate in ARCO, representing a potential future constituency.”

Be sure to check out this interesting story on the fair’s opening day at artdaily.org and this great article on the L.A. galleries participating at the Los Angeles Times.

Pictured: No Title (His transformation is), by Raymond Pettibon

Po the Panda is Here!

Williamson Gallery Director Stephen Nowlin gives us a behind-the-scenes peek at the installation of the upcoming exhibit DreamWorlds, opening March 4. A partnership between the College and DreamWorks Animation, the exhibit will highlight the artistry and craftsmanship behind today’s most successful animated features.

Become a fan of the Williamson Gallery on Facebook for exclusive updates as the exhibit takes shape. And speaking of Facebook, the official College Facebook page has officially launched—become a fan today!

The Wolfman Comes to Hillside Campus

There will be a special screening on campus of The Wolfman today. Film Department instructor Allen Daviau will host the 35mm screening of the Universal Pictures film for his Cinematography 5 Seminar. A Q&A with the film’s director of photography, Art Center alum Shelly Johnson, will follow.

A cinematographer and award-winning painter, Johnson has shot more than 50 feature and television projects including Tales from the Crypt, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II, Jurassic Park III, The Last Castle, Hidalgo, Sky High, The House Bunny and many more. The Wolfman, a reimagining of the 1941 horror classic, was directed by Joe Johnston, written by Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self, and boasts an all-star cast including Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Hugo Weaving and Emily Blunt.

The event is open to the entire Art Center community, as space allows.

The Wolfman Special Screening and Q&A
Thursday, February 18, 1 pm
Ahmanson Auditorium

Students Tackle Human Rights Issues

Images for Human Rights: Student Voices, a provocative exhibition exploring perspectives of Art Center students on the issues of freedom and human rights, is on display at the Skirball Cultural Center. The exhibition features more than a dozen large-scale, illustrated posters created by Art Center students as part of a Designmatters project.

The exhibition was designed in 2008 to mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in Paris in 1948. The historic document arose out of the tragedies of World War II and is modeled after the United States Constitution.

Images for Human Rights: Student Voices displays fresh interpretations of the declaration’s many principles, encouraging viewers to reflect upon its continuing significance. Taking such declarations as “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude” (Article 4), “No one shall be subjected to torture” (Article 5), or “Everyone has the right to education” (Article 26), the artists were challenged to represent these assertions through visual images. Each poster is accompanied by the text of the article(s) that inspired it, as well as insightful commentary by the student.

The exhibit runs through March 7. Read more about the project at the Desigmatters website.

Images for Human Rights: Student Voices
The Skirball Cultural Center
2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90049

(Pictured: Everybody by Christopher Kosek)

On Campus: Marian Bantjes

Don’t miss artist, typographer, designer and writer Marian Bantjes, who will speak at Art Center Thursday.  Working from her home on a small island off the west coast of Canada, her personal, obsessive and sometimes strange graphic work has brought her international recognition. Following her interests in complexity and structure, she is known for her custom typography, detailed and lovingly precise vector art, obsessive handwork, patterning and ornament.

Marian Bantjes
Thursday, February 18, 7:30 pm
Ahmanson Auditorium
Hillside Campus

(Pictured: Influence Map, Marian Bantjes)

Battle Royale: Book Versus Web

Lawrence Weschler loves the Web. So why is it a problem, then?

Permanence, for starters. The “extreme perishability of digital information” is of great concern to Weschler, who spoke on campus last Monday as part of the Big Picture Lecture Series. “Cuneiform tablets and papyrus scrolls have lasted thousands of years,” he explains. “Digital information, on the other hand, is catastrophic.”

Weschler argues the problem is that digital information decays over time, as well as the equipment and software used. Floppy discs, VHS tapes, CDs—these disposable media forms are quickly becoming archaic, and the work they contain becomes lost forever.

“The entire Clinton administration, in terms of history, is gone,” Weschler says. “Almost everything was conducted via email, with devices that are no longer around to use.” (Not to mention the fact that an external hard drive containing copies of data from the administration was discovered missing by the National Archives and Records Administration in 2009.)

A second issue, according to Weschler, is the “palpable substantiality of books,” or the stability of a printed book versus the instability and frantic nature of the Web. Books have substance and soul, while the Web is filled with insubstantiality and soullessness. “There is no calm centeredness on the Web,” he says. “Just a frenzy of echoes that rebound and go from one thing to the next. Which is its great strength as well.”

There is another set of issues with the Web related to authors. “The value of publishing a book for a writer is much the same as a visual artist putting together an exhibition,” Weschler says. “Preparing for an exhibition forces artists to self-edit, take stock in their work and decide what was good and what wasn’t.” You can’t do this on the Web, he argues. “It’s just too easy to put things up without the proper foresight or editing.”

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