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ART CENTER NEWSWIRE - November 20, 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 twice a month. To report news or obtain more information, contact Jan Kingaard, tel. (626) 396-2394, fax (626) 683-9233.


GREAT MINDS

The Toyota Motor Corporation Endowed Lecture Series hosted alum and documentary photographer Penny Diane Wolin. She discussed the responsibilities of the documentary photographer, funding photography projects and the process of publishing a photography book.

Art Center's Senior Designer Denise Gonzales Crisp and Illustration graduate made a presentation of her work (including the Art Center catalog) to the Contemporary Graphic Designers class.


CAMPUS

Industrial Laser Solutions for Manufacturing Instructor Bob Schureman presents the advantages of using low-cost laser marking and cutting systems in comparison with more expensive rapid prototyping processes in creating 3D prototypes. He explains how Art Center's curriculum focuses students to step into the role as responsible leaders in the world of art and design and the college's emphasis in "engaging students directly in professional design activity." This translates into providing them with the best in equipment in order to produce professional looking prototypes. Recognizing that lasers are no replacement for rapid prototyping, Bob offers that lasers provide a faster and less expensive method to visualize concepts in the early phases of the design process.

Los Angeles Times Art Center College of Design hosted a panel discussion and an opening reception for Air Raids, a citywide festival of experimental, documentary and new media works by more than 100 artists.


ADVERTISING

CMYK The work of packaging students Gary Williams and Bryan Ranzenberger and photography student Jonah Light was featured. Alum and Board of Trustees member Rick Boyko was showcased.


DIGITAL MEDIA

Chronicle of Higher Education Gravity need not apply. In today's virtual worlds, where a participant can explore a virtual environment on wings if they so choose, the use of virtual reality as a new tool in distance education is becoming more accepted. Says Margaret Corbit of Cornell University, "It adds a dimension to social communication online." Art Center digital media instructor Michael Heim holds a continuing lecture series in a virtual world. "It's somewhere between a lecture symposium and a party," he says. "The speaker will be making points that will be supported and made memorable by the virtual environment (created for that topic). The visuals imprint the message on the brain." Critics however disagree on the value of teaching in a virtual environment. "For discussion of English lit," says Philip l. Bereano, professor of technical communication at the University of Washington, "you don't need a 3D program."


ENVIRONMENTAL

Chicago Tribune A sofa with a citrus green Ultrasuede L-shape and exposed cherry wood and cutout back was one of the favored looks at the recent International Home Furnishing Market in High Point, North Carolina. Designed by Art Center instructor David Mocarski for Artedi Inc., the piece caught the attention of buyers for Casa Elegante, a furniture store that will be selling the design by spring 2001. "The open carved woodwork on the back is so that the form is not too solid and has a lighter feel," says Mocarski. His design was in one of the 2600 furniture showrooms seen by approximately 80,000 buyers, designers, journalists and manufacturers from around the world who attended the show.

Architecture More and more architects, including Frank Gehry, are reaching a crossroad of conceiving a building that traditional construction methods and materials cannot support. Whether their vision is produced by hand or on a computer screen, the issue of buildability is bringing into question the credibility of the new complexities. As is seen in Gustav Eiffel's tower and Gehry's Guggenheim in Bilbao, the ideal that is common to most designers is the conflation of structure and skin into the same complex surfaces, creating self-supporting forms that require no armature. "There's a lot of experience in airplane materials and technology in how to deal with gravity and structure in a skin," says Michael Dobry, coordinator of the Graduate Industrial Design Program at Art Center. "In a plane, the material is there to get lift rather than stability, so it's very lightweight. In a building, it would be interesting to have a building whose live weight is greater than its dead weight." The idea of a structural skin not only implies a new material, but geometries such as curves and folds that would enable a continuous skin to act structurally, obviating an independent static system: The skin alone does the heavy lifting. Architects could build many more exciting buildings, but complex surfaces with integrated structures promise a quantum leap of engineering elegance and intellectual satisfaction.


FILM

San Jose "Joey" Awards The awards program sponsored by the San Jose Convention & Visitors Bureau and the San Jose Film/Video Commission, named Director Ken Saba, cinematographer Irene Lopez, and editor Vee Vitanza as finalists for two commercials. The Award of Excellence nominations are for their student work on ESPN's "Mama's Boy" and

London International Advertising Awards Director Ken Saba, cinematographer Irene Lopez, and editor Vee Vitanza are finalists in the Television/Cinema Commercials, Low Budget Category for their commercials, ESPN's "Mama's Boy" and THX Sound System's "Audience Listening."

