Nick Locaino led students on a tour of Art Center's lasers.
Did you notice the flyers in the Student Dining Room encouraging students to attend a “laser” demonstration in Room 229A? Our curiosities at the Dotted Line were piqued, so we attended yesterday to see what exactly was going down.
“Some people are disappointed it’s not a gun mounted on a tripod,” said Art Center’s Nick Loicano, a staff member in the Technical Skills Center, when introducing one of the College’s laser-cutting machines. Loicano led the group of 13 students through a two-hour tour of the machines, which included: a walkthrough on setting up a graphic for laser-cutting; laser-cutting a design onto a three-by-three-inch keychain; and, perhaps most importantly, an overview of Art Center’s policies regarding fair and safe usage of the machines.
For additional information on the Technical Skills Center, visit Art Center’s website or the Model Shop and 3D Labs’ Facebook page.
Art Center for Kids students get up close and personal with a Mars Rover model.
This August, NASA’s Mars Rover Curiosity will land on the surface of the Red Planet. Armed with a geology lab, cameras galore and a rock-vaporizing laser, Curiosity’s mission will be to find conditions favorable for life.
This Spring, all students enrolled in Art Center for Kids—Art Center College of Design’s program for students in grades 4–8—will have a special opportunity to work with Curiosity engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to imagine what a future community on Mars might look like.
It’s all part of the Imagine Mars Project, an interdisciplinary program sponsored by NASA and the National Endowment for the Arts—and of which Art Center is a proud partner— that takes kids on a virtual mission to Mars and brings them back with a new outlook on community, science and the arts.
Art Center for Kids students in "Architecture from the Inside Out" design buildings suitable for the environment on Mars.
Every Spring term for the past six years, all Art Center for Kids classes focus on one common theme: imagining a future life on Mars. In these classes, young artists and designers, in cooperation with scientists and engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, translate this theme through a variety of disciplines.
“Here on Earth we take certain things for granted, like gravity,” says David J. Delgado, Art Center alumnus and Lead on the Imagine Mars Project for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who says the main skill Imagine Mars students develop is creative problem solving, “We ask the students to dig into their imagination and come up with things that have never been seen before.”
Delgado says the wide array of disciplines taught at Art Center for Kids means those ‘things that never seen before’ take on infinite variations—whether they’re group projects built in Architecture from the Inside Out (“How do you design buildings to fit into the environment on Mars?”), constructing narratives in Cartooning Technique (“What kind of people will live there? What will they do?”) imagining how pets would survive on Mars in Animal Sculpture (“The students have come up with some really fun spacesuits for their animals.”) or capturing images of life on Earth in Photography to remind residents on Mars of their roots.
Delgado also points out that the lessons learned in class go far beyond simply learning about Mars, “The instructors at Art Center for Kids use Imagine Mars as a jumping-off point to get really creative. Not only are the students learning about Mars, but they’re also learning skills for their specific medium, say photography. And they’re not just learning how to take a photograph, but they’re also learning about how tell stories through pictures. All the classes do a really good of that.”
Art Center for Kids Spring classes begin February 19; register today!
David J. Delgado, lead of the Imagine Mars Project at The Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams star in "The Vow." Courtesy: Sony Pictures.
Opening in theatres nationwide today–and right in time for Valentine’s Day–is The Vow, a romantic drama co-written and directed by Broadcast Cinema alumnus Michael Sucsy.
The Vow tells the story of a newlywed couple whose life is thrown into disarray when a car accident places the wife–played by Rachel McAdams of The Notebook and Sherlock Holmes–in a coma. Waking up with severe memory loss, her husband–Channing Tatum of Dear John and G.I.Joe: The Rise of Cobra–endeavors to win her heart again.
“She’s an artist when we meet her. She’s kind of bohemian and has edgy musical friends. But what she remembers is being in law school, close to her family and engaged to an attorney,” said Sucsy in an promotional on-set interview of what he finds most compelling about Rachel McAdams’ character. “It’s that choose-your-own adventure thing in life, where you go left or you go right.”
Sucsy previously wrote and directed the HBO telefilm Grey Gardens about Jackie Onassis’ eccentric relatives ‘Big Edie’ Bouvier Beale and ‘Little Edie’ Bouvier Beale.
Detail of a painting by Entertainment Design student Annis Naeem.
