Category Archives: Events

CSE Lantern Festival: Sleep and Happiness

At Art Center’s annual Chinese Lantern Festival held today, the most common wishes penned on bright orange and red lanterns were for sleep and happiness.

Photo by Adam Lopez

Not necessarily at the same time–but one can certainly see a connection when realizing they were written by art and design students.

About 75 students, faculty and staff entrusted their wants, whims and yearnings to the promise of the lantern at today’s event, held by Art Center’s Center for the Student Experience (CSE).

Next week, all lanterns created today will hang along both sides of the Bridge for all to enjoy.

A sample of some of the other wishes:

  • “To see beyond them all”
  • “I will travel to nearby places and imagine they are far”
  • “To see her again”
  • “Peace inside”
  • “More inspiration”

Lunar New Year celebrations traditionally end with a lantern festival, during which colorful lanterns are lit and released into the air. This year the event lands on Thursday, February 17, to correspond with the full moon. In many Asian countries, releasing the lanterns is believed to bring good fortune and prosperity.  People write their wishes on paper lanterns before releasing them in hopes that they will be granted.

Here’s to plenty of sleep and happiness to all of our students!

Photo by Adam Lopez

Art Center Dialogues in Portland

Calling all Portland alumni: Art Center’s Alumni Relations Office invites you to join fellow area alumni in celebrating Art Center’s 80th anniversary with the latest Art Center Dialogues with College President Lorne Buchman.

Join the conversation about the College’s future, and learn more about where we’re headed as we finalize our five-year strategic plan.

RSVP by Feb. 4 to alumni@artcenter.edu or 626.396.2305.

Art Center at 80: Dialogues with President Buchman
Feb. 9, 7-9:30 p.m.
Bluehour
250 NW 13th Avenue (at Everett)
Portland, Ore.

Graduation and Grad Show Tomorrow!

Tomorrow is Fall Term 2010 graduation!

Photo by Lara Warren

Join us as we welcome the newest graduates into the Art Center family, and check out the work of graduating students afterwards at Graduation Show. Can’t join us at Hillside Campus tomorrow? Watch our live online webcast.

 After graduation, check out the work of the newest Art Center graduates at Graduation Show from 6 to 9 p.m. at Hillside Campus.

Fall 2010 Graduation
Saturday, December 18, 4 p.m. PST
Hillside Campus

Art Center Honors Doyald Young

This is turning out to be quite a week for Doyald Young.

Tomorrow night he’ll be honored at a special Art Center reception (RSVPs required) with a screening of Doyald Young, Logotype Designer, a new documentary about Young by lynda.com.

Photo by Louise Sandhaus

At Saturday’s commencement ceremony, he will receive Art Center’s Alumnus of the Year Award for his dedicated work as an educator and lifetime of legendary work in typography, logotypes and alphabets. At Saturday’s commencement, he’ll receive an honorary degree from Art Center, where he studied Advertising in the ’50s, and where he has taught lettering and logotype design in the Graphic Design Department for decades.

We caught up with Young this week to talk to him about Art Center, his thoughts on teaching and those things computers can’t do.

Dotted Line: Congratulations on the alumni award and honorary degree.
Doyald Young: Thank you! I’m honored and thankful for such honors. I am an amalgam of the people I’ve known whose ideas have permeated my being. I’m blessed—so many people have kindly befriended me. I often wonder, “How do I repay them?”

I believe that teaching and writing books about what I do is a form of payback. Both of which I continue to do, and will, as long as I am able. A priori, how could I not be deeply touched with the awards I’ve received? I’m humbled that Art Center has allowed me to teach these many years, and blessed that I receive support from my fellow teachers and staff.

Dotted Line: What has Art Center meant to you?
Young: Art Center has been one of the great forces of my life. I learned, most importantly, that our first efforts are just that. They need refinement. A good job is done over and over, and oftentimes is changed again and again when marketing forces or creative directors change their minds. Final art does not emerge full-blown. I make my living making changes.

At Art Center, I learned professionalism, punctuality, and above all, how to continue my skills and burnish my talent. And a mentor of mine, Henry Dreyfuss, taught me the value of a thank-you note.

Dotted Line: You’ve said that you are an educator first, and a designer second.
Young: It’s true. When I was a student in Mort Leach’s class, he noticed fellow students coming to me for help on their projects. They came to me voluntarily, and I found that I enjoyed helping them. Mort later asked me to become his teaching assistant.

Teaching requires patience. I firmly believe that if you have the gift of teaching, you must pass it on. As Woodrow Wilson said, “You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.”

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Distinguished Filmmakers Series: Richard Rush

Film Department instructor Dan Perri will host director, producer and writer Richard Rush today for a lively Q&A session as part of the Distinguished Filmmakers Series.

Rush’s credits include Thunder Alley, Hell’s Angels on Wheels, Psych-Out, Freebie & The Bean, Color of Night, and one of the greatest movies ever made about making movies: The Stunt Man starring Peter O’Toole.

The event begins promptly at 1 p.m. and is open to all Art Center students, faculty and staff.

Distinguished Filmmakers Series:
Richard Rush
Tuesday, November 30, 1 p.m.
L.A. Times Media Center

Art Center on Display at L.A. Auto Show

Art Center students manning the L.A. Auto Show exhibit

The L.A. Auto Show kicks off today, hosting 50 world and North American debuts across virtually all vehicle categories.

