Category Archives: News

LEAP Day 2: Designing strategies for the future of social impact design careers.

Overhead view of a LEAP design storm. Photograph by Dice Yamaguchi

Overhead view of a LEAP design storm. Photograph by Dice Yamaguchi

This is the second in our three-part Dotted Line series covering “The New Professional Frontier in Design for Social Innovation: LEAP Symposium,” hosted by Art Center College of Design Sept. 19–21, 2013.

LEAP’s Day One established the event’s tone, methodology, purpose and goals as well as a set of burning questions facing the field of social impact design professional pathways. The following morning, participants arrived eager to drill down into the issues that arose during the previous day’s workshops.  Leap’s faculty team of facilitators and student teaching assistants were ready to continue guiding the second day of collaborative ideation sessions.  Leap’s core programming team which included Karen Hofmann, Sherry Hoffman and Heidrun Mumper-Drumm, had mapped out a programming flow for these charrettes based on Art Center’s tried and true Design Storm methodology, which enabled intense collaborative study, brainstorming, and problem solving throughout the day.

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Alum Neil Shigley makes the invisible visible

 

Illustration alum, Neil Shigley with block prints including, at left, Michael 67 (Pastor Shelby).

Illustration alum Neil Shigley with block prints including, at left, Michael 67 (Pastor Shelby).

For the portrait artist, block printing is a particularly labor-intensive form. For San Diego-based Neil Shigley, it’s a labor of love.

The Art Center Illustration alum, who documents his adopted city’s homeless in search of “the most honest portrayal that I can get,” is among 48 artists whose work is included in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, a juried exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery on view through Feb. 23, 2014.

“They are people who are, to most of us, invisible. They are the homeless,” says Shigley’s artist statement. “I have focused my art on capturing the incredible character that life on the streets has given these individuals, many of whom are from my neighborhood near downtown San Diego. As a human being I can’t help but feel compassion . . . and by presenting them in this large format perhaps it will bring them into focus. Making them visible.”

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Station to Station and Mirror place Doug Aitken at the epicenter of underground art

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All great art (and even some of the mediocre stuff) can be transporting. Conceptual artist Doug Aitken (ILLU ’91) took that idea into the realm of the literal with his latest project, Station to Station, a traveling public art project for which he has commandeered a cross-country train and turned it into “a moving, kinetic light sculpture, which will broadcast unique content and experiences to a global audience.” The traveling exhibit, which kicked off on September 6, brings together groundbreaking artists, musicians, writers, filmmakers and chefs for a series of pop-up festivals taking place at train stations along the two costs and at stops in between. And with Levis sponsoring the whole enterprise, don’t expect this to be a typical beer-in-plastic-cups underground art scene affair. Aitken managed to recruit a lineup of iconic creators, including Cat Power, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, Jackson Browne, Patti Smith, Beck, Urs Fischer, Alice Waters, Ed Ruscha and Rick Moody among others.

If you miss that train, don’t fret. Just book a trip to the Emerald City and be sure to stop by the Seattle Art Museum to see Mirror, a new permanent installation by Aitken that wraps itself around the downtown museum’s northwestern façade. Unveiled in March, the monumental LED display features a horizontal band of projected images that dissolve into narrow columns of light running up and down the building. To create the images, Aitken shot a vast archive of video footage of the Pacific Northwest that can be choreographed—for Mirror’s public unveiling, the work was synchronized to music by minimalist composers Steve Reich and Terry Riley—and that can also respond to the installation’s changing urban environment, so that ephemeral factors like weather and traffic all help Mirror decide what to reflect.

For more on Aitken and the Mirror exhibit, check out the Dot magazine story here.

LEAP Symposium kicks off with a line-up of pioneers in design and social innovation

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One hundred thought leaders and educators in design and innovation will converge at Art Center College of Design September 19–21 for the LEAP Symposium, a convening comprised of a series of focused conversations exploring new career pathways for designers in the emerging field of social innovation. For more information about LEAP, including participant photos and bios, please visit the newly launched website.

The weekend-long symposium was conceived and hosted by Mariana Amatullo, Vice President, Designmatters Department with a national braintrust that includes: Allan Chochinov, Chair Products of Design, School of Visual Arts and Partner, Core 77; Lee Davis, Scholar-in-Residence, Center for Social Design, Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA); William Drenttel, Director, Winterhouse Institute and Edirorial Director, Design Observer and LEAP Symposium Editorial Director; Robert Fabricant, Vice President of Creative, frog; Jocelyn Wyatt, Co-Lead and Executive Director, IDEO.org.

Portions of the event are open to students, faculty, staff and members of the public. Check out the schedule below. And if you can’t attend in person, you can also tune into the livestream of LEAP’s opening session and LunchTime Talks here.

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Creativity 101: Harnessing the power of students’ imaginations

Photographs by Chris Hatcher, PHOT '05

Photographs by Chris Hatcher, PHOT ’05

In 30 minutes, visualize your creative process and recreate it using an 8-and-a-half-by-11 sheet of paper.

