Category Archives: Events

UPDATED: Graphic design art exhibition of M/M (Paris) makes West Coast premiere

VIDEO:  Watch artists Augustyniak, Amzalag in conversation with Illustration Associate Chair Aaron Smith and instructor Nancy Reigelman here. 

Art Center College of Design is pleased to announce the first ever West Coast exhibition by M/M (Paris), the celebrated Paris-based art and design partnership created by Mathias Augustyniak and Michaël Amzalag in 1992.

The exhibition M/MANIFESTATION runs March 8–April 28 at the Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery at Art Center’s Hillside Campus.

The free opening night events on Thursday, March 7 begin with a conversation with M/M (Paris) at 7:30 p.m. in the Ahmanson Auditorium, followed by a book signing and reception in the gallery. Please R.S.V.P. to events@artcenter.edu.

M/M’s close associations with the art, music and fashion worlds have led to their becoming one of the most distinctive and acclaimed creative voices of their generation, within graphic design and beyond.

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Art Center gets interactive at SXSW

Art Center tech-heads will have a chance to talk design at the 20th annual SXSW Interactive festival, held March 8 to 12 in Austin, Texas.

The College will host an alumni event March 7 with panelists – including Anne Burdick, Chair of Graduate Media Design Practices, and Maggie Hendrie, Chair of Interaction Design – discussing challenges facing designers in a networked global future.

Additionally, a trio of alumni from the Media Design Practices program will sit on panels: Jayne Vidheecharoen (Shaping the Future of Play Is Serious Work), Carina Ngai (Design for Aging, Your Future-Self) and Jennifer Darmour (The Next Frontier of Interactive: Smart Fashion).

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‘Rise of the Guardians’ director to speak at Art Center

“Rise of the Guardians” director Peter Ramsey will speak at Art Center Thursday at 4 p.m.

Ramsey’s Hollywood credits include “Panic Room,” “Fight Club,” “Batman Forever” and “Backdraft.” And by helming DreamWorks Animation’s “Rise of the Guardians,” Ramsey became first the African-American to direct a major animated film.

His decades-long Hollywood career includes turns as a storyboard artist, illustrator, continuity artist and production illustrator.

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Art Center hosts distinguished speakers from the art world

Andrea Fraser

The Graduate Art Seminar at Art Center College of Design welcomes internationally recognized artists, critics, art historians, architects, filmmakers and writers to Pasadena to share their insights into the world of contemporary art. The seminar — a core component of Art Center’s Graduate Art program — takes place at the Hillside campus Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. throughout every Spring term.

All events are free and open to the public.

Next up Tuesday evening is New York-based performance artist Andrea Fraser, whoseinstallations have been featured at the Berkeley Art Museum, the Kunstverein Munich, the Venice Biennale and the Whitney Biennial.

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Art Center to host student-only film festival

On March 16, Art Center will host the first annual Dot Independent Film Festival, which will screen and award student projects from around the world.

“There’s no other film festival that only caters to students,” says Kevin Wansa, a film student who coordinated the event along with fellow film student Mike Reyes and faculty member Andrew Harlow.

DIFF will award films in several different categories including narrative short, documentary, music video, and commercial and PSA. The festival is also about forming collaborative relationships across schools and communities.

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How ’90s dreams gave way to interaction design

Today is the last day of the Interaction Design Conference (IxD13) in Toronto, the sixth annual conference organized by the Interaction Design Association (IxDA), an international network dedicated to the professional practice of interaction design.

Earlier today, Jason Brush, executive vice president of creative at the Emmy and IDEA award-winning interactive marketing agency POSSIBLE, and the newest faculty member of Art Center’s recently created Interaction Design Department, gave a presentation at the conference titled The Dream of the 90s is Alive.

In the presentation, Brush reminded the audience that the early ’90s — “a time when Mark Zuckerberg was still in grade school, Steve Jobs had yet to return to Apple, and computers still had floppy drives” — was a time in which artists, filmmakers, authors and philosophers made the first technological forays into applications that drive global culture and communication today.

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Alum Dan Goods to speak at youth-focused TEDx


TEDx will host a daylong creative conference Feb. 10 for Southern Californian youth ages 14 to 19.

Dubbed TEDxYouth@Hollywood, presenters include visual strategist for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and alum Dan Goods, who has drilled a hole into a grain of sand and recast Jupiter’s storms as art.

A half dozen presenters will speak at the inaugural event, which will focus on the inspirational theme of “jumping.”

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Spring 2013 orientation week welcomes new students

This week, Art Center officially welcomes the Spring 2013 incoming class with a week of orientation activities organized by the College’s Center for the Student Experience.

“New student orientation sets the stage for the success of our students during their time at Art Center,” said Dean of Students Jeffrey Hoffman. “Helping students feel connected to each other and the College is critical.”

Here’s the lineup of what’s to come so new students get the most out of their education — in and out of the classroom.

Tuesday, Jan. 8

8–9 a.m.: New student orientation check in.

9:30 a.m.: Art Center President Lorne M. Buchman, Dean of Students Jeffrey Hoffman and Admissions Vice President Kit Baron welcome new students.

9:45 a.m.–noon: Campus tours, followed by a lunch with peer mentors (12–1:30 p.m.).

1:30–3 p.m. or 3:30–5 p.m.: Undergraduate students have the option of taking digital waiver tests.

2–5:30 p.m.: Graduate student orientation and course selections.

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Exhibit reveals secrets of Hollywood monster maker

Film fans have one more chance to meet one of Hollywood’s greatest monster makers.

Art Center alum Neville Page — who created on-screen beasts for Cloverfield, Piranha 3D, Super 8 and Prometheus — is the mind behind “The Beauty in the Beast: Crafting Creatures.”

The exhibition at the Oceanside Museum of Art, which closes Saturday, features Page’s design progression creating mythical anatomies from early sketches to full 3D models.

In addition to a last look at Page’s process, attendees will be entered to win signed prints of his work. Admission to the exhibition and closing reception (5 to 7 p.m.) is free for OMA members and for Art Center students and alum; $10 for non-members. Page will give a private tour of the exhibition from 2 to 4 p.m., which costs $20 and includes admission.

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Williamson Gallery, LitFest host page-turner

In an era of e-readers and smart phones, Art Center’s Williamson Gallery and LitFest Pasadena have teamed up to celebrate the simple power of the printed page.

On Sunday as part of the gallery’s “Pages” exhibit, eight prominent Los Angeles writers will each read one page from a favorite author.

“Art, science, literature, these disciplines define Pasadena — increasingly so,” said Larry Wilson, LitFest artistic director and public editor of the Pasadena Star-News. “That’s why the ‘Pages’ show in the Williamson Gallery is the perfect place for LitFest Pasadena, which is growing way beyond an annual book fair, to have a reading by these celebrated writers.”

Readers include Los Angeles Review of Books Editor Tom Lutz; Altadena novelist Jervey Tervalon; young writer Andrew Ramirez; mystery writer Gary Phillips; Slake magazine Editor Laurie Ochoa; poet and young adult novelist Ron Koertge; painter and author J. Michael Walker; and poet Lisa Teasley.

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