Category Archives: Alumni Relations

Nurture the right brain, feed the left

Scott Griffiths

Scott Griffiths

Art Center alum (’79) Scott Griffiths, who launched 18|8 Fine Men’s Salons in 2002, has a track record of creating breakthrough brands. He recently began franchising 18|8, sharing the opportunity for driven entrepreneurs. Griffiths is a recognized marketing and branding trendsetter who has created and built industry-leading companies across several sectors, including within the salon segment.

Though I’m currently functioning in the business world as the owner and developer of 18/8 Fine Men’s salons with company-owned stores and a franchise business (18/8 is expanding nationally with target goal of 1,600 salons), I was trained first as an artist and designer at the Art Center College of Design.

Because of that experience, I see and think in pictures. I paint in my mind. The process of painting — working in layers, textures…adding and taking away — is conducive to entrepreneurship and building my businesses. (I have led or been on the leadership team for 20 start ups and early stage companies). My training from Art Center helps me think more like Mickey Mouse conducting in “Fantasia“ than like Gordon Gecko in “Wall Street.” After more than three decades, I’m still an artist at heart.

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Highlights from Art Center’s 2013 Grad Show Preview

This has been a summer of record-breaking heat waves and dramatic conclusions to ongoing narratives in the news (Nelson Mandela’s miraculous recovery from a life-threatening illness coinciding with his 95th birthday) and culture (Superman will face off against Batman on the big screen). Last night’s Grad Show Preview played right into this season’s “go big or don’t go at all” ethos, with its spectacularly well-attended (upwards of 500 guests) display of graduating Art Center students’ creative heat.

Each term at Art Center culminates with Graduation Show Preview, an invitation-only event, where students unveil final projects as well as highlights from their time at the College. While the show eventually opens up to the public following Saturday’s graduation ceremony; there is a particular electricity and excitement coursing through Hillside campus on the preceding Thursday night when students debut the feats of ingenuity and imagination they’ve spent the past four years cultivating and refining.

“It’s such a special night with incredible energy and great opportunities for our graduates to share their work with industry and celebrate the completion of a tremendous amount of hard work,” says Alumni Relations executive director, Kristine Bowne. “It’s the only time during the whole year when the work of our graduating students is on display and the only time you can visit and get a sense of the breadth of creativity and innovation of our students and the impact they will have on our world.”

For those of you who weren’t on the list last night, here’s a glimpse at what you missed.

Student profile: Christina Yang’s Art Center coming of age story

Self portrait by Christina Yang

Drawing of Christina Yang at work by Madeline Ocampo

Christina Yang began attending Art Center when she was 12 years old. But hold off on calling her the Doogie Howser of the design world. She simply followed her passion for visual arts through every phase of the College’s curriculum, from its public programing for underage artists to full-fledged matriculation.

She began her journey with Art Center for Kids courses. She then continued her studies in the College’s Saturday High program while attending Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA) before being recently accepted as a full-time student in the degree program. She starts Fall 2013 as an Entertainment Design major.

Dotted Line: Why did you choose Art Center?

Christina Yang: My father went to Art Center, so attending the Kids program felt natural. But I also kept returning chiefly because of the high quality instruction I received. While other children’s programs were rather loose and directionless, Art Center instructors taught me core skills with a great deal of structure balanced with encouragement. My age never mattered. The teachers were never condescending. We had the privilege of being exposed to Art Center’s disciplined, focused, rich learning environment, which helped us begin to take ourselves seriously as artists.

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Conscious Commuter mobilizes an e-bike revolution at The Design Accelerator

Gabriel Wartofsky with his electric bike at the Environmental Media Awards

Gabriel Wartofsky with his electric bike at the Environmental Media Awards.

When entrepreneurial inspiration strikes, it’s often described as the convergence of creative and commercial instincts. An innovator perceives a void in the marketplace and conceives a product or experience to fill that space and drive demand for more. But for Gabriel Wartofsky and Bob Vander Woude, that well-worn path into the startup trenches has been less clear-cut.

The partners have spent the past two years developing Conscious Commuter, a company built around an electric bicycle with a sleek design and long-range battery. However the whole enterprise is driven by nothing short of a mission to revolutionize transportation.“We’re solution providers,” declares Vander Woude, an entrepreneur and CEO of a seed-stage investment fund, who was looking to fund an electric bike company when he happened upon a web demo of Wartofsky’s senior thesis project, now the basis for their partnership, which aims to implement e-bike sharing systems in cities around the world. “We’re multi-modal. That’s the secret sauce. Other electric bike companies are not coming from the background of solving a social problem. They’re just motivated to get to a retailer and make money.”

