Campus News |
ART CENTER NEWSWIRE - January 17, 2000
PASADENA, CA, USA | To keep abreast of the exciting and innovative ideas, people and projects at Art Center College of Design, the media and general public can subscribe to Art Center's news digest by sending a blank email to: newswire-on@lists.artcenter.edu. We highlight some of the newsmakers in our Art Center community on the first and third Monday every month. To report news or obtain more information, contact Jan Kingaard, tel. 626-396-2394, fax 626-683-9233.
ART CENTER COLLEGE OF DESIGN
Los Angeles Times Editorial
The crown jewel of the educational structure of America's industrial design mecca is Art Center College of Design. Frank Saucedo, picked to head the new GM design studio in North Hollywood, is a graduate of the college, one of hundreds of alumni in similar positions. Beyond first-class training, designers are attracted to the L.A. area by the diversity of the population living in a concentrated area and providing a microcosm of the entire country, a youthful culture and other intangibles that count for so much in a creative profession. With a nationwide "Los Angeles by Design" campaign to be kicked off later this spring, the L.A. Economic Development Corp. hopes to expand the industry even further and bring in more design business. It also wants to stimulate the teaching of arts at area high schools by offering scholarships to design schools. Clearly, industrial design is an important element of the city's economic mosaic. Together with the high-tech and entertainment industries, it fosters the status of Los Angeles as America's trendsetter.
Pasadena Star NewsOne of Pasadena's priorities, according to Mayor Bill Bogaard, is to find a way to keep Art Center from moving its campus, possibly to Los Angeles. He said that the city is committed to accommodating the future needs of the college, provided neighbors' concerns about proposed campus expansion are adequately addressed. The mayor is convinced that the community has everything Art Center needs to prosper in the 21st century, and he hopes that the city will be able to convince college officials who are expected to decide the future location in six months.
Graphis Annual 2000The Art Center Website is featured in the premiere international showcase for the best work produced in all areas of contemporary graphic. The notable design team consisted of alumni Francesca Murphy, Web designer; Steve Heller, photographer; and Ben Curtis, JavaScript specialist.
DIGITAL MEDIA
Digital Media Department Chair Andy Davidson announced that Allison Goodman will be directing special educational programs in the Digital Media Department. These include the current Digital Media Design Research Program for faculty grants, the digitalDesigners@work lecture series, the Digital Media Visiting Artist Program. She also helps coordinate the MFA program in new media. Goodman has been a member of Art Center's faculty since 1990 and has taught students in the graphic design, industrial design, advertising, environmental design and photography departments. She received her BFA in Design from Carnegie-Mellon University and her MFA in Graphic Design from Art Center. In her professional life, she has been an art director for the Offices of Richard Saul Wurman, and for Sussman/Prejza & Co., Inc. She was also Associate Editor for the Rockport publication, New Design: Los Angeles.
ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN
Dream Theater
Art Center instructor and LA-based environmental, furniture and set designer, Lisa Krohn and her student-collaborator Ichelle Spitzig developed the set for a month-long series of performances at the Dream Theater and multicultural center in Los Angeles entitled "Living Goddess." They have created a cocoon of white, 4-way-stretch Lycra surrounding a series of steel frames representing both female and male Tantric genital symbols: yoni and lingam. These cross-gendered frames combine the mandorla or nimbus surrounding traditional depictions of saints and divine beings with contemporary images like go-go cages and stationary exercise equipment. Like mannequins, they are adorned and decorated with everything from more Lycra to light, fire, candles, flowers, ribbons, and even a tree costume. Performances run through February 12th and will benefit Laura's House Battered Women's Shelter in San Clemente, California. The sets are featured on the Web at Living Goddess.
FINE ART & ILLUSTRATION
Garden Design
For the Germinators, members of America's most colorful gardening club, creativity isn't restricted to canvas and the palette is endless. Art Center faculty member Laura Cooper is one of a tribe of 11 young LA artists in the group. Photos of her collages illustrate how she plans her classic English garden that is characterized as loose, playful and exuberant.
Recovery2KArt Center alumni work will be featured at Three Thirty, Inc. in Culver City from January 24-28. Fine artists Nolina Burge, Juliet Deacon Dayday, Kiyoshi Nakazawa and students Carrie Lee, and Rohit Fernandez will be featured in a show organized by graduates Marilyn Joslyn and Matthew Cogswell, Juli Farris, and faculty member Mike Kelley.
Norwalk Cultural CenterArt Center graduates Marilyn Joslyn and Matt Cogswell, co-founders of OtherWorld Press, will be guest artists to show children how to create special books from concept to storytelling, illustration and bookmaking.
Pasadena Star NewsFine arts major Meredith Jennings-Offen created the comic strip "Crits" and daubed her creatures larger than life-size on the Del Mar graduate studio wall, attracting the attention of editor Lawrence Wilson and passers-by. Fresh from a yearlong trip around the world funded through a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, the graduate student is planning a career as a cartoonist.
