Author Archives: Sylvia Sukop

Longtime library leader enters retirement with a loving send-off — and a stack of 19th century novels

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Betsy Galloway embraces a well-wisher during her retirement party in the Art Center Library. Photo by Chuck Spangler.

Friends and colleagues old and new gathered together for an Alice in Wonderland-inspired tea party to celebrate Betsy Galloway’s 35 years of devoted service and commitment to Art Center and its students. Betsy’s retirement from her position as Vice President, Library, was announced in mid-May, and her farewell party took place in the Library June 11.

“Through Betsy’s leadership and management of the Library and her collaboration with her remarkable staff, she has ensured that the Library is a professional and social community resource that enhances the rich and full educational content that the College offers,” said Provost Fred Fehlau. “She has made significant contributions throughout her tenure in her management of the Library and its other resources, including our institutional Archives, which have served thousands of students and researchers.”

Outreach activities spearheaded by Betsy have included information events and guest speakers that benefit the entire college community. She also played a key role in Art Center’s co-hosting the Art Libraries Society of North America’s international conference in Pasadena in April. During her long tenure, she oversaw the introduction of the Library’s mobile application, international student research tutorials, use of social media, video tutorials for remote learning, and library orientation programs. She credits her colleagues with innovations such as a unique and growing collection of zines, which are typically self-published and usually impossible to find in bookstores and libraries.

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Transgender Portraits Celebrate Courage and Community

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From the series Transformational Project by Jen Rosenstein.

Jen Rosenstein will never forget the first time she met a transgender person. A lesbian and, at the time, a student at Art Center College of Design, Rosenstein was curious. But her curiosity backfired. “I had so many questions for him, and he took it wrong,” says the 2008 Photography and Imaging graduate. “He misunderstood my intention.”

Still, Rosenstein and her new friend Mir kept talking and later he invited her to visit his home in West Hollywood. There she set up an impromptu studio to photograph Mir and some of his friends — the first portraits in what would become the series Transformational Project. “I went back to his house every weekend for several months,” she recalls, “and people were literally lining up to have their portraits taken.”

Five years on, Rosenstein has made nearly 70 portraits of trans men and women in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. The ever-expanding series, “a platform for the trans community to express themselves any way they want,” has been featured by ABC News and presented in a gallery show at the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center. On Saturday, June 22, her roving portrait studio returns to LAGLC’s Village at Ed Gould Plaza in Hollywood, and she has put out an open call to the trans community to come and be photographed there.

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Art Center Honors the Memory of a Faculty Member with a Visit to his Children’s School

In 2010, beloved Art Center faculty member Norman Schureman was killed in a tragic act of gun violence. Now, three years later, his sons Milo, 15, and Kian, 12, are students at the Aveson Global Leadership Academy, a public charter school in Altadena. On May 31, a group of Designmatters’ faculty, students and alumni visited the school’s sixth and ninth grade classes to introduce Uncool: The Anti-gun Violence Project — a series of children’s books and the Where’s Daryl? middle school curriculum — dedicated to Norman’s memory.

Children’s book author-illustrator Kin Lok addresses sixth graders in Milo Schureman’s class at the Aveson Global Leadership Academy, with Illustration instructor and “Uncool” project faculty lead David Tillinghast (lower left). Photo by Christy Moision.

Designmatters Director Elisa Ruffino gave Kian’s sixth grade class an overview of the project and explained that artists and designers are creative problem solvers who play a vital and exciting role in social change. “With Designmatters, we like to say that innovation is not about seeing the world as it is, but as it could be,” she said, adding, “We’re thrilled to be carrying on this work in Norman’s honor, in his spirit.”

“Making a book is a lot of work,” Illustration instructor David Tillinghast told the students. He described the many steps it takes, from research, brainstorming and rapid protoyping, to creating the art work, refining the story and transferring the work onto a computer for layout, further refinement and ultimately printing.

