Doug Aitken, Station to Station. Courtesy Regen Projects.
1. Since graduating from ArtCenter nearly 25 years ago, Doug Aitken (BFA 91 Illustration) has blazed a luminous trajectory. From his breakout Electric Earth video installation at the 1999 Whitney Biennial, to the nomadic Station to Station (2013), the Southern California native creates multimedia works at once monumental and ephemeral.
Frances Stark, Portrait of the Artist as a Full-on Bird, 2004, Collage on casein on canvas board. 20×24 in. RSC Contemporary, London. Photo by Marcus Leith.
With the arrival of the holiday season comes a time for hot beverages and brightly-patterned sweaters; for giving and receiving, at work and at home. We’re excited kick off the next six weeks’ worth of non-stop merriment by presenting you with with an early gift in the form of the latest installment of ArtCenter alumni notes, which is teeming with impressive news and accomplishments, from book releases and public engagements to major exhibitions at the Hammer Museum and LACMA.
Photography by Daria Kobayashi Ritch.
Have you ever spent time at a retail job daydreaming about ascending to a role that calls upon your creative voice instead of those perky customer service pleasantries you’ve been trained to dole out? Well, Daria Kobyashi Ritch is living that dream, going from a sales associate job at Urban Outfitters to freelance gigs shooting fashion for their blog—while pursuing her Photography degree at ArtCenter. In the time since, the enterprising student has continued to create content for hipster clothing chain as well as shooting professionally for Nylon.
Ritch, whose mother also attended ArtCenter, discovered her passion for photography as a UCLA undergraduate student and transferred to ArtCenter to hone her craft. In the following Q&A, Ritch speaks about the role fashion plays in her photography and how her ArtCenter mentors have fueled her passion for her chosen field. As she gears up for her Fall 2015 graduation, Ritch reflects on her myriad influences —from magazines to cameras to up and coming photographers—as well as her ambitions to continue her work with major brands and fashion luminaries.
The stock photo agency Shestock is the brainchild of Photography alumna Karen Beard (pictured), who aims to change how women and girls are portrayed.
“Girls today are inundated daily with imagery that is overtly or covertly sexist,” says Photography alumna Karen Beard. “They have not developed the skills to question the visual language that surrounds them. I wanted to do something about that as a mother, and I realized that I could.”
In 2012 Beard founded Shestock, a stock photography agency that offers compelling and visceral female-centric images created exclusively by professional women photographers. Early on in her career, Beard was drawn to the freedom that stock photography made possible. “Stock allowed me this open free space to create, to make mistakes, to evolve as a photographer—it gave me an outlet for that and a place to put the images. If they sold, that was great. If people passed, that was fine too.”
Girl with Curious Hair. Photo: Marisa Howenstine.
Marisa Howenstine (BFA 10 Photography) has had a great run the past two years with three images selected by Graphis for its prestigious Photography Annual, this year grabbing a Gold for “Ecce Homo: Behold the Man” and a Silver for “Modern Nature” and last year earning a Silver for “Murder of Crows.” The Dotted Line took this opportunity to catch up with her and find out a little more about this artist and her work.
In the Grad Art Seminar series, Jeff Wall spoke candidly about his work and its influences. (Art Center photo by Juan Posada)
Vancouver-born and -based artist Jeff Wall is now living and working part-time in Los Angeles, which is good news for students at Art Center. A capacity crowd filled the L.A. Times Media Center at Hillside Campus last Tuesday night, eager to hear what he had to say.
Jack Bankowsky, who co-curates the popular Grad Art Seminar series with fellow faculty member Walead Beshty, introduced Wall, and reminded the audience of three of his works—opaque black and white prints—that are set in Los Angeles: Citizen (1996), a man lying on the lawn in a public park; 8056 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles (1996), a cinema-turned-synagogue, framed in a circular black vignette; and Office Hallway, Spring Street, Los Angeles (1997), a man in a dimly lit, nondescript hallway.
Peter W. Anderson (BFA 67), left, accepting his Oscar at the Academy’s Technical Achievement Awards with Douglas Trumbull. (Credit: Michael Yada/©A.M.P.A.S.)
Earlier this year, Photography alumnus and visual effects master Peter W. Anderson, ASC, accepted the 2013 Gordon E. Sawyer Award, an Academy Award for technological contributions that have brought credit to the film industry. “Without the sciences what would the art be?” Anderson asked as he hefted his Oscar. “Without the art, what would the sciences be?”
Car Classic reliably serves up a feast for the photographic eye, with its high-contrast placement of man-made wonders amid the natural marvels surrounding Art Center’s Hillside campus. But the 2014 edition of the College’s annual homage to car design delivered more spectacularly photogenic feats of design and engineering than usual, thanks to this year’s theme, Street to Screen, featuring a swarm of Batmobiles amid a caravan of camera-friendly automotive stars of film and TV.
To give these sirens of street and screen their artful due, we dispatched two upper term Photography students, Kit Sinclair and Eduardo Medrano, to capture the look and feel of this year’s event with a visual conversation in the language of still images. Their marching orders were simply to convey the visceral thrill of Art Center’s carefully curated collection of iconic rides.
Kit and Eduardo delivered on their promise and then some, with the above series of images, a digital zine, for which Sinclair supplied the following inquisitive artist’s statement, clearly aimed at engaging the viewer: “This series was influenced by timeless design and created to inspire you, no matter your background. What makes a design classic? What elements in a design make it appealing no matter when you see it? How does time influence and inform current design?”
Viewbook photographer Stella Kalinina (BFA 13) with the finished product in hand. (Photo by Chuck Spangler)
Remember when you were shopping around for college? You were likely deluged with thick catalogs and eye-catching viewbooks sent by institutions vying for your attention. Even in the internet era, the printed viewbook remains a vital tool for communicating a school’s value proposition to prospective students—especially when it comes to art and design schools.
Art Center’s 2015–2016 Viewbook, showcasing student work in 11 undergraduate and six graduate degree programs, was published in September, both in print and online. Content and design for the biennial publication are developed by a core team of Marketing and Communications staff members, in collaboration with Kit Baron, senior vice president, Admissions and Enrollment Management, and the College’s Provost Fred Fehlau.
High-quality visuals are key to the Viewbook, which this year features contributions from photographer Stella Kalinina (BFA 13), commissioned to capture student life on campus and in classrooms. It was a large and complex project, one that Stella was well prepared for as a recent graduate of the College’s Photography and Imaging program, with its emphasis on technical and professional skills along with creative expression. Continue reading
“January, Julia F. Parker, Yosemite Visitors Center”
Photo by Jonas Kulikauskas.
Providing a top notch education in art and design requires an intricate ecosystem comprised of state of the art facilities, a driven and talented student body and, perhaps most of all, a broad body of skilled faculty members committed to engaging students and their own creative and professional practices in equal measure.
It’s no accident that Art Center’s faculty is comprised of working artists and designers, many of whom are game changing iconoclasts and leading innovators in their fields. In addition to being steeped in the most up-to-date best practices in any given field, Art Center’s faculty members offer incentive to students to continue pursuing their creative dreams.
But maintaining dual careers requires a surplus of passion and resources, both temporal and financial. To that end, Art Center’s Faculty Council has has marshaled funds to help out with the latter in the form of its annual Faculty Enrichment Grant program, which distributes up to $40,000 to faculty members actively pursuing projects “related to creative or professional development.”
Last month, the Council announced the seven recipients of its 2014 Faculty Enrichment Grants. Each will receive an award of up to $5000 to support their work outside of the classroom. The Dotted Line reached out to each of the seven recipients to learn more about their award winning projects. Here’s what we learned:
