Writer Silvia Uribe checks out alumna and faculty member Diana Thater’s latest exhibit, Butterflies and Other People, at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Read her interesting take on the pieces at the Santa Barbara Independent.
The Pasadena Museum of California Art (PMCA) presents Population: Portraits by Ray Turner, an exhibition of 150 portraits by the Art Center alumnus and former faculty member.
Turner ILLU ’58 fashions a uniquely seductive and engaging fusion of lyrical realism and abstraction in portraiture. A prescient interpreter, Population features intimate portraits of Pasadena residents.
The exhibit runs through Jan. 31. Read more about the exhibit at artdaily.org.
Edmunds.com editor Kelly Toepke recently visited campus, bringing along the new 2009 BMW 750i for Transportation Design students and faculty to examine.
Toepke writes: “Of all the cars in the Inside Line fleet, the 2009 BMW 750i seemed the most logical, given that the last two BMW design chiefs were Art Center graduates: Chris Bangle (’81) and current head of design Adrian van Hooydonk (’92). (Maybe this was why there was a reserved, curbside parking spot for me when I arrived?)”
Read more about Toepke’s visit, and see photos of the BMW 750i: 2009 BMW 750i: Returning to its Spiritual Home
We’re super excited to welcome acclaimed photographer, director and alumnus Matthew Rolston to campus on Oct. 29 for a conversation with celebrity journalist Merle Ginsberg.Widely recognized as one of the leading photographers and directors of his generation, Rolston’s imagery has helped define today’s aesthetics of celebrity and beauty photography. In 1998, he endowed the Matthew Rolston Scholarship for Photography and Film, and in 2008 he renewed his support for the scholarship, adding the very special privilege of serving as a mentor to recipients.
Join us for a lively evening of conversation, imager and a unique viewing of his latest book, beautyLIGHT.
Seating is extremely limited for this event, and reservations are required to attend. RSVP by Oct. 27 to rsvpaccd@artcenter.edu or 626.396.4327.
The exhibit LA Artcore Artists, including work by alumnus and faculty member Ramone Muñoz, opens this week in Bakersfield. Part of an “art exchange,” the first show, featuring L.A. artists, will hold an opening reception Oct. 15 at Bakersfield College’s Wylie and May Louise Jones Gallery. Next year, Bakersfield artists will exhibit at the Artcore Brewery Annex in downtown Los Angeles.Bakersfield Express has a nice write-up previewing the show as well as an interview with Muñoz.
(Pictured: “Towers of Vik” series of paintings by Ramone Muñoz)
Artinfo (in an article from the October 2009 Modern Painters issue) visits Art Center alumnus Doug Aitken ILLU ’91 to explore the audio experiments of the renowned video artist.
This month his “sound pavilion” will debut at Brazil’s Instituto Inhotim. For this piece, Aitken drilled a hole deep into the ground to broadcast the earth’s “primal, geologic sounds.”
“As if putting a stethoscope to the planet’s heart, he has used a system of ultrasensitive amplifiers and geomicrophones (like the ones geologists use to record the breaking up of glaciers in Antarctica) to transform these guttural registers into audible sounds that fill a ground-level glass pavilion above. He expects the visitors in the pavilion both to have intensely private experiences and to become part of a larger community—the audience created by sound.”
Read the article here. For more on Aitken, read Art Center’s interview with him here.
Three years ago, Transportation Design alumna Michelle Christensen was a new graduate working for Honda, making sketches for a blue-sky vehicle. The Honda brass were so impressed with her sketches, they turned them into a real vehicle—the Acura ZDK.
Read more about this exciting story on USA Today’s Drive On Blog.
The Armory is celebrating its 20th anniversary, kicking it off with a new exhibition.
Paying tribute to its 20 years of exhibition history, the Armory commissioned 20 contemporary artists, all having previously created art for the organization, to make new site-specific works and installations both inside the Armory and at sites throughout Pasadena. Artists included in the show include Art Center alums Edgar Arceneaux and Pae White, and faculty member Seth Kaufman.
The show, Installations Inside/Out: 20th Anniversary Exhibition, runs through Dec. 31. Details about the installations can be found here.
There’s an interesting article on ceramist Harrison McIntosh FINE ’36 in today’s L.A. Times. He is celebrating his 95th birthday with a retrospective exhibition at the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona. McIntosh studied at Art Center in the ’30s, when we were located in downtown Los Angeles. He is known as “a virtuoso of pure, gracefully handmade objects that represent the classical vein of Southern California’s postwar crafts movement in museum collections around the world.”
The exhibition runs through Jan. 9, 2010.
This issue of Orange Coast Magazine visits alumnus Freeman Thomas at Ford’s advanced design studio in Irvine.
“Southern California is so important from a design standpoint,” Thomas says. “It’s where the pebble hits the pond.”
Read more at Orange Coast Magazine