Category Archives: General Interest

Another Day in the Life: Saturday High Instructors David Sotelo and Evah Hart

Sotelo

Last month we introduced you to Olivia Crawford, an alumna of Saturday High, Art Center’s program for high school students (grades 9 through 12), who shot images for Nike Sportswear’s Look of Sport: Los Angeles campaign. Olivia spoke very highly of the “Day in the Life” projects she completed in Saturday High’s Photography 2 class, saying they were important in shaping her experience with photography.

We wanted to learn more about “Day in the Life,” so we chatted with David Sotelo and Evah Hart, who co-teach Photography 2, to learn more about the project, the process of discovery, and teaching at Saturday High.

Dotted Line: Tell me a bit about the “Day in the Life” project.
Evah Hart: We start almost all of our classes with “Day in the Life.” It’s important because it establishes the recognition that our student’s lives are important and a valid place to be pulling from to create work. In the project, we have them shoot three disposable cameras in one day. And we ask them to include the time stamp on the prints. The fact that they’re shooting a lot of pictures really forces them to recognize things in their life that they wouldn’t otherwise see.

Dotted Line: These disposable cameras aren’t the digital kind, right?
Hart: Yes, and that’s important because we’re not editing. We actually have them cover up the viewfinder, too. We want them to react to their life rather than trying to make beautiful pictures. The project diminishes the expectations of beauty and the ideals we’re confronted with on an everyday basis.

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Art Center at Night Instructor on New Book, Film

Art Center at Night instructor Robert Mehnert recently completed the cinematography of Jinn, a supernatural thriller written and directed by Art Center Film alum Ajmal Zaheer Ahmad.

Jinn is based on the Middle/Far East myth of the Jinn, a race of beings that occupied the earth long before mankind evolved. The problem is that some of them want the world back for themselves. The story follows Shawn, the one man who can save humankind, on his quest to save mankind from a terrible fate.

The planned release date is this Halloween. Mehnert and Ahmad have worked together on three other films.

In a departure from the world of motion pictures, Mehnert has written a series of books, the first of which, Looking Down at the Sky, is now available on Kindle from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com. An adventure in time and alternate reality, the story tells the story of a brilliant mathematician lost in a mysterious earthquake—only to wake in her own bed, discovering that seven years have passed.

Visit Mehnert’s website at bobmehnert.com.

MDP Grads Help Define Future of Mobile

Alex Braidwood's Synthetic Din

The L.A. Times Hero Complex blog has a great piece on the evolution of mobile apps, and even better—it features the thesis projects from recent Graduate Media Design grads Alex Braidwood and Scott Liao!

From the article:

Media artists such as Alex Braidwood, 32, are in fact harnessing smart devices as the means to a more aesthetically nuanced end. The Art Center College of Design graduate programmed the iPhone’s built-in camera to function as a sensor that detects blue, red and yellow tones. The Synesthetic Din program then translates the colors into an ever-shifting electronic composition that plays into a user’s ear buds as he or she walks down the street.

“To me the most interesting things about smart phones and iPads is that they have all these capabilities that are just waiting to be glued together in new ways,” says Braidwood. “I like turning these devices into little performance machines.”

Braidwood, who last month earned his master of fine arts in Media Design, notes, “Most apps are commodities that people get either because it helps them do something or it’s some kind of novelty game. But there’s this space in the middle where it’s not about guiding you to the best sushi restaurant in town but more about helping you wander around and discover something new that you did not see or hear before.”

Art Center graduate Scott Liao has similarly toyed with the innards of iPad tablets to create what he calls “enriched narrative.” His Anonymous Triangle piece allows viewers to aim a sensor-rigged iPad at projected short films to trigger back-story texts about the various characters. “With current tablet technologies,” says Liao, 27, “we have the chance to change our viewing behavior from passive to active.”

Read more: Apps evolution: A new wave of digital artists is adding whimsy to mobile gaming

Student Film Wins Art Directors Club Gold and Cannes Award

The following post about Voices From the Field, which we’ve featured here earlier this year, is from the Designmatters blog.

Guest Blogger John X. Carey (Film Department, 8th term) is the recipient of the 2011 Young Director’s Award from the Cannes Film Festival as well as the recipient of the Art Director’s Gold Cube Award for his film, Voices From the Field.

Designmatters put me and two of my fellow classmates at Art Center College of Design into a real world re-branding situation as part of a TDS studio last spring with an international aid organization called Project Concern International (PCI). Kyle Murphy (Film), Jeremy Jackson (Photography & Imaging) and I pitched the idea of shooting a film in Africa about the humanity that PCI was working with everyday and the client decided to go with the idea.

Flying to Africa for a week and shooting the film and subsequently editing the 40 hours of footage down into a digestible five minute commercial pushed me way outside of my comfort zone but I couldn’t help but come away with a fresh perspective on my career, the world, and my place in both.

Our resulting film, Voices From the Field, went on to win an Art Directors Club GOLD Cube, which was a really gratifying way to cap off the entire experience.

Jeremy and Kyle were such amazing students to work with on the film. The job called for them to be both particle technicians and highly creative artists, and they were able hold both in the palm of their hand flawlessly.

The fact that I had such a good crew is just a testament to Art Center and how amazing the students are here.

I highly encourage people to investigate Designmatters and meet the program Director Elisa Ruffino and Vice President Mariana Amatullo, who are two of nicest people I know.