Berkeley Video/Film Festival Director Ken Saba, cinematographer Irene Lopez, and editor Vee Vitanza won two Grand Festival Awards in Commercials Category for ESPN's "Mama's Boy" and THX Sound Systems' "Audience Listening," at the festival, sponsored by the East Bay Media Center.


GRAPHICS/PACKAGING

Western Art Directors Club Faculty member Doyald Young won a silver for his book, Fonts & Logos. Doyald teaches lettering, logotype designer and the fundamentals of typography at Art Center. He as designed fonts and logos for a wide array of international clients, including The Annual Academy of Country Music Awards, California Institute of Technology, k.d. lang, Bette Midler, UCLA and The Tony Awards. The Annual West Coast Show is a juried competition of design, illustration and photography and it attracted over 1,000 entries from all over the West. Only 32 medals were awarded.


ILLUSTRATION

(Glendale) News Press Graduate George O. Hanft was the guest artist for a meeting of the Verdugo Hills Art Association. Throughout his 40-year career, he worked as an art director in New York City and Los Angeles and owned Hanft Advertising Design. He also was an instructor at Art Center for 17 years.

(San Luis Obispo) Telegram Tribune-Award-winning artist and alum Robert Reynolds presents a visual documentary of the central coast in his work. For "La Cuesta Valley," he used watercolors to recreate the trees and sloping hillsides of the peaceful basin. "He's documenting what we have. He's actually recording for history what our environment looks like," says Gail Johnson, owner of Johnson Gallery in San Luis Obispo, where many of Reynolds' paintings are on display. His work has also been featured in numerous magazines.


PRODUCT

Supply House Times, Contractor Price Pfister named the top three winners of its "Pfaucet of the Pfuture" contest, conducted as part of its 90th anniversary celebration. Art Center students Silas Beebe and Shane Koo took first and third places respectively. Beebe's design "Water Go" is a bathtub faucet and handle with an organic modernism, meaning every element of the design is derived from nature. Koo's "Chameleon" is a temperature sensitive bathroom faucet that visually notifies the user how hot or cold the water is and provides a cascade of water from a faucet head resembling a waterfall.

Brandweek, Mediaweek Pasadena-based RocketPod, a technology and design firm that specializes in developing next generation consumer electronics products, will introduce the first in a series of modular Internet-enabled appliances that will bring consumers closer to an integrated entertainment and advertising platform. The MP3Pod, the LaunchPod and the ViewPod will use a proprietary operating system and graphical user interface. According to CEO and Art Center alum David Roth, "Technology had brought us to a point where information can be easily shared and manipulated as digital data. The next step in sharing that process was to create a system that integrates all electrical devices."


TRANSPORTATION

Autozine Automakers are hungry for new ideas, new ways of thinking and new designs that push the envelope in personal transportation. With the "blue-sky" conceptual approach that allows Art Center students to become tuned in with automotive design trends, it's no wonder that major automotive manufacturers are supporters of the college's transportation program.


STUDENT GALLERY

The Tribune Ultra-modern barbecues, car designs, and reconfigured seating for a Boeing jet are just some of the exhibits that visitors will see through December 15 at Art Center College of Design's Student Gallery. Though often overlooked as one of the "must see" spots of Pasadena, the work of students give visitors interesting examples of photography, package design, brochures and even furniture.

San Marino Tribune and San Marino News Five reputable art spots were available to tour at no cost from 6:00 to 10:00 pm on October 6. The fourth Pasadena Art Night, sponsored by the city of Pasadena and participating art institutions, gave visitors a gratis view of a variety of exhibits. Art Center's Student Gallery was one of the venues that opened its doors to feature some of tomorrow's top artists, illustrators, car designers and filmmakers.


WILLIAMSON GALLERY

Arcadia Weekly collaborative project of arts and sciences is under way in the San Gabriel Valley. "The Universe" showcases a variety of artistic endeavors and scientific discovery that originated in the San Gabriel Valley and will feature eight different venues. The festival is a collaboration of eight organizations in Pasadena presenting concerts, visual arts exhibits, symposia and a film series for the coming season. Art Center's contribution is "Russell Crotty: The Universe From My Backyard" an upcoming exhibit at the Williamson Gallery that will include an installation of suspended spheres and a group of drawings of cosmic bodies, along with astronomical notations, sketches and observations.