Tag Archives: photography

How Photo student Dave Koga learned to listen to his intuition

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by Dave Koga

The best way to understand the essence of Art Center is by paying a visit to Pasadena and getting to know some students. The quickest (and cheapest) route, however, is to travel to our recently refreshed “Students” page where you’ll find a mosaic of Polaroid-style snapshots of unfamiliar faces, containing inspiring Q&As about each student’s creative journey.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be rolling out a series of deeper dives into the creative lives of those profile subjects, with highlights from the body of work they’ve produced at Art Center. Today’s installment looks at the winding path that landed Dave Koga in the Photography and Imaging Department of Art Center. 

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Self-portrait by Dave Koga

Why did you choose Art Center? I came to Art Center after leaving a 10-year career in the entertainment industry, where I served as a TV development executive. I have a prior degree in history and art history from UCLA. I have several friends who graduated from Art Center around the time that I graduated from UCLA.  I’ve spoken to them a lot over the years about the Art Center curriculum and the quality of instruction and their collective feedback has been extremely positive. When I made the decision to change careers, Art Center was naturally my first choice.

Biggest creative challenge/breakthrough you’ve faced while at Art Center?
I’ve always been a rational and somewhat linear thinker who relied on logic and intellectual analysis to solve problems. While this mode of thinking served me well in the corporate world, I found it often got in the way of the creative process when I started at Art Center. Learning how to rely more on intuition and observation when faced with creative problems was the biggest challenge and/or breakthrough I’ve faced while at Art Center. I credit two instructors—Ken Merfeld and Mark Wyse—with helping teaching me how to trust and rely upon the intuitive side of my brain. [For more on this, check out Wyse’s essay on repression and creativity.]

What are your most reliable and/or unlikely sources of inspiration?
Inspiration comes in all forms, shapes and sizes. That said, I find that my most reliable sources of inspiration tend to be music, poetry, painting and graphic design.

Who are your biggest creative influences?
My biggest creative influences include Gerhard Richter, Mark Rothko, Ellsworth Kelly, Dan Winters, William Eggleston, Miles Davis and Frank O’Hara.

What do you hope to do when you graduate from Art Center?
My goal upon graduating from Art Center is to build a successful commercial architectural photography business that will generate enough income to fund my gallery-oriented personal projects.

Photo alum captures veterans’ emotional deployment to WWII Memorial

Millions of people regularly travel to Washington D.C. to see the National WWII Memorial. And yet, sadly, many of the veterans this memorial celebrates don’t have resources to make that trip. I feel strongly that they should have the opportunity to experience the respect and admiration embodied in the memorial. 

So, with that in mind, in April of 2012, I got involved in Honor Flight, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing veterans to visit the WWII memorial in Washington D.C. Fortunately, I was able to fill a need for a photographer to capture these men and women during their journey to the nation’s capital to glimpse this monumental tribute to their service.

My grandfather was a WWII veteran, and I wanted to do something and give back to the Greatest Generation. This desire became even more urgent after I learned that WWII veterans are dying at a rate of more than 600 per day; and that there are veterans on Honor Flight’s waiting lists who have passed before they were chosen to go.  The organization’s director told me that Honor Flight Kern County’s inaugural trip would launch the following month, on May 25, 2012 (Memorial Weekend).

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2013 Great Teacher Award-winner, Richard Keyes, delivers graduation address. Student-drawn allegory included.

 

Illustration by Katia Grifols

Illustration by Katia Grifols

Richard Keyes didn’t stay long the first time he took the stage at Art Center’s 2013 Summer commencement ceremony to accept the Great Teacher Award. That’s likely because he knew he’d return shortly in his other capacity, as the event’s keynote speaker. Keyes, who is both an alum (Graphic Design ’87) and beloved faculty member has made a habit of multitasking throughout his career at Art Center, where he straddles five departments — Graduate Industrial Design, Entertainment Design, Photography, Integrated Studies and Art Center at Night. For insight into why he received the highest honor awarded by Art Center students, look no further than the speech itself (posted in its entirety below), which culminates in a moving fable, accompanied by a slideshow of images hand-drawn by student, Katia Grifols, who has been Keyes’ T.A. for three terms.   

You have reason to expect a celebrity sending you off into the world today, but you are getting a teacher. Conversely, when I came to Art Center 30 years ago I occasionally expected teachers and got celebrities, so I hope I can redress the balance somewhat. But not before I state how much I have learned from you, quite probably the most impressive student body in the creative world.