They spend their days helping Art Center students use their smarts, social status and personal voices to better mankind.

Remembering Don

Kubly and a student with a model of Hillside Campus

Don Kubly passed away yesterday at the age of 93.

He was an alumnus, our second president, an influential leader, a colleague, mentor and friend.

A native of Pasadena, Kubly came to Art Center to study Advertising, quickly earning a reputation as one of the school’s best students.

“We wanted to be leaders in the field, so it wasn’t a matter of training, but a matter of truly understanding,” Kubly said in a 2010 interview. “A school like ours was unusual back in those days.”

Kubly met his wife, Sally, while both were students at the College’s first campus on Seventh Street in Los Angeles.

Don and Sally Kubly. Photo © Steven A. Heller/Art Center College of Design

“When Don asked my father if he could marry me, my father told him that if we did, he would have to take on my Art Center tuition,” Sally remembered in a 2010 interview. “That’s what motivated Don to begin teaching, that tuition payment.”

After graduating in 1949, he landed a job at N.W. Ayer & Son in Philadelphia, one of the country’s leading advertising agencies. Serving as a senior art director for more than 16 years, Kubly won numerous gold medals and other top awards for his creative work.

In 1963, Kubly returned to Art Center to work with College president Tink Adams as assistant to the director, teaching and managing the school’s day-to-day operations.

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Don Kubly, 1917-2011

Students, Faculty, Alumni, Staff and Friends:

Today, one of Art Center’s most influential leaders, Don Kubly, passed away at 93 years old. Don’s active involvement with the school spanned 47 years, starting as a student in 1938 and continuing as second president of the College. Don was a dear friend of the school and mentor and colleague to so many.

Don was a truly great and inspirational figure in Art Center’s development. Student, alumnus, educator and president, he never wavered in his dedication and commitment to Art Center or in his enthusiasm and excitement for our students.

His many contributions to Art Center have had a lasting impact on the College. He has left us a great legacy and built us a beautiful home in this wonderful location in Pasadena. We are all indebted to him for his brilliant work and profound care.

On a personal note, I am honored to have met Don and to have made a connection with him. He was always very warm and supportive of our work, our strategic plan and our community’s collective vision for the future.

A public celebration of Don’s life will be held at Art Center in the coming weeks. We’ll be sure to keep you informed here at the Dotted Line.

Our hearts go out to his wife Sally and his entire family. Don will truly be missed.

Sincerely,
Lorne M. Buchman
President, Art Center College of Design

Day in the Life: A Saturday High Alum Shoots for Nike

Angela Choi, as photographed by Olivia Crawford for Nike Sportswear.

With most of us walking around with YouTube, Facebook and Twitter on our phones, it’s no wonder why it has become increasingly difficult to be aware of our own surroundings.

But don’t tell that to Saturday High alumna Olivia Crawford. The Pasadena native recently graduated from Polytechnic School and is now studying art and art history at the University of California, Berkeley. Crawford’s passion for capturing the people and events in her life through photography not only made her a standout in her Saturday High courses, but it also landed her a very cool gig during her last winter break.

An ad agency discovered her work on Flickr and asked her if she’d like to be involved with Nike Sportswear’s “Look of Sport” campaign. The job involved shooting photographs of athletic and stylish individuals from Los Angeles, photographed in a style remaining true to her own aesthetic.

Crawford agreed, and the campaign appeared online last month.

“Olivia is a disciplined, focused and intelligent kid,” says Saturday High instructor David Sotelo, who along with co-instructor Evah Hart, taught Crawford twice in Photography 2. Sotelo recalls Crawford being particularly inspired by Nan Goldin and Larry Clark, two artists whose work he and Hart regularly feature in their class. “The work Olivia did for Nike—that aesthetic evolved out of the inspiration she got from those photographers, artists who were using their everyday life as a diary.”

We recently caught up with Crawford to learn more about her experiences in Saturday High and her work with Nike.

Dotted Line: Which Saturday High classes did you take?
Olivia Crawford: I took an oil painting course my sophomore year of high school. We painted from models and that class really helped me with my later photography courses, Photography 1 with David Sotelo and Photography 2 with David and Evah Hart, which I took twice.

Dotted Line: What did you learn in those classes?
Crawford: Both emphasized making your own projects and learning to be sensitive to your environment. We came up with projects based on what we were seeing in our own photography and what we were reacting to in our environment.
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How Are You Spending Your Summer Vacation?

Photo by Amelia Stier

This summer, a group of Art Center students are immersing themselves in the culturally rich city of Berlin as part of Art Center’s cutting-edge take on traditional exchange programs called TestLabs.

In TestLabs, a group of students are selected representing a variety of disciplines, then placed in a metropolitan locale where they meet up with a corporate or nonprofit sponsor. The sponsor presents the students with a specific design challenge, which becomes their focus for the term. From there, the students form a pop-up studio, which becomes home base for ideation and instant visualization.

Through TestLab Berlin, Art Center students are spending the summer in the German city. The project includes a pop-up studio located at Bikini Berlin site, and is the start of a three-year partnership with GmbH.

In the current project, sponsored by Johnson & Johnson, students are exploring ways to connect with Millennials using different areas of emphasis including music, fashion, sports, body modification and health and wellness.

Amelia Stier has set up a blog documenting the experience—be sure to follow along as the term progresses!

Photo by Amelia Stier