Art Center Spring 2014 graduation is around the corner

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After years of all-nighters fueled by coffee, critiques, cramming for finals and collaboration, 192 Art Center students will graduate on Saturday. This ceremony includes the very first graduating class for the Graduate Environmental Design and Graduate Transportation Design Programs. In fact, we have a record number, 36, students accepting graduate level degrees on Saturday. Also notable, 25% of this graduating class attended one or more of Art Center’s Public Programs (Art Center at Night or Saturday High).

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Close encounters of the Mac Pro kind

Mac Pros at 870

Like a fleet of alien spacecraft, over 50 new Mac Pros have landed at 870, melded with the network and firmly attached to new Wacom Cintiq touchscreen monitors. To the delight of Illustration and Fine Art students, these strange new digital organisms have taken root and are ready to start turning out some serious teraflops (1 Trillion floating-point operations per second)!

The new Mac Pro has been eagerly anticipated since its announcement last year at The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC); and it represents the next wave in desktop computing, boasting dual GPUs, PCIe flash storage, high-performance Thunderbolt 2 peripheral connectivity, new-generation Xeon processors, ultrafast memory, and support for up to three (count ‘em, 3) 4K monitors (That’s… ehem… over 24 million pixels at up to 60 frames per second = over 1 Billion pixels per second).

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From muscle machines to dinosaur skulls: Art Center’s March 2014 alumni notes

It’s that time of month again. Time, that is, to catch up on the creative undertakings Art Center’s talented diaspora of alums have been plotting, planning, pitching, prototyping, publishing, publicizing, producing and plying. And that’s just the p’s.

Dive into the following digest of alumni accomplishments and works-in-progress. And for those alums among us, be sure to clue us in on your own news and notes for inclusion in our next dispatch. We don’t want to miss anything. This is Art Center, after all. And we’re nothing if not completists.

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Of animals, art and otherness: Q&A with incoming Grad Art chair, Diana Thater

Diana Thater. Photo by Sigrid Rothe, 2012

Diana Thater. Photo by Sigrid Rothe, 2012

Just over two months ago, Art Center provost, Fred Fehlau announced that full-time faculty members, Diana Thater and Jason Smith, would assume the roles of Chair and Associate Chair of Art Center’s Graduate Art program after longtime Chair, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe vacates the position in summer, 2014.

Thater, a pioneering film, video and installation artist, has been a dynamic and esteemed member of the international art community, ever since she earned her MFA from Art Center’s Grad Art program in 1990.  She is a prolific artist who has exhibited around the world at first-rate institutions, including MOMA, the Walker Art Center and Dia Center for the Arts. Much of Thater’s work is informed by the social conscience she brings to her installation and video work exploring the relationship between humans and the natural world.

The Dotted Line recently visited Thater in her studio to discuss her plans for the Graduate Art Department as well as her current and future projects.

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Captain America soars at the box office, thanks in part to Tim Flattery’s Helicarrier and Quinjet designs

Tim Flattery Captain America 6 of 7

Art by Tim Flattery for “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”

Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier flexed and flaunted its superpowers at the box office during its opening weekend, earning more than $300 million worldwide. With those kind of numbers, it clearly wasn’t just fanboys (and girls) vying for an early glimpse at Hollywood’s latest super-sized comic book adaptation.

This widespread embrace was particularly gratifying to Art Center Entertainment Design Chair (and resident alpha fan), Tim Flattery, who collaborated with production designer Peter Wenham on designs for the movie’s spectacular Helicarrier (yes, an airborne aircraft carrier) and the Quinjet. “I love working on comic book movies,” Flattery said.  “I’ve always been a fan and read comics as a kid.” Continue reading

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Creative disruption: Image strategists on photography’s new frontier

CicLAvia

Photographs by Annenberg Apprentice Dave Koga are part of Our Story, a digital visual narrative he curated in collaboration with CicLAvia.

“The advent of new technologies and a global population consumed by social media have turned photography on its head,” says Dennis Keeley, chair of Art Center’s Photography and Imaging Department. “The profession now demands a daunting versatility for survival—including skills in entrepreneurship, computational competency and critical thinking. Image-making now extends well beyond the traditionally constructed photograph to more immediate and interconnected processes. These contemporary practices and ideas utilize art, science and communications, and demand an intellectual flexibility, collaborative spirit, and a willingness to engage the world with strategy.”

To prepare photography students to meet the demands of this rapidly changing profession, Keeley and his colleagues developed a pilot class this Spring, Creative Disruption: Beyond the Classroom. Co-led by Everard Williams, Ann Cutting and Elisa Callow, the class embeds students in local nonprofits where they’re given a creative challenge and work in collaboration with the partner organization to tackle that challenge.

The class is part of an Art Center study, funded by a grant from the Annenberg Foundation, investigating and testing models for the future of photographic education.

Read on to learn about our first two Annenberg Apprentices, and their innovative work with two community-based organizations, CicLAvia and the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center.

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Expand your mind without emptying your wallet

Glitter art on view at Jones Coffee Roasters. Photo: Teri Bond

Glitter art on view at Jones Coffee Roasters. Photo: Teri Bond

It’s the last few weeks of the term, and your top priorities are probably work, sleep and the next cup of coffee. But what about re-charging your creative batteries?

Art Center is nestled within one of the most innovative and entrepreneurial environments in the world. But be honest: When was the last time you pried yourself away from your projects and prototypes to find inspiration among Los Angeles’ vast creative riches?

We ask you this not to taunt or torment you about artistic opportunities missed. Really we’re here to simply offer you some incentive to take a break from your creative toils to remind yourself that great art and design is not created in a vacuum. Or a wind tunnel, post office or hillside haven.  It requires stimulation. Don’t worry. We’ve got you covered with the suggestions below.

Try the hidden gem on Fairfax, Family, which is stocked with a unique selection of art books, prints and zines you won’t find at chain retail stores. Be sure to check out the mini art gallery in the back. Just a few yards away is the Supreme store, where you’ll spend less time shopping than hanging out or taking advantage of the indoor skate ramp. You might even run into Tyler, The Creator.

Closer to campus, you can get the best-of your much-needed coffee at Jones Coffee Roasters, where you may run into Art Center chairs or faculty. The open space is a great studying spot, and there is always interesting art on the walls.

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Hollywood heavyweights duke it out over student talent at Entertainment Design intern show

Early on Sunday morning, the hallways of Art Center were magically transformed into a winding gallery of installations created by sleep-deprived Entertainment Design students. The 49 nervous conceptual artists prepared to show their work to top industry employers shopping for talent to hire as summer interns.

Covering the walls and table tops were prints and displays ranging from environments, architecture and characters, to vehicles and props. The impressive displays all stem from the fertile imagination of students who will go on to create visuals we see in films, video games, animation commercials, TV shows and theme parks.

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Inside ‘In Particular:’ Sarah Magladry’s installation in the Fine Art Gallery

This creative manifesto is part of a series of first-person pieces by Fine Art students reflecting on the ideas informing their work. Each post will feature the artist whose work is currently rotating through the Undergraduate Fine Art Student Gallery, at the Hillside Campus. This week Sarah Magladry explores the inspiration behind her exhibit, “In Particular.”

“Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation, because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet. Therefore, things must be learned only to be unlearned again, or, more likely, to be corrected.” – Richard Feynman

Dissection is a crucial element in my practice. The minute details ignite the story. It’s a process of deduction, examination and reappropriation. I am never finished searching for what I am attracted to in an image and am typically drawn to the unexpected, the failed or the perverse. It is these details I relish that make the final viewing. There is an embracing of aberrations: a celebration of them. A self-reflective nature that allows the inadvertent to take on more than perhaps what the piece originally intended to do. The fragmentation of each piece allows them to converse with one another. Each element feeds upon the next, creating a carousel of information more thorough and more complex with the progression of each concept.

Products become just as much a narrative of the image-maker as the image itself.

And the narrative is as the quote suggests… we are in constant entropy. And yet it is this degree of disorder and uncertainty that allows for metamorphosis.

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Community celebrates new studio spaces, student artists love stronger connection to each other

Ranee Henderson’s life has changed dramatically since the opening of Art Center’s new 870 Building. Since she doesn’t own a car, the 7th-term Illustration major and Fine Arts minor typically lugged a heavy backpack plus a carry-on bag stuffed with supplies, all while juggling a large canvas, every day on the bus ride from her home in Eagle Rock to Pasadena–where she then boarded the campus shuttle to reach her Hillside destination.

Carrying around all that extra weight is now a thing of the past. Today, Henderson–along with her art supplies–happily occupies one of 47 individual studio spaces in the newest addition to the College’s expanding South campus.

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