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Trayvon Martin protest: Photography student Kit Sinclair embeds himself on the front lines of the battle for justice

We first glimpsed the images above by chance, as Photography instructor Tony Di Zinno and student Kit Sinclair were reviewing the project in the cafeteria at South Campus. We were immediately struck by the bold and viscerally affecting quality of the shots Sinclair captured while attending a protest the night the Trayvon Martin verdict was rendered. Sinclair had been working closely with Di Zinno, a renowned sports photographer, in a class entitled, Project Photo: Sport, which focuses on navigating the intersection of sports, politics and art. “The culture of sport relates to conflict in many ways,” explains Di Zinno. “The Olympics are a thing of beauty – but also form of surrogate warfare. In this class we reflect on how examples of how sport acts as a mirror in reflecting ourselves as societies. We examine seminal figures like Mohammed Ali whose iconic LIFE magazine image by civil rights photographer Flip Schulke is featured on the profile of our Art Center-Sports class facebook page. Kit’s protest coverage was squarely in the tradition of the concerned photographer. We see in his images moments reminiscent of Sixties symbols of protest – which led in turn to class discussions of  visual literacy and image as art reference in terms of a so-called ‘black power’ salute by Tommy Smith and John Carlos on the 200m medal stand in the ’68 Olympic games.” 

“The larger point to me as an educator is to support these emerging artists,” continues Di Zinno, who co-teaches the class with Andy Bernstein, who shoots for the NBA and NHL. We are reminded by Kit’s work not to be too isolated in our silos of higher learning. But to realize that we are all indeed citizens and participants… and to learn to apply critical thinking. To dare and go see for ourselves. To take time to consider and deliberate in how to apply what we learned. Perhaps,most importantly – to share what we did learn with others.”

In the above gallery and blog post below, Sinclair incorporates each of these strands into a series of arresting photographs, that simultaneously call out for our attention and compassion.

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Three Boys from Pasadena Return Home to Art Center

UPDATE:  You’re invited to the closing party Thursday, Aug. 23 at 7 p.m.
Last chance to see exhibition honoring Helmut Newton

Join the photographers, models and friends for a celebration of this critically praised exhibition featuring the photography of three Art Center alumni who were mentored by Helmut Newton.  Please RSVP to suzanne.valles@artcenter.edu or call 626.396.2368 for more information.

On June 14, a packed house celebrated the Williamson Gallery’s opening reception for Three Boys from Pasadena, an exhibition of work by Art Center photography alums Mark Arbeit, George Holz, and Just Loomis.  The exhibit is accompanied by a tribute to famed fashion photographer Helmut Newton, with whom Mark, George, and Just each maintained a close and lifelong friendship after working for him early in their careers. In June 2010, Three Boys from Pasadena premiered at the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin. The companion book, with a foreword by June Newton, was published in France and is available in the Art Center student store. The Williamson Gallery exhibit is an expanded version of the original show, featuring an additional seventy prints, and will continue through August 26, 2012.

This exhibition is a homecoming, arriving back at the site of the first meeting between the Boys and Helmut. The exhibit consists of each photographer’s individual work, as well as several vitrines of memorabilia, consisting of snapshots, handwritten notes, journal pages, contact sheets, and other souvenirs. In the sensual, striking fashion editorial and portraiture by Mark, George and Just, a direct line of influence can be traced from Newton to his apprentices, while at the same time each of the three photographers’ body of work shows a departure from Newton’s strong influence and the development of a unique and independent voice.

Listen to the 3 Boys from Pasadena panel discussion

Los Angeles Times’ Art Critic Christopher Knight Raves About History of Space Photography Exhibition

infrared photograph of Helix Nebula

An infrared photograph of Helix Nebula in deep space, part of "The History of Space Photography" at Art Center College. (Art Center College of Design / September 21, 2011)

May 1 “Space Stories” Reception and Tour Open to Public

“Spectacular” is how Los Angeles Times’ Art Critic Christopher Knight describes some of the pictures in the Williamson Gallery exhibition “The History of Space Photography” on campus through May 6.

To create the dazzling collection of images, guest curator Jay Belloli worked with several consultants from the nearby Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), founded at Caltech and affiliated with NASA. The exhibit features 150 noteworthy images, most from the last 50 years of space exploration plus video projections of various celestial animations.

“The sheer grandeur of these scientific images, the awe inspiring beauty of them, is what reminds us of art,” says Williamson Gallery Director Stephen Nowlin who is featured in an NBC TV news story about the show. Also featured in the piece is Dr. Randii Wessen, a JPL space scientist and an advisor to Belloli who will also be available at the May 1 event.

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