Daily JournalMendocino County artist Marjo Wilson's innate talent and unique vision were refined at Art Center, resulting in a distinctive blend of contemporary design based on classic themes. Her "ranch art" hangs in the corporate collections of Brown-Forman in Kentucky, Fetzer Winery in San Rafael, and in private collections across the country. She is noted for her uncanny ability to convey on canvas an animal's spirit and the beauty of the California landscape.
Pasadena WeeklyIn artist Ray Bustos' universe, the animals roam, especially bison and anything else in the flock or herd. Bustos juxtaposes painting and collage to create his brand of surreal-realism, a term he came up with to describe his style, and photo realism of the 1970s. This union of fact and fantasy is an attempt to create wonderful, positive landscapes that often only exist in dreams. Bustos is an instructor at Art Center.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Photo Insider
Even if you don't know his name, you know alumnus Steve Hellerstein's work. A world-class advertising shooter, his client list comprises the crème de la crème of sophisticated businessesIBM, Intel, Sony, The Wall Street Journal, Bell Atlantic, J&B Scotch, Nikon, Polaroid, Lancôme, Sprint, Armani, Volvo, Visa, United Airlines, Compaq and Mercedesto name a few. One of the things interviewer Howard Millard found most striking about Steve is his low key, soft-spoken and modest personal stylean anomaly in an arena of super egos.Hellerstein's studio is a breathtaking, palatial 12,000square-foot space in lower Manhattan. He originally studied to be a doctor, but was getting no satisfaction from it. When a friend asked him to shoot an Eagles concert because a photographer had fallen ill, Hellerstein took the job. The experience made his realize that photography was a terrific vehicle to access things. So, he researched photo schools and decided that Art Center was for him. He pulled up his roots in Boulder, Colorado, and moved to L.A., having no idea how difficult the program was going to be. Upon graduation, he sold his car and moved to New York where he freelance assisted, learned a lot about the business, and went on to make his mark doing high-end advertising photography and problem solving.
TRANSPORTATION DESIGN
Business Development Outlook
Because of Art Center, five Japanese and four European auto firms have design studios in Los Angeles County, as well as the U.S. "big three." In engineering design, 33 of the top 500 design firms are located in the Los Angeles area. The motion picture and TV production industry employs more than 224,000 people and generates receipts of $25 billion. Art Center is one of 215 institutions of higher learning in the region.
Los Angeles TimesThe world's largest automakerwho gave the world tail fins, the Chevy Corvette and stylistic standouts such as the Cadillac Evoq concept caris about to rejoin the Southern California design crowd. Art Center alumnus, GM design chief, Wayne Cherry said GM is entering the design wars in full force, with a dozen concept vehicles for its various brands to be unveiled over the next few months at major auto shows in Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago and New York. Sheryl Garrett, resource manager for creative designers at GM, said that they are aggressively looking for talent and that the area is an important one for diversifying its talent pool. They chose North Hollywood because of its location, near the entertainment businesses. They want to be close to the infrastructure it needs for design, model building, electronics and computer animation skills. Ron Hill, chairman of Art Center's transportation design program and a former top GM designer, believes that it is vital for car companies to be here and to understand how this very competitive and important market works. Including independent studios that often work for major automakers, there are at least 20 automotive design centers in Southern California. Art Center is considered one of the world's premier automotive design schools. The new GM studio will be directed by Frank Saucedo, a 38year-old Art Center graduate fired away from Volkswagen's U.S. design center.
Pasadena Star NewsSouthern California has long been a center for auto design. The region is home to independent contractors and design studios operated by automakers such as Ford, Volvo, Daimler-Chrysler and Volkswagen, Mazda, Honda, Toyota, Nissan and Mitsubishi. Many of the designers working in those studios are graduates of Art Center. GM's new design studio will have 30 or so employees, including computer-assisted design experts recruited from Hollywood animation and special effects companies. GM plans to use computer techniques such as three-dimensional imaging to replace tedious clay modeling n the early stages of new car design. The goal is to reduce the time needed to bring a new car to market from about four years to two.
Los Angeles TimesManufacturers, retailers, the mass media and Madison Avenue may lay claim to igniting the consumer revolution but, truth be told, it's being driven by consumers who behave like a shopping Energizer Bunny. Consumer cravings extend far beyond Pashmina shawls, Pokemon toys and Palm Pilots. Consumer confidence has been fueling the spending spree. Automobiles, perhaps better than any other product, provide insights into the consumer psyche. "During the past decade, cars have changed from extravagant, overblown kinds of cultural icons to more conservative yet increasingly complex vehicles," said Ron Hill, who designed cars during the 1950s and now is head of the transportation design department at Art Center.