Tillinghast then invited two of the Designmatters’ children’s book author-illustrators to speak. As their books were passed around the classroom, Kin Lok (Zoarmax 133’s Big Question) and Juan Marco (My Imagination Book) detailed their creative process and took questions from curious students.

Sixth grade teacher Tom Hyatt, a fan of the books and the project as a whole, noted that Lok’s story is great for teaching about perspective. “The artist is from Earth,” he said, “but he’s writing from the perspective of an alien.”

The College is donating two sets of the four-book series to Aveson, one for each of its campuses, along with the “Where’s Daryl” curriculum package.

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“Uncool: The Anti-Gun Violence Project” Engages Children Through Creative Workshops

Designmatters’ pilot program with Pasadena Public Library offers a fresh approach to promoting dialogue and prevention

Art Center College of Design, through a partnership with the City of Pasadena Public Library, has taken its innovative gun violence education and prevention initiative into local neighborhoods. Uncool: The Anti-Gun Violence Project, supported by the Nathan Cummings Foundation, provides vital new resources for educators and prevention advocates in the form of original illustrated children’s books for six- and seven-year-old readers.

At the Pasadena Public Library, teacher LaShawn Moore reads to children from the book “Mark and the Jellybean Monster” by Art Center alumna Ariel Lee. Photo by Sylvia Sukop.

Throughout the month of April, the Pasadena Public Library has offered a series of free public programs for children and their families — hands-on creative workshops inspired by the “Uncool” children’s books — led by an Art Center faculty member and other educators, including some of the designers and storytellers who created the books. Curated by Helen Cahng for Designmatters at Art Center, the local series is a pilot program with potential for expansion in other communities.

The final workshop in the Pasadena Public Library series takes place Tues., April 30, 3:30–5:30 p.m. at the La Pintoresca Branch Library, 1355 North Raymond Ave. in Pasadena.

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The Librarians Have Landed! And They’re Coming to Art Center

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Pasadena plays host to the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) 41st annual meeting April 25–29, 2013, with speakers and attendees from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Latin America, Europe and beyond. The conference takes place at the Pasadena Convention Center, with additional programs and activities scheduled at Art Center College of Design.

Art Center’s Betsy Galloway hosts a meeting of fellow library directors from Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design (AICAD) schools. Archetype Press’s Gloria Kondrup conducts a hands-on workshop in letterpress broadside printing. And Art Center Product and Entertainment Design instructor Justine Limpus Parish leads a tour of the Los Angeles Fashion District.

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With Volunteers’ Help, Late-Night Breakfast Serves 400

For Art Center students, it’s the most anticipated meal of the term

Like holiday crowds at a big box store, students begin lining up well before the doors open. What’s the big attraction? Art Center’s Late-Night Breakfast, a longtime tradition sponsored by the Center for Student Experience (CSE), that treats students to a free breakfast buffet in the feverish final weeks of the school term. The student dining room is currently open 24 hours a day (even when food is not being served) and usually packed at this hour. The hard part, says Cafeteria Manager Ben Herrera, is clearing everyone out to set up for the event.

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Provost Fred Fehlau joins fellow volunteers in serving students Late-Night Breakfast on Wed., April 10, 2013. All photos by Sylvia Sukop.

On this Wednesday night, Herrera joins nearly a dozen staff and executive team members—along with one student—volunteering their time in a show of support for students in the throes of finals. Donning black aprons and transparent latex gloves shortly before 10 p.m., the volunteers take their places behind eight stainless steel serving trays and two giant bowls of fruit salad spread out on a long table.

“What are you serving?” asks Betsy Edmunds, Associate Director of CSE’s Student Development Programs, as she walks the line greeting her team. They respond with a brightness usually reserved for daylight hours. Pancakes! Hash browns! Sausage patties! Scrambled eggs with cheese!

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Environmental Design Students Take Top Prize in 2013 LAIAC Competition

Connie Bakshi and John Clark propose design ideas for a new space in the tunnel beneath historic Union Station in Los Angeles

Art Center Environmental Design students Connie Bakshi and John Clark emerged victorious in the Los Angeles Interior Architecture Committee (LAIAC) 21st Annual 1:2 Student Competition, winning accolades, a $10,000 scholarship and valuable exposure in their field.

