Tag Archives: UCLA

From punk rock cabaret to Cindy Sherman: Dahlia Schweitzer’s compelling narrative extends well beyond the page

Alumna Dahlia Schweitzer, with her new book, Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer: Another Kind of Monster (Intellect, 2014). Photo by Ana J.

Alumna Dahlia Schweitzer, with her new book, Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer: Another Kind of Monster (Intellect, 2014). Photo by Ana J.

Peripatetic is one sure way to describe Dahlia Schweitzer. The Baton Rouge-born novelist, chanteuse and performance artist studied at Wesleyan University, lived and worked in New York and Berlin, and landed in Los Angeles some eight years ago to begin her studies at Art Center. “I was traveling around Europe doing a Dietrich-inspired punk rock cabaret show, but decided I wanted to focus more on my writing,” she recalls. “I was having a very tough time finding a graduate program that felt like a good fit. But Art Center faculty definitely understood and appreciated my interdisciplinary approach.”

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Art Center-UCLA partnership explores the next frontier of healthcare design innovation

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This is the second in a two-part series on a joint pilot program between Art Center and the UCLA Business of Science Center focusing on the role of design in the field of health and wellness. Art Center offers special thanks to the Knapp Foundation (Betsy and Bud Knapp) for providing generous support to launch the program.

A stethoscope cover that prevents the spread of disease. A non-invasive “tuning fork” that helps improve hip implant fit by aiding surgeons with feedback during hip replacement surgery. A sensor that can detect lung cancer biomarkers in the breath of high-risk patients.

These are a few of the innovations developed by students in Jeff Higashi’s recent Advancing Bioengineering Innovations course—and prime examples of what can be accomplished when designers are included in the early stages of developing health and wellness products.

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Venice Family Clinic gives Art Center designers a seat at the table for new pediatric center

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“Design has an enormous and growing role to play in developing health and wellness products and spaces,” says Art Center Product Design faculty member Jeff Higashi.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that when the Venice Family Clinic, an affiliate of UCLA Health System, was preparing to launch its new Children’s Health and Wellness Center, organizers made sure that designers—including 12 Art Center students—had seats at the table. Continue reading →

Life after ICFF: Q&A with Environmental Design alum Chris Adamick

 

Chris Adamick

Chris Adamick

Chris Adamick (BA 07 Environmental Design) is the manager of Global Marketing, Store Design at Gap’s New York headquarters. He is an award-winning designer whose multidisciplinary, large- and small-scale work includes commercial, civic, educational and residential design. Adamick maintains his own studio, Chris Adamick Design, for independent projects, and has collaborated with Bernhardt Design, among others. Bernhardt honored Adamick in 2011 by featuring his Audio chair in a retrospective at ICFF of its ongoing interdisciplinary studio with Art Center College of Design, which educates students in the process of designing products for production in the commercial market. Today Adamick’s client list includes Bed Bath and Beyond, W Hotels, Disney and Haworth and he has held prominent positions at Pentagram, Rios Clementi Hale Studios, ByLissoni, Studio Gaia and other high-profile companies.

The Dotted Line: What drew you to Art Center?

Chris Adamick: Jorge Pardo [the noted sculptor and an Art Center graduate], one of my professors at UCLA, opened my mind to art existing in the world beyond fine art—in architecture, in product design. He suggested Art Center. I looked at the Fine Art program first and it was stellar, just stellar, but when I saw the design work going on there [at the College], I instantly knew that was what I wanted to do.

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Faculty member, Sean Adams awarded the AIGA Medal, design’s equivalent of the Best Picture Oscar

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Art Center faculty member Sean Adams and his partner Noreen Morioka are among a special class of design leaders being awarded the prestigious AIGA Medal–the highest honor of the design profession–by the noted professional association, which represents and advocates for a broad range of design disciplines. The AIGA Medal has been awarded since 1920 to individuals in recognition of their exceptional achievements, service and contributions to the field of communication design.

Sean Adams is a partner with Noreen Morioka at AdamsMorioka. Since 1994, AdamsMorioka’s driving words of “clarity, purity and resonance” have guided their work. Among the projects showcased by AIGA in announcing the award, is work for clients such as UCLA, The Getty Center, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Nickelodeon, Annenberg Foundation and Sundance Institute.

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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.

Required reading: Digital_Humanities, by Media Design Practices Chair Anne Burdick

burdickWhat are the digital humanities? That’s the question posed in a new scholarly book co-authored by Anne Burdick, chair of the Graduate Media Design Department. And judging by the critical response—from movers and shakers in the field like Lev Manovich, Dan Cohen and Alan Liu—it’s a question many want answered.

In Digital_Humanities (MIT Press), Burdick—along with metaLAB (at) Harvard’s Jeffrey Schnapp and UCLA’s Johanna Drucker, Peter Lunenfeld and Todd Presner—explores geospatial analysis, data mining, corpus linguistics and other non-traditional modes of humanistic inquiry. Writing for Leonardo Reviews, media artist and scholar Dene Grigar urges everyone to read Digital_Humanities, no matter their academic discipline, as it describes an area of research that has “the potential of transforming higher education.” And in the Italian edition of WIRED, Matteo “Mister Bit” Bittanti names the book one of his best of 2012 and recommends that every Italian university student add it to their reading list. A free Open Access edition of the book is available at the MIT Press website.

This story originally appeared in Art Center’s Dot magazine. Check out Dot online for more news of alumni and faculty exhibitions, products, books, films and social impact.

Tonight: Art Center Explores Brave New WORLDS

Astronomer Mike Brown's "How I Killed Pluto" (left); Detail of Semiconductor's "Black Rain" (right)

For the past decade, Art Center’s Williamson Gallery has produced a series of exhibitions superimposing art and science, domains traditionally thought of as existing on opposite ends of a spectrum. The latest project in this continuing series is WORLDS, a medley of objects, images, sounds and videos that explore celestial phenomena.

The exhibition kicks off tonight with a presentation by Caltech’s Mike Brown (8:00 p.m., Ahmanson Auditorium). A professor of planetary astronomy and the author of How I Killed Pluto And Why It Had It Coming, Brown will speak on “Worlds of Fire, Worlds of Water” as part of Pasadena’s Art and Science (AxS) Festival 2011: Fire and Water.

Following Brown’s presentation, stay for the WORLDS opening reception (9:00 p.m., Williamson Gallery), where you can enjoy a glass of wine, groove to the sounds of Opera Posse, and see incredible work on display by such artists as Jonathan Cecil, Rebeca Méndez and Semiconductor, as well as objects on loan from The Huntington Library’s Rare Book Collection, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and The UCLA Meteroite Collection.

This event is free; RSVP to events@artcenter.edu.