This is the first assignment in Creative Strategies, a popular undergraduate Product Design course taught by instructor Fridolin “Frido” Beisert PROD 98, INDU 08, faculty director of Art Center’s Product Design Department.

All 14 students accept the challenge. Walking to the front of the classroom, they each select a single sheet of colored construction paper and take a seat along the row of bare metal tables. As a digital timer, projected onto the wall, starts ticking, the students immediately start cutting, tearing, folding and drawing.

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Finalist in Ron Howard’s Project Imaginat10n experiences Art Center flashbacks. The good kind.

Kalman Apple's "A Day in the Country"

Kalman Apple’s “A Day in the Country”

Go Back to Art School in your head.  You can see it right? Germanic block letters tattooed between the shoulder blades, or etched in a delicate script on the hip or across the belly. I’m a little old fashioned that way, so I’ve kept it simply as a personal mantra. Whenever I’ve been stumped or creatively blocked, I invoke the mantra to help me get away from the mediocre solutions I’m hoping to avoid.

Recently, the meaning of that phrase came back to me-­‐ and this time from an unlikely place. In this instance, I was up against a seemingly impossible deadline to finish a film. I started shooting on a Wednesday for a project due by 6 AM on the following Tuesday. The deadline was for a contest Canon USA was sponsoring to promote its latest DSLR camera.

The contest was to be judged by Ron Howard and his daughter, Bryce Dallas Howard. You probably remember him best as a child star, brilliant director or the guy who introduces the magic of movies on the tram ride at Universal Studios. When I first heard about Project Imaginat10n, it sounded very much like an Art Center class assignment. Take ten still images, each representing an aspect of storytelling and create a 1-10 minute film inspired by those images. The genesis of this contest comes from a statement Ron Howard made years ago, “We’re all creative.” And to prove it, Canon has stepped up to provide the forum.

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Pasadena green-lights Art Center student’s design for Armenian genocide memorial

Catherine Menard’s design for the Pasadena Armenian Genocide Memorial.

This week the Pasadena City Council unanimously approved the memorial designed by Art Center Environmental Design student Catherine Menard. The Los Angeles Times reported that more than 150 supporters attended the Sept. 9 meeting, including members of Pasadena’s large Armenian community.

Menard’s design concept was selected by the Pasadena Armenian Genocide Memorial Committee (PASAGMC) in January, at the conclusion of a two-phase competition. The monument will be built at a proposed site in Pasadena’s Memorial Park once PASAGMC completes its fundraising campaign. Dedication of the public artwork is set for April 2015, coinciding with 100th anniversary commemorations of the Armenian Genocide.

Related:

Art Center student wins Pasadena Armenian genocide memorial competition

augh.: Streetwear with a conscience by Art Center students

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting

- e.e. cummings

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Aye Hasegawa models pieces from the Fall/Winter collection, entitled The Wanderer
Photography by Simia Rassouli

It is simple: You are who you are. If you cannot explain yourself to a child, then you do not understand yourself, which means that you have constantly complicated your life and confused yourself because you have listened to what others have told you instead of listening to your own inner self. You know that the right thoughts and the right words are simple: They are raw and elegant. You use common words to say uncommon things. Those words have force. Your presence is forceful. Life is very simple, but it is YOUR choice to live it simply or to complicate it.

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Redefining future of professional photography for the digital age

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The Annenberg Foundation has awarded a grant of $75,000 to Art Center College of Design’s Photography and Imaging Department for an ambitious examination of the current state of the medium, the profession, emerging cultural and technical issues and opportunities for innovation in photography education.

“We are honored that the Annenberg Foundation, a leading advocate for and supporter of the field of photography, has recognized the timeliness of our investigation into the future of photography education,” says Lorne M. Buchman, president of Art Center. “We share a deep commitment to the profession and the art form. We are grateful for the Foundation’s invaluable support.”

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LA Shorts Fest to screen alumni and current student films

Official Selection LA Shorts Fest

Art Center’s graduate Film department will be well represented in the program of this year’s LA Shorts Fest, which runs from September 5-12 at Laemmle Noho 7 theaters. Current student, Ellen Houlihan and recent grad, Carlo Olivares Paganoni, learned this week that each of their MFA thesis projects — “Joan’s Day Out” and “Cardboard Camera” respectively — has been accepted into the prestigious festival, which also serves to qualify all its selections for Oscar and BAFTA contention. In other words, LA Shorts provides a uniquely powerful showcase for exposing up-and-coming filmmakers to industry power players.

Houlihan and Paganoni’s films represent the broad spectrum of work produced by Art Center Film students. “Joan’s Day Out,” which screens Monday, September 9, follows a grandmother (played by Sally Kellerman) who becomes a fugitive from her assisted living facility. While “Cardboard Camera,” which unspools on Sunday, September 8, features a 10-year-old boy who makes his cinematic dreams come true with few resources beyond his imagination and ingenuity. What follows are the filmmakers’ reflections on the ideas and inspiration animating their films and the challenges involved in bringing them to the screen.

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