Category Archives: Public Programs

Making It Happen: A Conversation with Art Center at Night’s Dana L. Walker

Open House 2010, Photo by Lara Warren

Are you looking for a new challenge? Do you need to add a valuable skill to your art and design practice? Or perhaps you’re interested in applying to Art Center College of Design’s full-time degree program and need to build a portfolio? Stop dreaming about the possibilities and make it happen with Art Center at Night (ACN).

Managing Director of Public Programs and Director of Art Center at Night Dana L. Walker took a break from preparing for tomorrow’s Open House to talk to us more about the program and its offerings for fall.

Dotted Line: What is the value of a continuing studies program like Art Center at Night?
Dana L. Walker: There are no single career paths in today’s world. Jobs are taking on more and more skills and responsibilities due to consolidated workforces, increased freelance opportunities versus staff positions, and a variety of other reasons. Art Center at Night (ACN) helps those trying to add to their design skill set, as well as those wanting to take their careers into a different direction. For instance, technology might have changed since you began your design career, and now you need to get up to speed quickly. There are ACN classes for that.

But I also find that there are a number of people who started out in digital careers coming to ACN get the full range of design foundation that they may have missed in their studies. They want to understand everything that came before digital—use of typography, color theory, visual communication and such. Sometimes they want a tactile experience where they’re not designing on a computer monitor. We’re seeing a growing desire for these sorts of experiences, making things by hand.

Dotted Line: How does a program like ACN adapt to the changing economic climate?
Walker: We’ve developed smaller, shorter‑term classes as well as some online and weekend intensives. A full term is 14 weeks, but we are offering many 7-week courses and one-day seminars. These can be easier for many students because it’s less of a commitment, in both time and money.

Dotted Line: What type of student attends ACN?
Walker: The program is for anyone age 18 or over—students looking to develop their portfolios for acceptance into Art Center’s degree programs, working professionals, retirees—and everyone in-between searching for a way to explore their creative side. We have classes tailored for all of these people.

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Designer Sami Hayek on Art Center at Night

Hayek

With registration for the Fall Term of Art Center at Night (ACN) beginning Monday, August 15, you may find yourself wondering who exactly enrolls in Art Center’s continuing studies program.

ACN offers hundreds of courses that attract everybody from art and design professionals looking to enhance their skills, to mid-career professionals looking for a creative challenge, to individuals preparing a portfolio for admission to one of Art Center’s full-time degree programs.

Over the years, many students have made the leap from taking an ACN course to being a full-time Art Center student.

We recently spoke to Art Center alumnus Sami Hayek, whose new Espacio Sami Hayek line debuted last May at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York. Hayek credits ACN for helping him assemble a portfolio that lead to his admission into Art Center’s Environmental Design program.

Here’s what he had to say:

“I was studying business administration when, one day, I realized that I was going to have a boring life ahead of me if I continued this pursuit. At first I was leaning more towards architecture, but after researching the field I realized I wanted something more diverse, which led me to environmental design.

“I knew Art Center had the best Environmental Design program out there, but I didn’t know how tough it was going to be for someone like me—coming from business with practically no design skills—to get admitted into the program. When I visited Patricia Oliver, chair of the department at the time, she asked if I had a portfolio. When I said no, she suggested I attend Art Center at Night (ACN) in order to build one.”

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In Case You Missed It

Photo by Eric Curry

As you know, there’s always something going on when it comes to Art Center alumni, students and faculty.

Some of the latest:

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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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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Art Center at Night Students Explore Brave New Worlds

Plotting a new trajectory is never a simple task. Just ask Dave Doody, a senior engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

A recent image of the Sun, captured by NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. (Photo courtesy of NASA.)

Doody is the lead flight engineer of NASA’s Cassini Solstice Mission, a mission in which the Cassini spacecraft is gathering and sending back information on the planet Saturn, its rings, moons and magnetosphere. Once a year, he also teaches Basics of Interplanetary Flight at Art Center at Night (ACN), a course in which curious students from all walks of life explore what it takes to navigate spacecraft across the solar system.

We recently trekked across the arroyo to JPL to ask Doody about his class.

Dotted Line: What do you explore in Basics of Interplanetary Flight?
Doody: We look at results from NASA’s probes, whether it’s from Voyager, the Mars Exploration Rovers, Cassini or the others. In each session we touch on a few other topics as well. We ask a lot of questions like: What is the spacecraft all about? How does it work? What are all its pieces and what do they do? How do you design it? How does it travel?

We also explore the environment that it has to operate in, whether it’s the vacuum in space or plasma from the sun. Can the spacecraft go straight to its destination in the solar system or does it have to follow certain pathways?

And we cover the up-and-coming spacecraft and anything that’s happening right now, like a launch or a landing. We also touch on some historical information.

Doody.

Doody.

Dotted Line: What kind of students do you get in the class?
Doody: Of course we get some students from Art Center, both undergraduates and graduates.

