Art Center College of Design — Summer 2013 Summer 2013 — Artcenter.Edu/Dot
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Art Center College of Design — SUMMER 2013 SUMMER 2013 — artcenter.edu/dot “Whitewash is Los Angeles at its most stripped down and honest,” writes Nicholas Alan Cope PHOT 07 in his new book of nearly 70 black-and-white photographs. 02 28 Born in Takoma Park, Md., Cope around the world teaching creativity first picked up the camera as a The latest news in art and design—products, books, Step inside the classroom for Art Center’s intensive teenager. After moving to L.A. films, exhibitions and social impact—from Art Center Creative Strategies class. Applying big ideas to simple and becoming a student at Art alumni and faculty. materials, students learn to break patterns, reframe Center College of Design, he problems and apply new conceptual thinking to their began photographing local work. architecture as a side project. That project steadily expanded and he wrote about it as part of an independent study, working with Photography and Imaging instructor David Strick. “I had maybe 20 images by the time I 08 transform, transcend, graduated,” says Cope, “quite a few of which are included in the transmedia book.” His work has been featured In the emergent field of transmedia design, Art Center in W, Interview, Dwell and New is leading the way. Upper-term students and faculty York magazines, among others, actively push boundaries in an experimental curricu- and he was selected for Photo lum that uses everything from data visualization to District News’ “30 in 2011.” Today spatial experiences to create conceptually intricate Cope splits his time between a and emotionally charged messages. growing commercial practice and personal projects, often col- laborating with fellow Art Center alumnus Dustin Edward Arnold, with whom he shares an L.A. studio. Incorporating sculptural garments of their own design, Cope and Arnold teamed up to create the evocative 2011 series Vedas (back cover). Read more about Whitewash on p. 2. 34 dot news Campus News: The Parson Foundation Grant and major gifts support South Campus expansion; Berlin hub expands; Designmatters student wins memorial design competition; Transportation students impress EcoMotors and Bill Gates; Dieter Rams addresses Spring 2013 grads; Alyce de Roulet Williamson named Outstanding Philanthropist. 15 39 annual report spotted There’s a growing awareness across the country of the Who’s who? A photo round-up of recent events both on power of art and design to invigorate our economy, and off campus. and Art Center’s educational model emphasizes the very qualities today’s business leaders seek. College donors are taking notice—helping to make 2012 a year of pace-setting growth at Art Center. EXPERIENCE DOT ONLINE! ARTCENTER.EDU/DOT •2 SUMMER 2013 — artcenter.edu/dot AROUND THE WORLD •3 Home Is Where the Art Is around Neil Shigley ILLU 86 For the portrait artist, block printing is a particularly labor- intensive form. For San Diego-based Neil Shigley, it is a the labor of love. Shigley, who documents his adopted city’s homeless in search of “the most honest portrayal that I can get,” is among 48 artists whose work is included in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, a juried exhibition world at The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery on view through February 23, 2014. Shigley’s portrait chosen for the exhibition and published in the accompanying catalog features the smiling, deeply etched face of a man named Michael, or “Pastor Shelby” as he liked to be called. When they met, Pastor Shelby was using a branch to sweep the sidewalk where he lived. The two sat down together and talked, then Shigley snapped a few unposed photos. Shigley was impressed with the man’s confidence and above left Designing for a Demi-god Digital Humanities, enthusiasm, and with his commitment to helping others book co-authored by despite his own situation living on the streets for many years. Patti Podesta GRADUATE ART FACULTY Anne Burdick. After completing the four-feet-tall woodblock portrait back above right & below in his studio, Shigley returned to look for Pastor Shelby to Art museums aren’t only about the art. That immediately Views of Kubrick show it to him, but never found him. If you can’t make it becomes clear as film and television production designer installation at LACMA, designed by Patti to D.C., online visitors are invited to vote for their favorite Patti Podesta talks about her design of Kubrick at the Los Podesta. pieces as part of the People’s Choice Award. —SS Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Podesta, an inte- npg.si.edu gral part of Art Center’s Grad Art faculty for more than 20 years, explains that her exhibition design emerged from Oh, the Digital Humanities! “the important notion that one is not seeing the