Tag Archives: Mike Kelley

The overpowering and humbling beauty of UH-OH Frances Stark at the Hammer Museum

Frances Stark, My Best Thing, 2011. Digital video, color, sound. 100:00 min. Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Purchase. Image courtesy of Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York.

Frances Stark, My Best Thing, 2011. Digital video, color, sound. 100:00 min. Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Purchase. Image courtesy of Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York.

“’UH-OH’ is among the finest solo museum shows this year.” Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times, November 12, 2015.

It is not often that an artist has both intrigued and intimidated me as much as Frances Stark (MFA 93). So it was with some trepidation that I set out to the Hammer Museum to see Stark’s mid-career retrospective, UH-OH: Frances Stark, 1991-2015, on view until January 24, 2016.  The exhibition brings together more than two decades of Stark’s poetic compositions and autobiographical reflections, featuring 125 works, including the artist’s early carbon drawings, intricate collages, and mixed-media paintings as well as her more recent videos.

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Graduate studies at Art Center: Art and design for a changing world

Media Design Practices students Kristina Ortega and Jenny Rodenhouse's Wearable Services, created in the Intel-funded Connected Bodies course.

Media Design Practices students Kristina Ortega and Jenny Rodenhouse’s Wearable Services, created by the Intel-funded Connected Bodies course. Photo by Stella Kalinina

From business ventures to social justice, cultural research to experimental mediums, transportation systems to spatial experiences, Art Center’s renowned graduate programs offer designers and artists exceptional opportunities to create unique and personal career and life paths.

For the recently released 2015–16 Viewbook, Art Center Provost Fred Fehlau invited leaders from the College’s six graduate programs—Art, Environmental Design, Film, Industrial Design, Media Design Practices, and Transportation Systems and Design—to offer their perspectives on the current state of their fields, and what it means for prospective graduate students.

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Artworld luminaries and Art Center alums pay tribute to Mike Kelley’s legacy as an educator

Of all the ways Mike Kelley has been celebrated for his pivotal contributions to contemporary art, since his death on January 31, 2012, his impact as an educator may be the most significant aspect of his legacy to go relatively unexamined, if not unsung. Kelley was a faculty member of Art Center’s Graduate Art Department from 1992 to 2007. And during his time teaching at Art Center, Kelley mentored such monumental talents as video artist Diana Thater (who now chairs the department from which she graduated), multimedia artist Pae White, installation artist Jennifer Steinkamp and Fine Art faculty member Jean Rasenberger.

In the above video, inspired by Kelley’s MOCA retrospective, these artists examine the ways in which Kelley influenced the kind of artists they’ve become, the work they create and, perhaps most importantly, how they go about crafting and sustaining a life as an exhibiting artist. Kelley has often been credited with helping raise the clout and visibility of LA’s art scene when his career took off and he declined to follow the well-worn path previous west coast supernova artists had followed to New York. As one of the first internationally acclaimed artists to root himself in Los Angeles, Kelley was, in essence, laying the groundwork for his students and their contemporaries to do the same.

If these artists’ upwardly-tilting career paths are any indication, Kelley’s impact on his students, his city and his creative discipline only gets deeper as time goes on.

A salute to creative independence to light up your July 4th weekend

John Van Hamersveld

John Van Hamersveld

Before we gather with friends and family to celebrate the 4th of July, we want to take a moment to recognize the spirit of independence. At Art Center, we revere art and design warriors who embody this country’s pioneering spirit: the rebels, the change makers, the innovators, the futurists and the unapologetic patriots. On the eve of Independence Day, we’d like to devote some pixels to a few of our unrivaled alumni who blazed their own paths, and who embody the same spirit of sovereignty that founded this country.

The Fourth of July is an opportunity to celebrate independence, which we tend to do over a barbecue grill loaded with savory treats, or sitting at the edge of a pool. Independence Day is the pinnacle of summer. We’re often reminded of John Van Hamersveld’s (BFA 64 Advertising) poster for The Endless Summer, which evokes the dreamy colors of California. His design came to define the iconography of surf culture. According to Vanity Fair, the poster, now over 50 years old, “hasn’t aged a minute.”

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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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Art Center in the News: February-March 2014

Maggie Hendrie on the set of TakePart Live

Maggie Hendrie on the set of TakePart Live

Art Center students, faculty, staff and alumni have been making news while making their mark at on the art and design worlds. For those who may have missed a headline or two, we curated this handy highlight reel of our recent media clips:

Don’t miss two lengthy, live interview segments we arranged for Interaction Design Chair, Maggie Hendrie and ACCD student Alex Cabunoc on the new cable program TakePart Live—a show tailored to Millennials (age 18-34) that reaches 40 million-plus households through Participant Media’s Pivot TV network. (Participant Media is the award-winning, socially and politically progressive production company responsible for An Inconvenient Truth, The Cove, Lincoln, among other enlightening and edifying films and TV shows).

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Art Center in the News, March 2013

In case you missed it, Dotted Line brings you a monthly roundup of media coverage.

From the success of the student-led Dot Independent Film Festival (DIFF | LA) and the rise of 3D printing, to reflections on the life of Mike Kelley and the connections between art and science, catch up on any news you may have missed with our March media roundup.

Mike Kelley in The Wall Street Journal

“In 1987, [Mike Kelley] began teaching at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, a sign among his peers that he had ‘arrived.’”–Kelly Crow writing in the Wall Street Journal. Photographs of Kelley by Grant Mudford in 1989, left, and by Tyler Hubby on December 7, 2011, right.

For the latest Art Center news, follow us on Twitter at @art_center.

Art Center Alumni Reminisce About Mike Kelley in the “L.A. Times”

Last month, the Art Center community was stunned at the news that legendary artist Mike Kelley, who had taught in Art Center’s Graduate Art program from 1992—2007, had died.

At the time, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Chair of the Grad Art program at Art Center, said, “Recognized as an important artist almost from the very beginning of his career, Mike kept teaching as long as he could before the pressures of being very famous indeed made it simply impossible for him to come to school with any regularity at all. He was, both in general and as a colleague, a brilliant combination of passion regarding art and a sense of humor… He has left us devastated.”

While much of the news following Kelley’s death focused on his cultural impact on the international art world, Sunday’s L.A. Times featured Art Center alumni reminiscing about their former teacher, who was “generous, patient, sometimes harsh but above all, eager to engage and share with fellow creators.”

Art Center would like to acknowledge our alumni–all celebrated artists themselves–and thank them for taking the time to share their thoughts with the L.A. Times.

To read the article in its entirety, please click here.

From the Art Center Archives: Faculty critique work by Steve Roden GART '89. Pictured (L to R) circa 1989: Laurence Dreiband, Richard Hertz, Sabina Ott, Stephen Prina, Mike Kelley and Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe. Image (c) Art Center College of Design/Steven A. Heller

UPDATE (3/15/12): Steve Roden, the student whose work was being critiqued in the above picture, recently blogged about seeing this photograph in the Los Angeles Times.