“I plan on bringing a little bit of Hollywood into this department,” Tim Flattery told us last year after he was named chair of Art Center College of Design’s Entertainment Design Department. “Rather than just having companies come in to look at student’s artwork, we’re also going to showcase the students and the College.”
And now it’s not just the entertainment industry getting a new level of exposure to the work created by Entertainment Design students, but the general public as well, as the exhibition Fantastic Scenarios debuts at the Armory Center for the Arts this Saturday night with an opening reception from 7:00-9:00 p.m. The exhibition, which was organized by Flattery and runs through May 13, features work created by current Entertainment Design undergraduate students.
Designing new worlds, characters, and objects that have never before been seen requires great imagination as well as an understanding of how things are built — and how to communicate with the people who will build these new worlds. Art Center’s Entertainment Design curriculum helps students develop the skills and creative focus required of concept designers in the entertainment industry.
For more information on the Entertainment Design Department, visit Art Center’s website.
New mother and Art Center alumna Emilie Halpern–who graduated from the Graduate Art department in 2002–has an exhibition of new work on view at Pepin Moore in Chinatown.
The exhibition titled Jamais Vu, which translates as “never seen,” includes new photographs and sculptures that explored her feelings about her status as a soon-to-be mother.
“By the time I make the next show, so much will have happened; I’ll have such a different point of view on the purpose of art,” Halpern recently told Flaunt Magazine. “There’s this real fear as an artist that when you have a baby, do you continue to be an artist?”
"Red Tails" Executive Producer and Art Center Trustee Charles Floyd Johnson.
One of Art Center’s newer Trustees, Charles Floyd Johnson has a long-standing and successful career as a producer in the entertainment industry. He first started becoming familiar with the College during August of last year, became a Trustee earlier this year, and is looking forward to assisting Art Center in a number of different capacities, from outreach to fundraising.
“I came out for a graduation and was so impressed with Art Center, its students, and its plans for the future, that I said this is the place for me,” said Johnson, who points to being particularly impressed by the College’s Strategic Plan. “It felt to me like a very forward-thinking agenda, in terms of both making the school more user-friendly for the students and also making Art Center more dominant. Art Center already has a wonderful reputation in so many of its areas, but the College is interested in becoming even stronger.”
Johnson is currently serving as executive producer of the CBS television drama NCIS, which celebrates its 200th episode on February 7. He is also one of the producers of Red Tails, the Lucasfilm feature about the Tuskegee Airmen, America’s first all African-American aerial unit who both helped bring down the Nazi war machine during World War II and challenged racial stereotypes back home. Defying the odds, the film starring an all African-American cast — including Terrence Howard, Cuba Gooding Jr., Nate Parker and David Oleyowo — debuted last weekend in second place by bringing in nearly $19 million at the box office.
“It’s a story that has resonance with a lot of people,” said Johnson of the film which he and fellow Red Tails producer George Lucas had been trying to get off the ground for 23 years. “These young men were not encouraged to fly for their country. They were not expected to succeed. But they triumphed over adversity. These were men who fought racism at home and fascism abroad. They did it successfully and they were heroes, not victims.”
Don’t miss your chance to meet Jennifer Golub, Executive Director of Content at Let There Be Dragons today at 1:00 p.m. in the Boardroom as part of the Office of Career Development’s Career Chats series.
What exactly is Let There Be Dragons? In case you haven’t seen the pink posters scattered across campus, here’s how the creative firm describes itself:
“Let There Be Dragons is a new content dream machine. The name Let There Be Dragons comes from 16th century cartography — unknown areas and uncharted waters were labeled with the phrase, ‘There Be Dragons.’ We say, ‘Bring it.’ LTBD embraces the unknown and uses it to craft new ways to tell brand stories and connect with new audiences. Led by creative thinkers and craftspeople, we bring new content and forms of creativity to the world from new games, apps, films, shows, books, memes and more.”
Organized by the Office of Career Development, Career Chats: Insights into Creative Professions (formerly the Business Dialogue Series) provide Art Center students with an exclusive opportunity to meet industry leaders in a variety of fields. At these informal presentations, students can identify potential job markets, gain insight into specific fields and solicit career advice from visiting guests, all in the intimate setting of Art Center’s Boardroom. Career Chats take place Tuesdays, 1–2 p.m. during Weeks 3–7 of every term.
Upcoming Career Chats this term include:
February 7 — OISHII: Ismael Obregon, Creative Director and Daniel Walkup, Director of Operations.
February 14 — RTT: Parker Fredlund, Director, Professional Solutions
February 21 — Diana Koenigsberg, Photographer
February 28 –EAST WEST LITERARY AGENCY: Deborah Warren, Agent/Managing Partner
For additional information, please visit the Career Chats page on Art Center’s website.
Alumnus Jonathan Jarvis GMD '09 speaking to the Fall 2011 graduates. Photo: John Dlugolecki.
At last month’s Fall 2011 graduation ceremony, Graduate Media Design alumnus Jonathan Jarvis GMD ’09 received Art Center’s prestigious Young Alumni Innovator Award for his innovative professional and creative work.
While at Art Center, Jarvis made a splash with The Crisis of Credit Visualized, a video he created which entertainingly explained the nuts and bolts behind the economic crisis of 2008 using easy-to-understand language and engaging imagery. The video became an Internet sensation and has been viewed millions of times since Jarvis first placed it online.
Just one week after graduating, Jarvis was hired by Google’s Creative Lab unit as one of the original Google Five. Currently a designer for the company, he has worked on several high profile projects for the search giant, including Androidify, the YouTube Symphony and a Google-powered love story that ran during the Super Bowl.
In addition to receiving the Young Alumni Innovator Award, Jarvis also delivered the evening’s commencement address to the Fall 2011 graduates, during which he elaborated both on The Crisis of Credit Visualized and what he took away from his Art Center experience. Here are highlights from his speech:
On lessons learned at Art Center:
“As you think about the road ahead, you’ll no doubt feel many things. I remember when I graduated from the Master’s program here a little less than three years ago, I was sitting where all of you are today, thinking about that road. I’ve been asked to tell you my story today, and how circumstances allowed me a brief glimpse of that road before I was ready to walk it. At least I thought that I wasn’t ready to walk it. But my time at Art Center had done something to me, something that made me ready. I can’t tell you exactly how it happened, or precisely when it occurred, but it did. I’m sure of it. The challenges you faced here, both personal and academic, and the ideas that you saturated in, have had a deep impact on you, deeper than you realize right now. You may not see it now, but it might manifest in an unconscious manner, like a muscle memory you’ve forgotten you developed. Something inside of you has changed, and you’ve grown more than you’ve recognized.”
On what inspired The Crisis of Credit Visualized:
“I had some studio space down at South Campus that I called the bunker because it had no windows and really thick concrete walls. I was sitting in the bunker, listening to NPR and I heard that Lehman Brothers, one of the biggest banks in the country, had just gone bankrupt. I also heard the term “subprime mortgage” for the 500th time, and I still didn’t know what that meant. So instead of working on my master’s thesis, I thought that it was the perfect time to learn what a subprime mortgage was. And I quickly discovered that to learn what a subprime mortgage was, you need to learn what a prime mortgage is. And to learn what that is, you need to understand defaulting and bankruptcy and so on. And while I was learning about all of this, a strange thing happened to me. I became fascinated.”
On the power of design:
“I started reading and watching everything available about the credit crisis. And surprisingly, for something that was so relevant, there was no basic introduction for someone who wasn’t versed in finance. Then I had this realization that, as a designer, I had the ability to turn around and explain everything I just learned to someone who, just like myself a few weeks ago, didn’t know anything about finance. And this was an amazing feeling. It was the first time that I personally realized the power of design. And it was also my first realization that what I had been learning in school was actually applicable to the world at large.”
On going viral:
“In my sixth and final term and I wanted to make a short film about the credit crisis in a very simple way. So I said to myself that I would work really hard for one week, crank the video out, it would be out of my system, and I would move on. About four weeks later, it was starting to shape up, but it was still far from what I felt was ready. I had already sunk almost half of the semester into making this film and I had to do something quick, so I threw together a website. I put the film on it, and I called it The Crisis of Credit. I sent it to my professors, some friends and a few blogs. Surprisingly they watched it. And they started watching it a lot. And then more people watched it, and started to share it. Before I knew it, it had been viewed millions of times. And I couldn’t believe it. The response was far bigger than anything I had ever imagined. Back when ‘viral’ was still a cool word, my film was going viral. And it was all because I had made something I just wanted to watch myself when I started this process.”
On glimpsing life after school:
“I suddenly started getting lots of email and my phone would ring with unidentified numbers. I was getting a lot of attention, and I loved it at first. And then everybody wanted to know what my agenda was. They wanted to know my design philosophy. What did I plan to do next? Everyone started making demands on my time. I was forced to talk to the world outside of school and to find myself as a designer before I felt ready to define myself to anybody. Even myself. I couldn’t handle it. But somehow, I did. That muscle memory kicked in. I somehow responded to all the emails. I somehow answered all the questions. And somehow said what I wanted to do without sounding completely stupid.”
A research sketch by Jarvis for his "Crisis of Credit Visualized" video.
On the next move:
“The next thing I knew I was at the finish line. It was graduation day and I thought, wait a second, what’s going on? Wasn’t everything supposed to be sorted out by now? Wasn’t I supposed to have a job? Wasn’t the next move supposed to be clear? I just managed to get through this crazy situation and I thought that meant that I was ready. But I was sitting there, and I certainly didn’t feel ready. I spent most of graduation day wondering when do you feel ready? And it was about a week later and I was on the phone with a man named Andy [Berndt] from Google. He’d seen the video and he was telling me about a new group that he was putting together in New York to find new ways to use Google and YouTube and Chrome. I told him it sounded fascinating, but that I wasn’t sure that I was ready. And then I immediately thought to myself, what are you doing? You just told a prospective employer that you don’t feel ready for the job! And then he said to me, ‘Nobody ever feels ready. But if the spaceship lands in your backyard and the door opens, you get in.’ So I got in.”
On not being ready:
“Over the past three years I’ve been on a team that’s found ways to use YouTube to let people anywhere in the world audition to play with the London Symphony Orchestra, that’s used only Google Search to tell a love story during the Super Bowl, and that’s visually redesigned all of Google. I’m on a team that every day asks me to do things that I don’t feel ready to do. And all of you will be asked to do the same. Because you are going to go on to do things that have never been done before. On your road ahead, you will build new types of products that have never been built before. You will work in industries that did not even exist when you started here. One of you may even go on to create an entirely new industry. And you’re never going to be ready for that.”
Art Center Alumni Awards, which provide the College an opportunity to publicly recognize the talent, service and design influence of our alumni, were also bestowed uponLou DanzigerADVT ’48 for a lifetime of professional and creative achievement andWendy McNaughton FINE ’99 for realized humanitarian design impact. See all the award winners and the Fall 2011 graduation ceremony in it’s entirety here.
Writer/director/producer, Art Center alumnus and Saturday High instructor Chris Gehl. Photo: Mike Winder
In a recent interview, The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola said, “The cinema language happened by experimentation—by people not knowing what to do.”
For Chris Gehl, an Art Center alumnus and a film instructor in Saturday High—Art Center College of Design’s program for high school students (grades 9–12)—venturing into unknown territory is par for the course. The Los Angeles-based writer/director/producer spends most of his Saturdays at South Campus, teaching Directing for Film and Writing for Film during the Spring and Fall terms and the Writing for Film and the Film Production workshops during the Summer.
With the beginning of the Spring Term less than two weeks away, we caught up with Gehl to ask him more about his Saturday High classes.
How much filmmaking experience do your incoming students have?
The nice thing about Saturday High is that it attracts a great cross section of the universe. Because we’re in Southern California, sometimes you get students who have parents or relatives in the industry. Then there are some students have more sophisticated tastes because they’ve been exposed to more film history. And some students come to class with no experience whatsoever. In fact, for some kids, this might be the only art education that they’re getting. So it’s a really nice mix.
Instructor Stan Kong reviews his students' work. Photo: Four Eyes Photography
“I hate being called ‘Mr. Kong’ because that puts a barrier between you and me,” says Art Center at Night (ACN) instructor Stan Kong, who’s teaching Sketching for Designers, among other courses, for the upcoming Spring 2012 term. “And I don’t think there should be any barriers.”
For Stan, who graduated from Art Center in 1983 and created ACN’s very first Introduction to Product and Transportation Design course shortly thereafter, removing barriers isn’t about becoming best friends with his students; it’s about facilitating honest communication in order to meet their needs. “A lot of what I do in the classroom is getting the students to talk about themselves,” says Stan. “If somebody were to ask a student of mine what they learned from me, I’d be totally disappointed if they answered ‘how to design a product’ or ‘how to draw.’ The best answer would be, ‘I learned to care about myself and about the world. I learned that I could go out there and achieve and make this world a better place.’”