films, which are the art. However, across images and intimate readings, Anne Burdick GRADUATE MEDIA DESIGN CHAIR via fracturing and intensification, through memory and association, one can arrive at a kind of Kubrickian perception. What are the digital humanities? That’s the question posed This is the kind of activity museums contextualize so well in a new scholarly book co-authored by Anne Burdick, chair and that I wanted to provide for my subject.” Featuring of the Graduate Media Design Department. And judging more than 600 objects, the Stanley Kubrick retrospective above by the critical response—from movers and shakers in the was originally organized by the Deutsches Filmmuseum North Hollywood, Everything Under the Sun January 2007, field like Lev Manovich, Dan Cohen and Alan Liu—it’s a in Frankfurt, Germany, in collaboration with the director’s photograph from the Nicholas Alan Cope PHOT 07 question many want answered. In Digital_Humanities (MIT estate. For its U.S. premiere, co-presented by LACMA and book Whitewash by Nicholas Alan Cope. Press), Burdick— along with metaLAB (at) Harvard’s Jeffrey the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Nov. 2012 Nicholas Alan Cope sees Los Angeles as a city of contrasts, Schnapp and UCLA’s Johanna Drucker, Peter Lunenfeld through June 2013, Podesta completely reframed the show. right with “dueling public narratives of glamour and cynicism” and Todd Presner— explores geospatial analysis, data Winning New York Times raves for her “stunning installation” Michael 67 (Pastor Shelby), block print legible in its stark, modern architecture. In Whitewash, his mining, corpus linguistics and other non-traditional modes and its “striking visual tableaus,” she more than met the by Neil Shigley. new book of black-and-white photographs, he dramatizes of humanistic inquiry. Writing for Leonardo Reviews, media challenge. “Although Kubrick is revered worldwide,” she that contrast by making elegant use of the extremes of artist and scholar Dene Grigar raves that everyone should observes, “here in Los Angeles he’s a demi-god.” —JG light and shadow produced by the intensity of the Southern read Digital_Humanities, no matter their academic discipline, lacma.org California sun. The Maryland native did not grow up in L.A., as it describes an area of research that has “the potential of but living here since 2002 he has immersed himself in transforming higher education.” And in the Italian edition photographing the city’s schools, churches, homes, busi- of WIRED, Matteo “Mister Bit” Bittanti names the book one nesses and industrial buildings. Cope began work on the of his best of 2012 and recommends that every Italian series in 2006 as an undergraduate in the Photography and university student add it to their reading list. A free Open Imaging program, developing a systematic approach and Access edition of the book is available at the MIT Press a set of visual parameters for a project that ultimately last- website. —MW ed seven years. In April, powerHouse Books published the mitpress.mit.edu/books fruits of his long labor, with a foreword by California-born, Paris-based fashion designer Rick Owens, and celebrated with an exhibition of large-format prints at Mondo Cane gallery in Tribeca. —SS cope1.com •4 SUMMER 2013 — artcenter.edu/dot AROUND THE WORLD •5 right Cover of Metropolis Cars and the Future of SoCal magazine featuring Jason Pilarski and Kati Rubinyi GART 02 Steven Joyner. below left Spearheaded by Grad Art alumna and former faculty Two of MachineHisto- member Kati Rubinyi, The Car in 2035: Mobility Planning ries’ projects. for the Near Future seeks to engage a broad readership in below right the aesthetically and intellectually complex relationship Sin Palace: Horizontal between cars and the physical environment. More than a Section Cut by handful of Art Center folks have contributed to the book, Michael Webb, published in The Car which features essays by Graduate Transportation Design in 2035. Executive Director Geoff Wardle and Graduate Art Chair Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, among others, and illustrations by alumna Jiha Hwang GMDP 11. Published in March, the book and the issues it addresses became the driving force behind the creation of the nonprofit Civic Projects Founda- tion, founded and led by Rubinyi. Its mission—initiating projects for the public benefit that break down silos among professional disciplines—was inspired, in part, by Art Center. “My education and later experience at the College did nothing less than pry open my mind to new WATCH values and to other communities of practice, which was VIDEO ONLINE a much-needed antidote to my professional experience at that time,” says Rubinyi, whose background is in urban planning, architecture and art. Civic Projects welcomes collaboration and support from anyone who recognizes the Share a Story,