This year’s show will display a number of electric vehicles and futuristic concepts, and test-drives of a number of vehicles.

Art Center again has an exhibition space in the show, featuring student and alumni work from Transportation Design and beyond.

Alumnus Chip Foose has work on display; Deep Orange, the collaborative concept electric vehicle created by Clemson University graduate students and styled by Art Center students; and examples of Art Center student work from a variety of disciplines.

Take a peek at the Art Center exhibit in the photo slide show below:

Another Art Center connection to the auto show: The Cadillac Aera concept vehicle won the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show Design Challenge. The concept was created in GM’s North Hollywood Advanced Design Studio, led by alum Frank Saucedo. GM Advanced Design has now won the honor more times than any other design team; this is its third victory since 2005. Congrats!

Dogs in Space!

David Wilson, director of the Museum of Jurassic Technology, visited Art Center on Monday to talk about the early days of the Russian space program.

Laika, painted by M.A. Peers, one of five portraits of Russian Space Dogs commissioned by the Museum of Jurassic Technology

Wilson was the final Big Picture Lecture Series speaker of the term. We knew right away that this talk was going to be an interesting one.

No talk of early Soviet space exploration is complete without a discussion of the Russian space dogs. As many know, Laika was the first earth born creature to leave the atmosphere.

We were amused and intrigued as Wilson taught us more about Russian space dogs. Did you know:

  • All were female.
  • All were formerly strays.
  • They went through extensive space training.
  • Nine dogs made it into orbit; sadly three of them died during their missions.
  • Strelka, who went into orbit with Belka, went on to have six puppies after her safe return to Earth. Nikita Krushchev gave one of the puppies to Caroline Kennedy in 1961.
  • Belka and Strelka are stuffed (!) and on display at the Cosmonaut Memorial Museum in Moscow.

Wilson also screened two portions of a film depicting the lives of early influencers of the Soviet space program. Obshee-Delo (translated means The Common Task)  told the stories of Nicolai Federov, who was an impoverished yet influential philosopher-librarian, and Constatine Tsiolkovski, who imagined the future of space travel.

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This Week at Art Center

It’s another busy week here at Art Center. Just some of this week’s events:

Photo © Steven A. Heller/Art Center College of Design

  • It’s International Education Week, and there are a ton of fun events planned. Dotted Line Blog
  • Director of Photography Paul Goldsmith, whose credits include Academy Award-winning documentary When We Were Kings, will be on campus for the Distinguished Filmmakers Series Tuesday at 2 p.m. More info.
  • East or Beast: What does Jaws have in common with Slumdog Millionaire? Sarha Moore, soprano saxophonist in the Bollywood Brass Band and Ph.D. candidate in ethnomusicology at the University of Sheffield will discuss the topic and air clips of great movies and music. Tuesday, Nov. 16, 1-2 p.m., Room 208, Hillside Campus.
  • Blurred Boundaries: Interactive Design and the digital agency Schematic invite a host of industry professionals to explore how the shrinking space between brand communication and product design is changing the way we design. Thursday, Nov. 18, 7-9 p.m., L.A. Times Media Center. More info.
  • Art Center Student Government elections will be held this Wednesday and Thursday.
  • Save the date: registration is now open for Imaging DNA 2011, held on March 26 at Art Center. Imaging DNA

Big Picture Lecture Series: David Wilson

Don’t miss today’s Big Picture Lecture Series featuring David Wilson, who will speak on Nikolai Federov, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and the Roots of the Russian Space Program.

Wilson is the founding director of the Museum of Jurassic Technology (MJT), which he opened in 1988 in Culver City. MJT has exhibited internationally and Wilson has lectured throughout North America and Europe.

He has produced eight independent films, most recently under the auspices of MJT in conjunction with Kabinet, an arts and science-based cultural institution located in St. Petersburg, Russia. The latest of their collaborative efforts is titled Bol’shoe Sovietskia Zatmenie (The Great Soviet Eclipse).

In 2001, the MacArthur Foundation granted Wilson a fellowship in recognition of his accomplishments at the museum.

And don’t forget—podcasts of the lectures are up at Art Center’s iTunes U site.

Big Picture Lecture Series: David Wilson
Monday, November 15, 1 pm
Ahmanson Auditorium

Upcoming: International Education Week

It’s going to be a fun week on campus for Art Center students, faculty and staff: International Education Week. A joint initiative of the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Education, the week of events celebrates the benefits of international education and exchange.

Photo © Steven A. Heller/Art Center College of Design

All week, the cafeteria will serve a variety of international cuisines, there will be a display of multilingual art and design books in the library, and there will be information available about the Designmatters Department. International Education Week is sponsored by the Center for the Student Experience, Designmatters, Illustration Department, FOOD, the Armory Center for the Arts, Continental Art Supply Store and the Japanese American National Museum.

International Education Week events:

Monday, November 15
Global IQ Quiz
CSE Lounge, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Enjoy international coffee, tea, snacks and music, then test your global knowledge by taking a short 15-question Global IQ Quiz and enter to win a prize.

Tuesday, November 16
London Ancient Modern: The Mix
Faculty Dining Room,1:30 to 3:30 p.m.
Would you like to study in London next spring? Learn more about this annual trip led by Illustration Department Chair Ann Field. While you’re there, try your hand at flag painting, enjoy a British afternoon tea service, and meet Paul Smith’s L.A. team and more at this event hosted by the Illustration Department.

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