Category Archives: Photography and Imaging

Art Center for Kids Students Imagine Life on Mars

Art Center for Kids students get up close and personal with a Mars Rover model.

This August, NASA’s Mars Rover Curiosity will land on the surface of the Red Planet. Armed with a geology lab, cameras galore and a rock-vaporizing laser, Curiosity’s mission will be to find conditions favorable for life.

This Spring, all students enrolled in Art Center for Kids—Art Center College of Design’s program for students in grades 4–8—will have a special opportunity to work with Curiosity engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to imagine what a future community on Mars might look like.

It’s all part of the Imagine Mars Project, an interdisciplinary program sponsored by NASA and the National Endowment for the Arts—and of which Art Center is a proud partner— that takes kids on a virtual mission to Mars and brings them back with a new outlook on community, science and the arts.

Art Center for Kids students in "Architecture from the Inside Out" design buildings suitable for the environment on Mars.

Every Spring term for the past six years, all Art Center for Kids classes focus on one common theme: imagining a future life on Mars. In these classes, young artists and designers, in cooperation with scientists and engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, translate this theme through a variety of disciplines.

“Here on Earth we take certain things for granted, like gravity,” says David J. Delgado, Art Center alumnus and Lead on the Imagine Mars Project for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who says the main skill Imagine Mars students develop is creative problem solving, “We ask the students to dig into their imagination and come up with things that have never been seen before.”

Delgado says the wide array of disciplines taught at Art Center for Kids means those ‘things that never seen before’ take on infinite variations—whether they’re group projects built in Architecture from the Inside Out (“How do you design buildings to fit into the environment on Mars?”), constructing narratives in Cartooning Technique (“What kind of people will live there? What will they do?”) imagining how pets would survive on Mars in Animal Sculpture (“The students have come up with some really fun spacesuits for their animals.”) or capturing images of life on Earth in Photography to remind residents on Mars of their roots.

Delgado also points out that the lessons learned in class go far beyond simply learning about Mars, “The instructors at Art Center for Kids use Imagine Mars as a jumping-off point to get really creative. Not only are the students learning about Mars, but they’re also learning skills for their specific medium, say photography. And they’re not just learning how to take a photograph, but they’re also learning about how tell stories through pictures. All the classes do a really good of that.”

Art Center for Kids Spring classes begin February 19; register today!

David J. Delgado, lead of the Imagine Mars Project at The Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Student Jessee Torres Exhibits Her Work and Produces On-Site Collodion Prints

Photography + Imaging student Jessee Torres’s work is included in the 25th Annual Hearts & Flowers Exhibition currently on view at The Folk Tree in Pasadena. Torres specializes in wet plate collodion prints, the prevalent photographic method used through the end of the 19th Century.

Collodion Print (c) Jessee Torres

The collodion process requires the photographic material to be coated, sensitized, exposed and developed within the span of about fifteen minutes, necessitating a portable darkroom for use in the field. In the following video, she describes her progression from digital to collodion photography. Torres credits Art Center faculty Stephen Berkman, Ken Merfeld and Steve LaVoie as influencing her work.

Torres will be at The Folk Tree this weekend photographing portraits using the wet plate collodion process. Participants who reserve a time will receive a varnished tintype/ferrotype, an 8×10 archival print a digital image, all for the reasonable price of $75. To sign up, call Gail Mishkin at 626.793.4828 or call The Folk Tree at 626.795.8733.

The Pasadena Star-News recently spoke with Torres about her participation in the exhibition. For excerpts from the article, read more after the break.

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Come Hear Artist Jeff Wall Speak

Tuesday, January 17, 7:30 pm, L.A. Times Media Center

Vancouver-based artist, Jeff Wall (b. 1946), widely recognized for both his pioneering photography and his trenchant writing on the medium and its place in contemporary art, will be speaking at Art Center Tuesday, January 17 at 7:30 pm in the L. A. Times Media Center. The event, sponsored by the Graduate Art program, is open to the entire Art Center community.

Wall has exhibited regularly at the Marian Goodman Gallery in New York since 1989, and he has been the subject of numerous museum shows, including a comprehensive 2005 European survey, “Jeff Wall, Photographs 1978-2004,” which opened at the Schaulager Museum, Basel, Switzerland, before traveling in a reduced version to London’s Tate Modern as “Photographs 1978-2004.” “Jeff Wall,” a retrospective organized by New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the San Francisco Museum of Art, opened two years later, in 2007, and subsequently traveled to The Art Institute of Chicago. To mark the occasion, MoMA published “Jeff Wall: Selected Essays and Interviews,” a collection bringing together 25 years of the artist’s words. This past summer, the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, mounted an exhibition entitled “Jeff Wall: The Crooked Path,” a selection of his own work together with that of a broad range of artists with whom he has felt affinities.

