Category Archives: Alumni Relations

Art Center in the News: February-March 2014

Maggie Hendrie on the set of TakePart Live

Maggie Hendrie on the set of TakePart Live

Art Center students, faculty, staff and alumni have been making news while making their mark at on the art and design worlds. For those who may have missed a headline or two, we curated this handy highlight reel of our recent media clips:

Don’t miss two lengthy, live interview segments we arranged for Interaction Design Chair, Maggie Hendrie and ACCD student Alex Cabunoc on the new cable program TakePart Live—a show tailored to Millennials (age 18-34) that reaches 40 million-plus households through Participant Media’s Pivot TV network. (Participant Media is the award-winning, socially and politically progressive production company responsible for An Inconvenient Truth, The Cove, Lincoln, among other enlightening and edifying films and TV shows).

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Of one minute wonders and sustainable paper planes: February’s Art Center alumni notes

Hiroshi Sugimoto's design for for his museum complex in Odawara, Japan

Hiroshi Sugimoto’s design for for his museum complex in Odawara, Japan

From art installations inspired by NASA’S space oddities to a self-styled museum in Japan: Art Center alums have been busy in February. Read on for more details about last month’s alumni accomplishments, including Designmatters’ new alumni engagement efforts.

News

Dan Goods GRPK 02 was featured in a story on Yahoo News about his work at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).  Yahoo

Satyendra Pakhalé PROD 94 discussed his design process and curiosity in a One Minute Wonder video. One Minute Wonder

Hiroshi Sugimoto PHOT 74 has announced plans to design and build a new museum for his work, the Odawara Art Foundation, which will be located in Odawara Japan. Wall Street Journal Blog

Jennie Warren PHOT 05 collaborated with Welsh singer Cate Le Bon and illustrator Erin Althea and on a series of promotional images for Cate’s upcoming tour. Erin Althea’s Blog

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Art Center @ SXSW 2014: Choice program and party picks for artists, designers and innovators

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Lady Gaga announced, earlier this week, that she’d make her SXSW debut, headlining the music festival on March 13. But the biggest surprise was not that the mother of all little monsters would join the hordes of outliers, outcasts, oddballs and out there futurists making the pilgrimage to the annual Austin cultural convergence. It’s that she waited this long to get there.  “[I'll be performing] as part of the Born This Way Foundation night on the Doritos stage,” she said via video. “I believe being an individual and speaking your mind is one of the boldest things you can do. I will be celebrating that Thursday night. We are for the bold. This is a very special show…only people who prove their boldness are able to get in.”

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Spacing out with NASA resident artist (and Art Center alum) Dan Goods

Dan Goods drilled a hole in a grain of sand to illustrate the Milky Way's small size in relation to the universe

Dan Goods drilled a hole in a grain of sand to illustrate the Milky Way’s small size in relation to the universe

Rebecca Gross is a writer-editor for the National Endowment for the Arts.This article was provided to Live Science in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts for Live Science’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

When Dan Goods was studying graphic design, he figured he’d probably end up at an ad agency or some sort of commercial corporation. But these days, he tackles bigger artistic concerns than choosing an appropriate typeface, layout and color. Much bigger. Like Jupiter-sized big.

For the past 10 years, Goods has worked as a visual strategist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. He works to translate the technical, data-driven language of JPL’s missions into engaging, public-friendly works of art. When negotiating his position, the original idea was that Goods would create visualizations communicating JPL’s work. But the artist pushed back: He didn’t want people simply to see the universe; he wanted them to feel it.

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Alumni Spotlight: Erik Molano, social impact graphic designer

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Erik’s story originally appeared as part of Desigmatters’ Alumni Spotlight series. Find out more about Art Center’s social impact design department, Designmatters.

Throughout my education, I had always been fascinated by the power of graphic design. It’s everywhere. In books, freeway signs, software applications, automobile dashboards, cereal box packaging, architectural wayfinding, maps, and so much more. The thoughtfulness and intention that goes into the communication we consume daily is so ubiquitous we sometimes forget that it’s carefully crafted by a worldwide community of graphic designers. Since I had become a part of this community, I challenged myself to find a place within it; to discover my full potential.