We also get filmmakers and transportation designers. But the class is not just limited to artists and designers. It’s wide open to the public, so we get everyone from surgeons to secretaries. Anybody can take the class.

We don’t depend on any previous experience or knowledge. We just need people who are interested in the fact that today we’re looking at new worlds. And we’re looking at them with robots that have new senses on them. These robots can see not only in visual light but also in infrared and ultraviolet. And they also have expanded sensory regions, so they can analyze magnetic fields and high-energy particles.

Dotted Line: In class you discuss the different types of sensors found on spacecraft?
Doody: Yes, but we’re not just discussing. This course takes place after dinner after all! We get into all sorts of activities where the students are experimenting and seeing how different sensors work. I try to keep it interesting and informative and get everybody working together and talking to one another.

Dotted Line: Give me an example of the type of activity you do in class.
Doody: Well, once you leave the Earth, you’re outside the magnetic bubble that protects us from the Sun, which is constantly shedding protons and electrons, which we call the solar wind. In fact, if the magnetic field on Earth were to vanish, the Sun’s solar wind would blow off the atmosphere, dry off the oceans and there’d be little hope for life.

It’s not the easiest concept to grasp, so I bring some plasma, which are highly charged particles, into the classroom. And the students take a very strong magnet and they can actually see how magnetic fields interact with plasma. It’s real simple and helps illustrate this environmental concept. And that’s what I try to do with the course in general. I try to take something abstract, put it right in your face and let you play with it.

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Swing By Art Center at Night’s Open House

Photo by Lara Warren

Have you ever wondered about Art Center at Night (ACN), the College’s continuing studies program? Then check out Experience Art Center at Night, underway at South Campus through Wednesday.

A variety of classes are open to the public tonight and tomorrow night from 7 to 9 p.m. Stop by a class, sit in on critiques and student presentations, view student work, take a self-guided tour of South Campus, ask questions and register for Summer Term classes.

ACN offers a variety of courses, short workshops and seminars to help you update your skills, polish your portfolio or recharge your creative energy.

New ACN courses include The Ultimate Photo-Shoot Guide for Photographers and Designers; Create and Publish Content for iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone; and Transpor-Tainment. “Summer-only” offerings include Manufacturing Techniques; Shoes: Fact and Fantasy; Neoimpressionism: Painting the Landscape; and Animal Sketching.

Courses begin May 16, and registration is now open. Check it out—there is something for everyone at ACN.

Meet Meliné Khatchatourian

Meliné Khatchatourian didn’t always know she was going to enter the arena of transportation design.

Khatchatourian

In fact, she never even took a fine art course until her senior year as a communications major at the University of California, San Diego.

“I was surprised to discover that I not only enjoyed those [art] classes, but I excelled in them,” Khatchatourian says. “I knew that I had discovered a path I had to pursue.”

She soon enrolled in Introduction to Product and Transportation Design at Art Center at Night (ACN). Khatchatourian vividly recalls the first day her class focused on transportation studies when her instructor used her car as a teaching tool. “My car was dissected and explained as a work of functional art,” she says. “I remember thinking, ‘I need to learn as much about this discipline as I can.’”

So Khatchatourian met with ACN Director Dana Walker, who suggested courses to prepare her portfolio for the College’s Transportation Design program. And the rest is ACN history.

Read her full story.

Ready to make history yourself? Then come to Experience Art Center at Night, April 18 through 20, 7to 9 p.m., a three-evening event where you can explore ACN’s broad range of courses.

Registration for ACN’s Summer Term is now open; courses begin May 16.

Alumnus Creating New Work for Metro Station


Fine Art alumnus and Art Center at Night/Saturday High faculty member Ronald J. Llanos has been hard at work the past three years creating Ephemeral Views: A Visual Essay, for Metro’s Expo/Western Station constructed at Western Avenue in Los Angeles. He is creating 24 mosaic panels (each 8’ x 3’) that comprise the work under construction.

The Source brings us an update on the progress. From the article: “Ronald’s watercolor paintings have a fresh, spontaneous quality to them. The task of translating his translucent washes of color into a hard, permanent material was a challenge. Artisans at Mosaika Art & Design traced Ronald’s designs onto ceramic tile and added thin layers of glaze to preserve the feel of the artist’s hand in the work. Next the work was fired, cut into small pieces and placed within the panels.”

Read more, and also check out Llanos’ blog for details from the beautiful mosaic.

It’s Not Too Late to Register for Art Center at Night

Remember that resolution you made to expand your horizons in 2011?

You’re in luck—it’s not too late to sign up for Art Center at Night. Classes begin January 18.

Art Center at Night (ACN), Art Center’s continuing studies program, offers nearly 200 innovative courses in art and design taught by award-winning instructors who have the knowledge and professional experience to help creative individuals reach their goals.

Whether you want to explore a new passion, prepare a student or professional portfolio, or launch a new career, ACN has a course that’s right for you.

Ready to make your New Year’s resolution a reality? Register today. Also, check out our gallery of student work.