Wall earned his Masters of Arts at the University of British Columbia, where he graduated in 1970 with a thesis entitled: “Berlin Dada and the Notion of Context”. He subsequently traveled to London in pursuit of his doctorate at The Courtland Institute (1970-73), where he studied with noted art historian T.J. Clark. Returning to Canada, Wall served as assistant professor at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (1974-5), and at Simon Frasier University (1976-87), and went on to lecture at the University of British Columbia.

A galvanizing figure in the Canadian art world since the early 1970s, Wall has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement (2008). In 2006 Wall was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and named an Officer of the Order of Canada the following year.

WORLDS Exhibition Extended

If you haven’t had a chance to view WORLDS, currently showing at the Williamson Gallery, you are in luck. The exhibition has been extended through January 29, 2012.

Galileo Spacecraft IO, Satellite of Jupiter, 1999, NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

WORLDS continues the theme of superimposing two domains traditionally imagined to be distant and estranged—art and science. The exhibition is a medley of objects, images, sounds and videos exploring celestial phenomena by examining the products of art and science.

Meteor rocks borrowed from UCLA’s Meteorite Collection, an illuminated manuscript from 1568, a Copernicus engraving and other scientific works (many borrowed from the rare books collection of the Huntington Library) are on display alongside more contemporary space-themed art by Jonathan Cecil, Richard Selesnick and Nicholas Kahn.

In the Los Angeles Times, WORLDS curator and Williamson director Stephen Nowlin explained the purpose of the exhibition, “We have an Earth focus. This show is about reinvestigating that perspective. It’s a space object we live on.”

According to Nowlin, exhibitions like WORLDS fit well with Art Center’s mission because the College trains artists and designers who innovate “at the boundary of art and science.”

The gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. and Friday, noon to 9 p.m.

Richard Selesnick and Nicholas Kahn Liftoff, from the "Apollo Prophecies" series, 2002-06. Courtesy: the artists

Don’t Miss Design Runway This Friday

Environmental Design student Belle Shang will present her BeWild winter accessories at Design Runway.

This Friday, Art Center College of Design will hold its annual Design Runway show at the College’s Hillside Campus. The show, which is free and open to the public, focuses on how industrial design and visual art students are expressing themselves through apparel design.

“This is a runway show unlike any other,” said Design Runway instructor Justine Parish of the event which marks the culmination of the course of the same name. “Apparel design at Art Center is less about fashion than it is an outlet for students from all departments to explore a new medium for their creativity. As a result, we have Product Design students creating performance sportswear for space travel, Illustration students creating jewelry, Transportation Design students creating high fashion shoes and everything in between.”

Continued after the jump.

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Recent Photography Alumni in Upcoming Juenes Talents Shifting Perspectives at Gallery 825

This photo by alumna Christine Hemm will be featured in the Juenes Talents exhibition at Gallery 825.

As you may remember, two recent Photography and Imaging alumni–Christine Hemm and Maeghan Henry–were among eight artists who recently completed the fifth annual Jeunes Talents (Young Talents) photography program, in which they were sent on ten-day trips this past spring to various parts of France to capture contemporary French life.

After premiering in the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York earlier this fall, the Shifting Perspectives: Martinique / Metz / Rouen / Toulouse exhibition will move to Los Angeles’ Gallery 825 from November 18 to December 2, 2011, with an opening reception on November 17. A selection of works by Hemm, Henry and all the other artists can be previewed on the Juenes Talents website.

Juenes Talents is a cultural tourism project that combines tourism and the arts, photography and real-life experience, travel and inspiration, and American and French sensibilities to show life in France today. The project is organized by the French Tourism Development Agency; the Cultural Services of the French Consulate in Los Angeles and FLAX, a Los Angeles foundation dedicated to fostering a better understanding of France through public and cultural art events.

Art Center Revs Up For Car Classic ’11

Art Center's annual Car Classic. Photo: © Steven A. Heller/Art Center College of Design

This Sunday Art Center presents Car Classic, the College’s 11th annual celebration of the best in automotive design. The event will feature an incredible array of more than 100 rare automobiles and innovative vehicles on display in Art Center’s panoramic Sculpture Garden.

The theme for this year’s event is “California Design: Influencing Change,” meaning that in addition to enjoying all the classic cars on display—including a 1968 Peter Brock Triumph TR 250 K; a 1942 Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 SS Berlinetta Aero Dynamica; and a 1932 Doane Spencer Hot Rod—visitors to Car Classic will learn about the continuing global influence that Southern California has on transportation design.

Why Southern California? As home to more than 20 advanced automotive design studios, as well as forward-thinking companies that are leading the way in new mobility and alternative energy, the region continues to shape the how, what and where of transportation on a large scale.