I began to ask myself, ‘What’s the most impact I can have as a designer? Is there more to design than just laying out images and text in a beautiful way? How does our work impact culture?’ After a few years of soul-searching, I found my answer lying within the world of social innovation, with many thanks to the following three catalysts.

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Art Center roundtable featuring Charles Ray examines the state of contemporary sculpture

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What does Charles Ray’s faintly lumpish, touched-all-over Tractor (2004) have in common with Jeff Koons’ glistening, meticulously machined Balloon Dog (1994–2000)? And what does either of these celebrated icons have to do with Katharina Fritsch’s fluorescent yellow, human-scaled apparition Madonnenfigur (Madonna Figure) (1987)?

Anticipating the Moderna Museet survey (October 2014–January 2015) that will bring together the sculptural work of Katharina Fritsch, Jeff Koons, and Charles Ray, the exhibition’s curator and Art Center adjunct faculty member Jack Bankowsky will present a distinguished panel at Art Center’s Pasadena campus to discuss the show-in-progress and the critical issues it raises.

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Ray Eames at Art Center: An alum remembers the Modernist pioneer’s commitment to inspiring the next generation of designers

Ray Eames and I first met in Chicago while judging the 1980 Society of Typographic Arts 100 Show. I was the Communication Department Chairman at the time and President of the Art Center Alumni Association. We would often meet for lunch near her studio offices on Washington Boulevard in Venice during the 80s, and she attended several alumni functions at Art Center during those years.

Visiting her studio was always special. Everything was still in place, as it had been when Charles was still alive. Ray had been assembling and archiving, with assistance, the Eames design history, and delegating the items being sorted and donated to the library of congress. There were work tables full of documents and models. And at one time she considered  donating the facility to Art Center for student research facilities to be shared with UCLA, as I recall. Art Center’s leadership at the time declined the offer.

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Oscar-nominated VFX whiz explains what makes an award-worthy special effect

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Film instructor and alumnus Dan Bartolucci is in demand as an Autodesk Flame® artist and VFX editor.

With the Oscars just days away, we decided to chat with Film instructor and alumnus Dan Bartolucci who, as a member of the Lola Visual Effects team, is Academy Award nominated for best visual effects for Lone Ranger. Visual effects tends to be one of the more mysterious and mystifying categories, capable of stealing the spoils of a perfectly predicted Oscar pool from the savviest of movie buffs. With that in mind, we sought answers from the ultimate insider. Bartolucci is an esteemed Autodesk Flame® artist and VFX editor who remains very dedicated to his alma mater, where he currently teaches two classes. He can’t reveal the title of his current project but we’ll be sure to find out and let you know when it’s available for public consumption.

Immediately after completing Art Center’s undergraduate film program in 2010, Bartolucci ignited a VFX career that’s been soaring ever since. He has conjured many memorable feats of special effects magic, including shrinking Chris Evans in Captain America, aging the lead actors at the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, and emaciating Bella in Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1.

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We shall not see his like again: Remembering Photography alum Wayne F. Miller

“We began as artist and dealer, but it developed into the most important personal relationship I made in my 16 years in the field,” says Chicago gallery director Paul Berlanga of his friend, Art Center alumnus Wayne Forest Miller (Photography ’41). They met in 2001, at an exhibition of Miller’s work at Northwestern University’s Mary and Leigh Block Gallery. “After a momentary glance at his work on the walls [the Bronzeville series], I knew the Stephen Daiter Gallery needed to represent this man.” Miller, a Chicago native, was 82 years old at the time, with a long and legendary career behind him — World War II photographer in Edward Steichen’s elite U.S. Navy Combat Photo Unit, member of Magnum Photos, and recipient of two consecutive Guggenheim Fellowships for his landmark project documenting the African American community on Chicago’s South Side in the late 1940s. Miller, who lived in the Bay Area with his wife of 70 years, passed away on May 22, 2013. Berlanga gave a eulogy at the California memorial service last fall, and now shares his memories of the photographer — “Wayne always preferred ‘working photographer’ to artist” — with Dotted Line.

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