The high-intensity, industry-juried, one-day charette provides an opportunity for undergraduate students, in teams of two selected by their instructors, from 12 Southern California design schools to have their design ideas critiqued by leading industry professionals and compete for a total of $23,000 in scholarship prizes.

Art Center students Connie Bakshi and John Clark at the LAIAC 21st Annual 1:2 Student Competition.

This year students were asked to design the “Linear Gateway.” Their assignment: Imagine a new space for the 600-foot long tunnel that passes underneath the rail lines at historic Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. Transform the existing plain tunnel into a new space that is functional, informative and forward-looking for the city.

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“Design for UNICEF” Showcase in New York

Media Design Practices Grad Students present Uganda projects March 28

 

 

Art Center Media Design Practices graduate students, in collaboration with the College’s Designmatters social impact department, are in New York this week, showcasing groundbreaking projects that feature insights from design research and prototypes created at the UNICEF Innovation Lab in Kampala, Uganda. The event is part of “Design for UNICEF” on Thurs., March 28, 2013 from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at the UNICEF House, located in the Danny Kaye Visitors Centre at the United Nations.

The seven students’ projects, aimed at addressing issues of sustainability, access and equity, grew out of a partnership between Art Center’s MDP/Field track graduate program and the UNICEF Innovation Lab. Faculty members Chris Csikszentmihalyi, Sean Donahue and anthropologist Elizabeth Chin head up the team. The student cohort — Jeff Hall, Maria Lamadrid, Judy Toretti, Betsy Kalven, Elizabeth Gin, Jacob Brancsi and An Mina — made multiple visits to Uganda and immersed itself in a broad range of issues challenging the country’s youth.

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Alum Nicholas Alan Cope’s book launch March 28 in New York highlights seven-year project documenting Los Angeles architecture

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From ‘Whitewash’ by Nicholas Alan Cope, published by powerHouse Books.

Nicholas Alan Cope sees Los Angeles as a city of contrasts, with “dueling public narratives of glamour and cynicism” legible in its stark, modern architecture. In his new book of black and white photographs, Whitewash, he dramatizes that contrast by making elegant use of the extremes of light and shadow produced by the intensity of the Southern California sun.

Published by New York’s powerHouse Books, with a foreword by California-born, Paris-based fashion designer Rick Owens, and distributed by Random House, the book’s April release will be celebrated with a launch party at Mondo Cane in Tribeca on Thurs., March 28, on the opening night of a gallery exhibition of Cope’s large-format photographs from the book. The exhibition continues through April 13.

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TEDxYouth at Caltech: Brain Food

TEDxYouth served up generous helpings of Brain Food at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Among the cooks in the kitchen: Art Center Trustee Bill Gross; Professor and Director of Sustainability Initiatives Heidrun Mumper-Drumm; and Product Design alumna Mariana Prieto, who completed the Designmatters Concentration in Art and Design for Social Impact.

The day-long event took place January 19, 2013, and 8-minute videos of the talks were recently made available online. If you have an appetite for fresh ideas, watch!

A Perfect Storm of Opportunity: Bill Gross at TEDxYouth@Caltech

Bill Gross is a lifelong entrepreneur who has been starting companies since he was 12 years old. He has personally started more than 100 companies in the last 42 years, of which more than 40 have gone public or been acquired. Gross is the Founder and CEO of Idealab, a “company factory” based in Pasadena, which he started in 1996. Gross is credited with starting the first online business directory company with CitySearch, the first online car retailed with CarsDirect, the first paid search engine with Goto.com/Overture, and the longest-running technology incubator where he has been the creator of all these companies. A graduate of the California Institute of Technology, Gross currently serves on its Board of Trustees. He also serves on the Board of the Art Center College of Design, and more than 20 technology companies in California.

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