Also leading the way is Art Center’s curriculum, which is expanding to further impact the evolution of the automotive industry and the broader field of transportation with a new Graduate Transportation Design program launching in Fall 2012. To coincide with this evolutionary growth, attendees to this year’s Car Classic will be treated to innovative designs for cars, bikes, planes, boats, materials and design tools influenced by Southern California culture.

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In Case You Missed It

Still from the upcoming film "Lost and Found in Armenia," directed by Gor Kirakosian FILM '06.

There’s always something happening when it comes to Art Center alumni, students and faculty. Sometimes there’s almost too much happening!

  • Alumnus Gor Kirakosian FILM ’06  directed the upcoming Lost and Found in Armenia, which stars Jamie Kennedy (Malibu’s Most Wanted, TV’s The Jamie Kennedy Experiment) as an American in Armenia who is mistaken for a Turkish spy. Speaking with Fresno’s Fox affiliate KMPH-26, the film’s producer Vanessa McCaffrey said the movie, which releases early next year, is “My Big Fat Greek Wedding meets The Hangover.”
  • “I was a rookie, and it was one of my first arrests. I saw someone had forged their registration tag — I noticed it was the wrong typeface. You can’t fool an artist.” So says alumnus and Pasadena cop Victor Cass ILLU ’89 in the Pasadena Star-News, who has been chosen to help launch an art-inspired campaign for Door of Hope, an agency that helps transition families from homelessness to permanent housing.
  • Alumnus Roberto Chavez PHOT ’06, a photographer and a member of the Whittier Cultural Arts Commission, has reportedly saved Pictures of Children’s Stories, a mural by ceramic artist F. Carlton Ball that had been tucked away in a corner of the Whitwood Branch Library, from being either dismantled or destroyed.
  • The E-bike, the first-and-last-mile brainchild of alumnus Garbriel Wartofsky TRANS ’09 is heading into the final stages of pre-production. Wartofsky, who has been working on the project since his days at Art Center, describes E-Bike a “compact, lightweight, intuitively-folding electric assist bicycle designed to get you seamlessly from point A to B utilizing the city’s existing infrastructure.”
  • Scars by alumnus and film director Woo-Seong Lim FILM ’01 opened in Seoul, South Korea last week. The film, starring Park So-Yeon and Jung Hee-Tae, is based on a story by novelist Han Kang, and chronicles a destructive love affair between a perfectionist news anchor and a children’s book illustrator.

If you have any Art Center-related news items you’d like to share with the community, send us an email at editorial at artcenter dot edu.

In Case You Missed It

Ana Serrano's "Salon of Beauty" installation at Houston's Rice Gallery. Photo: Nash Baker.

There’s always something happening when it comes to Art Center alumni, students and faculty. Sometimes there’s almost too much happening!

If you have any Art Center-related news items you’d like to share with the community, send us an email at editorial at artcenter dot edu.

Students Spend Their Summer Augmenting Reality

Still from the promotional video for Juju, a student-created augmented reality application.

This past summer term, Art Center welcomed back its first visionary-in-residence, science fiction author Bruce Sterling (Schismatrix, Islands in the Net, The Caryatids) to co-teach an augmented reality (AR) transdisciplinary design studio with Graphic Design instructor Guillaume Wolf called Augmenting Reality.

Not certain what AR is exactly? You’re not alone. For the studio, Sterling and Wolf defined AR as a software program that must: 1) mix the virtual with the real, 2) be interactive in real time and 3) register in three dimensions.

AR is an industry still on the cusp, and applications are only now starting to sneak out of the labs and into consumers’ hands. “It may even be a bit before the cusp,” Sterling says of the AR industry. “It’s an old technology, but it’s a baby industry.”

In the course—hosted by the College’s Graphic Design Department and sponsored by Amsterdam-based Layar, a company whose AR platform claims more than one million active users—teams of students designed both concepts and prototype AR apps that ranged from virtual pets to an augmented “spiritual reality” experience.

Layar's Maarten Lens-FitzGerald gets some FaceTime with Graphic Design student Shi Jie Lim and Graphic Design Department chair Nik Hafermaas. Photo: Alex Arestei, Layar.

“I was impressed by the student’s concepts, execution and their presentation,” says Maarten Lens-FitzGerald, general manager and co-founder of Layar, who watched the teams’ final presentations virtually (during the final he was “passed” around the classroom on an instructor’s smartphone). “Even with innovative media, it’s still important to be able to tell the story using mainstream media. Not all AR people know this; but the students did.”

Words, no doubt, that are music to instructor Wolf’s ears, who wanted to make sure the students were designing based on something people can actually connect with.

“Why are people interested in anything? It’s not just about design, it’s about the psychology behind it,” says Wolf of what he tries to impart to his students. “Why is a product sexy? Why do we want it? How does a designer create that desire?”

(Read more, and view videos of the work, after the jump.)

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