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Most Wanted: Young Guns of Illustration: Pioneering panelists shoot from the hip

Brendan Monroe, Demetrius May and Ronald Kurniawan

Brendan Monroe, Demetrius May and Ronald Kurniawan

Of all the role models one might expect an ambitious young illustrator to tap for inspiration, Jay-Z hardly qualifies as one of the usual suspects.  But unpredictability, in all its forms, has always been imperative to the outlaw mentality embraced by each of the panelists at “Most Wanted: Young Guns of Illustration,” this month’s lively discussion, featuring Illustration alums Ronald Kurniawan, Demetrius May, and Brendan Monroe. The three young mavericks enthralled the crowded Ahmanson Auditorium discussing the work in multiple sub-markets and the various facets of the industry. And, yes, the hip-hop mogul’s name was invoked, when May cited his sage advice to young entrepreneurs — “I’m not a business man, I’m a business, man…all of you are your own business.” – as a useful mindset vital to anyone determined to stand out in today’s crowded creative marketplace.

The panelists also stressed the importance of joining the ‘maker’ revolution. “I consider [Illustrators] as picture makers. You have to be a designer. You have to be able to create everything and anything out of your head. You have to be flexible,” said Kurniawan, an Art Center graduate (with honors), currently working at Dreamworks, whose work has been inspired by ideograms, letterforms and syllables. Kurniawan has a wide array of experience in feature and television animation, visual development, character design, advertising, and book illustration – both in-house and freelance. With extraordinarily realistic lighting and interplay of color, Kurniawan’s work is a feast for the senses. Kurniawan’s clients include Sony Pictures, LACMA, LA Weekly, Mattel, Inc. and Disney Consumer Products to name a few. His work has been recognized in several publications including Communication Arts, American Illustration and Society of Illustrators.

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Watch and learn how KILLSPENCER came to life

Back in 2008, well before the concept of a design entrepreneur had been exalted by futurists as the driving force behind the next wave of innovation, Spencer Nikosey, was ahead of the curve, approaching his work as an Art Center Product Design student with the ambition and enterprise of an MBA. Nikosi staged his own pop-up product launch event at Art Center’s Grad Show, where he began selling his nascent line high-performance men’s luggage, bags and accessories. Five years later, Nickosey has turned KILLSPENCER into a sought-after brand and model of sustainability with a line of products produced in his workshop in Downtown L.A. and sold in his recently opened Silverlake boutique.

In the above video, produced by Bluecanvas magazine, Nikosey re-traces his path to finding his foothold as a design entrepreneur. He makes fascinating pitstops throughout the piece, exploring his approach to creativity, innovation, business and his dreams for a future that includes an oceanside multi-media creative collective, where he’ll make films and products and occasionally run and jump off the roof into the ocean. Judging by Nikosey’s track record thus far, it’s only a matter of time before he takes the flying leap.

Aquatopia: Rolling in the deep with Grad Art alumna Jennifer West

"Heavy Metal Sharks Calming Jaws Reversal Film" (2011) by Jennifer West. Super 8 print transferred to hi definition video with sound.

“Heavy Metal Sharks Calming Jaws Reversal Film” (2011) by Jennifer West. Super 8 print transferred to hi definition video with sound.

With 90 percent of the earth’s oceans yet to be explored, “the deep” is and has always been a place of mystery, fear, desire—and wild imagination. One Art Center alum who’s creatively plumbed this furtive, fertile territory is Jennifer West ’04 (Graduate Fine Art). Her recent multimedia work, “Heavy Metal Sharks Calming Jaws Reversal Film” (2011) is featured in Aquatopia: The Imaginary of the Ocean Deep, a major exhibition that opened this past weekend at the Nottingham Contemporary in Nottingham, England, continuing through September 22.

Bringing together more than 150 contemporary and historic artworks, Aquatopia explores how “the deep” has been imagined through time and across cultures. Sea monsters, sirens, sperm whales, giant squids, octopi, submarines, drowned sailors and shipwrecks are all portrayed. In a show that includes iconic works by JMW Turner, Odilon Redon, Hokusai, Barbara Hepworth and Oskar Kokoschka, West finds herself in prestigious company.

West is known for her digitized films that are made by hand-manipulating film celluloid, and the description of materials and processes she used to create “Heavy Metal Sharks Calming Jaws Reversal Film” tells a story in itself: “Faded pink super 8 film print — library copy of select scenes from “Jaws” — from Lorain, Ohio public library — treated with black fabric dye enriched with heavy metals: iron and zinc vitamins, celluloid grated with stone, whipped with hair headbanging, impressed with thumb and pink prints devil ears. Super 8 print transferred to hi definition video with sound.” Total running time: 6 minutes, 47 seconds.

In reviewing a previous show of the artist’s work, Wendy Vogel noted on Artforum.com, “Like her experimental predecessors, West forgoes narrative cohesion in favor of creating jumpy cuts and abstract visual collages — splicing, rolling, and drenching the celluloid using materials from Mylar tape to pickle juice, whiskey to candle smoke.” Writing on West’s work in Frieze, Joanna Kleinberg observed how “the intermingling of materiality, feeling and identity creates a wild blend of synaesthetic experience wherein the substances of life literally and figuratively colour the film.”

Born in Topanga, Calif., West lives and works in Los Angeles. Before earning her MFA at Art Center, she received a BFA from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. She has had solo exhibitions in museums and galleries in Europe, Asia and the U.S., and has done commissioned projects for exhibitions at MIT’s List Visual Arts Center, the Aspen Art Museum and the Tate Modern. West also creates “zines” — DIY photo booklets of production stills of the making of her films — in conjunction with her exhibitions.

Curated by Alex Farquharson, Aquatopia is a collaboration with Tate St Ives in Cornwall, where it will be on view from October 2013 to January 2014.

“Like” Jennifer’s film on Facebook!

Art Center in the News, May/June 2013

Environmental Design student Jonathan Wook Kim with his new design “Remix” as seen in the Los Angeles Times coverage of the International Contemporary Furniture Fair and New York Design Week.

From the launch of Art Center’s The Design Accelerator to showcasing new chair designs at the top industry confab in New York, from Grand Theft Auto to anti-gun violence campaigns — here’s where you can catch up on any news you may have missed with our latest media roundup.

Bloomberg Businessweek, “Want to Build the Next Pinterest? Focus on Great Design,” June 26, 2013: Art Center partners with Caltech and teams up with Idealab to develop design-driven startups.

Huffington Post, “Entrepreneurship Driven by Design,” May 29, 2013

Bunch Magazine, June 2013: Interview with Grad Art shop instructor and alumnus Zack Stadel (GART 04).

Brand Republic, June 20, 2013: Student Gevorg Karensky’s short, Grand Theft Auto: RISE, selected for Saatchi & Saatchi’s New Director’s Showcase.

GOOD Magazine, “Reducing Gun Violence, One Middle School Class at a Time,”June 19, 2013

KCRW DnA: Design and Architecture, June 18, 2013: Designmatters’ Mariana Amatullo and Elisa Ruffino are featured in the first segment of the program about the Uncool Anti-Gun Violence initiative.

KCET Artbound, June 11, 2013: Art Center, JPL and Caltech present symposium on the emerging field of data visualization.

Los Angeles Times, “ICFF 2013 and New York Design Week: Top trends in home décor,” May 24, 2013: Environmental Design students Jonathan Wook Kim and Zara Vardayan are featured in this story about furniture companies which premiered their newest designs at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair and New York Design Week. Chairs designed by both students through the Art Center Bernhardt Design partnership are shown in a roundup of designs and trends spotted during the show.

For the latest Art Center news, follow us on Twitter at @art_center.

Calling all video sleuths: Archivist issues APB for lost footage of Keith Haring

Keith Haring painted this mural at Art Center shortly before his death

Keith Haring painted this mural at Art Center shortly before his death

 

The Archives needs your help locating a lost video treasure.

In 1989 artist Keith Haring was invited to paint a mural at Art Center to serve as a “permanent memorial to members of the art community who have died of AIDS and as a symbol of hope and compassion.” Painted over the course of two days, the mural covers a large wall near the Hillside campus Library and offers a daily source of inspiration to the College’s growing community of students focused on social impact art and design. Haring’s painting also stands as tribute to Haring himself, who passed due to AIDS-related complications in February 1990, two months after the Art Center public work was completed.

It was a significant moment in the College’s history; and steps were taken to capture the process on video. However, after searching high and low, we’ve been unable to locate a single frame of the footage captured while Haring worked on the painting.  Can you help us locate it?  We worry that video from that event is deteriorating somewhere. And without Indiana Jones around to dig it up this Holy Grail of archival material, we’re turning to you for help.

The Archives collects, preserves, and makes accessible materials related to the history of Art Center.  We accept items on a regular basis, including photographs, documents, course materials, examples of student work, and film and video.

If you would like to donate materials to Art Center, contact College Archivist Robert Dirig at: archives@artcenter.edu or 626.396.2208. As Keith Haring might have encouraged anyone with an inkling about where this footage might be hidden: Silence = Death (and/or a serious void in Art Center’s archives).

Stuck in a rut? Alum Audrey Liu’s iPad App Can Help.

Ever wish you could “unstuck” yourself from a sticky situation? Creative Director Audrey Liu of SYPartners Inc. developed an iPad app called Unstuck that helps users find motivation to overcome obstacles by understanding what’s wrong and providing a set of tools to solve the problem.

In a recent profile in The People Stories, Liu admits that she had admired SYPartners while she was studying at Art Center, where she presented her exhibit to them on recruitment day. Liu came prepared to seize the moment, at least partially thanks to the training she received while studying abroad at INSEAD, a business school in Singapore and a longtime partner of Art Center.

Creative Director Audrey Lui developed the Unstuck iPad app to help users find motivation to solve problems.

Unstuck-App

That experience, Liu said, also reinforced “the importance of design and storytelling as a communication tool.” Now, split across bi-coastal offices in New York and San Francisco, she and the rest of the SYPartners product design team brainstorm and develop products that transform the way companies do business. “Now being involved in the hiring process at SYPartners, I can see a focus on clear, simple, emotive storytelling as well as a passion for communicating information in a very human way,” said Liu.

During the past two decades, the firm has guided some of the world’s most respected companies like Starbucks, Apple, Facebook, Coca-Cola, Visa, and more. Liu feels inspired and excited by the challenges she and her team face on a daily basis. “I feel very lucky to be able to say that there are a lot of things that I love about my job.”