Omag10

OTIS COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN MAGAZINE

Otis College of Art and Design 9045 Lincoln Boulevard, Los Angeles, California 90045

310.665.6800 / OTIS.EDU

Non-Profit Org U.S. Postage

PAID

Los Angeles, CA Permit No. 427

Spring 2011

ISSUE 10

in this issue: No Finish Line

pg.10 -

Proving the Power of Art and Artists

pg.16 -

VOL.10

Magnet for Controversy 310.665.6800 / OTIS.EDU

pg.20

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A Foundation for the Future This issue of OMAG highlights the Foundation Program, a beloved first-year educational experience that generations of Otis alumni have credited for much of their success and penchant for lifelong learning. Otis is the only college of art and design on the West Coast that offers a full Foundation Year curriculum. The program is also unique in its approach to preparing students for the competitive, fast-paced 21st century while continuing to honor time-tested fundamentals.

Throughout Foundation, students learn aesthetic fundamentals, sharpen their visual acuity, develop their cultural and information literacy, begin a connection with the larger community as emerging artists and designers, and hone the essential “thinking and making” skills required for creative professionals who will enjoy career success. The faculty—all of whom are working artists and designers—serve as role models. Talented, passionate, and thoughtful professionals, they are accessible to students both inside and outside the classroom.

The holistic and forward-looking philosophy that underlies Foundation is based on educational research. Through courses such as Critical Analysis and Semiotics, students learn both to question everything and to see that everything is

connected. Through the Foundation Integrated Learning course, freshmen work with an external, real world “site partner.” The sitepartner project focuses on sustainability and the environment, and embodies another tenet of Foundation: Knowledge carries with it a responsibility to use it mindfully within the community.

Students share their first-year engagement within a learning community of 18 peers.

Research shows that students are more creative, motivated, and willing to stretch academically when bonded with a cohort group. At the close of Foundation, Otis students emerge as creative, skilled and collaborative individuals, ready to continue focused study in the upper levels.

Strong friendships with peers and faculty, combined with the accomplishments of the past year, give them confidence that, after three more years of intensive and rewarding study, they will lead a fulfilling life as art and design professionals and engaged citizens.

An Otis education cultivates students’ capacity to reach their full potential. The Foundation Year provides the solid first steps on that path.

FPO

President Hoi with NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman and James Irvine Foundation President and CEO, James Canales

Samuel Hoi, President

Editor: Margi Reeve, Communications Director Co-editor: Sarah Russin, Assistant VP, Institutional Advancement Photography: Photography: Kristy Campbell, Lee Salem, Artie and Kent Twitchell Creative/Design: Mark Caneso (‘04)

VOL.10 IN THIS ISSUE:

Otis prepares diverse students of art and design to enrich our world through their creativity, their skill, and their vision.

Contributors: Rose Brantley, Fashion Design Chair; S.A. Bachman, Graduate Public Practice faculty member; Scarlet Cheng, Liberal Arts and Sciences faculty member; Linda Hudson, Foundation faculty member; Randy Lavender, Interim Provost; Meg Linton, Ben Maltz Gallery Director; Kali Nikitas, Graduate Graphic Design Chair; Katie Phillips, Foundation Chair; Linda Pollari, Architecture/Landscape/Interiors Chair; Rush White, Foundation faculty member; Jackie Wickser, Fashion Design faculty member; Alexandra Pollyea, Media Relations Manager; George Wolfe, freelance writer

Founded in 1918, Otis is L.A.’s first independent professional school of visual arts. Otis’ 1200 students pursue BFA degrees in advertising design, architecture/landscape/interiors, digital media, fashion design, graphic design, illustration, interactive product design, painting, photography, sculpture/new genres, and toy design.

MFA degrees are offered in fine arts, graphic design, public practice, and writing. Otis has trained generations of artists who have been in the vanguard of the cultural and entrepreneurial life of the city. Nurtured by Los Angeles’ forward-thinking spirit, these artists and designers explore the landscape of popular culture and the significant impact of identity, politics, and social policy at the intersection of art and society.

Front cover: Lauren Barnette (’12),

02

Foundation

10

College News

Makers + Thinkers

Do it Now - Think Different: Profit, People and the Planet Designing for Atheletes and the Planet The Clay’s the Thing Splendid Entities: 25 Years of Objects by Phyllis Green Dismantled Figuration and Configuration: Donghia Designers in Residence Nader Tehrani and Sharon Johnston Proving the Power of Art and Artists Only the Beginning: Graduate Graphic Design A Magnet for Controversy: Kent Twitchell (’77) After the Fall: From Punk From Punk to Pornetration to ‘Let’s Be Facebook Frendz!!

24

Development

26

Alumni Around the World

28

Mei-Lee and the Art of Legacy

Chatard in Cannes Akashi in Berlin

Class Notes Featured Alumni Alumni Connect Doin it in Public Otis in the Art Scene of Southern California

© Otis College of Art and Design

Foundation Form and Space,

Publication of material does not necessarily

“Meaning of Form” project

indicate endorsement of the author’s viewpoint

Back cover: Sarmista Pantham (MFA ’10)

by Otis College of Art and Design

detail from Weekend Crafts poster

SPRING 2011

Otis College of Art and Design

OMAG 2

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Feature

Otis College of Art and Design Alumni Magazine

Spring 2011

3 OMAG

The

FOUNDATION

of

MAKERS + THINKERS

I

1

I learned things I never thought I’d have opportunity to, I tried things that

Kelly Dawn Hopkins (’13)

I never thought I would, and honestly, I’ve turned into someone I never thought I’d be. I went from being a distant wallflower to being a bold, confident nutcase. The people I’ve met along the way have been incredibly inspiring, unbelievably annoying, simply beautiful, and everything in between.

In the first semester, students take two drawing courses (Life Drawing, and Drawing and Composition) and two design courses (Principles of Design, and Form and Space). They spend eighteen hours in these studio classes and nine hours in Liberal Studies classes each week. In the second semester, they continue in Life Drawing or select Creative Practices and Responses. They also choose an elective, which is based on one of the upper-division majors. In addition, students can also select the elective class to travel to Paris where they study French art, history, and culture during spring break.

Students’ choices allow for varied experiences; a student who chooses creative practices and the sculpture/new genres elective will have a very different experience than one who continues with the core and takes an advertising design elective. Each choice helps to define a path of personal vision. In the spring, students take their first Integrated Learning (sitebased team project) class. Because of the focus on sustainable practices in the professional world, most students work with community environmental groups such as Friends of Ballona Wetlands.

In the Foundation year, students learn skill sets that support the informed making of art and design, as well as thinking skills for all visual arts. Very basic to the creation of art and design is “construction of meaning.” Students learn that each visual choice they make in constructing their work carries meaning. They ask what their choice means in the context in which it is meant to be seen or used. Why select a certain color? Why choose a jagged rather than a curved line? What does the choice of scale imply?

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Feature

Otis College of Art and Design Alumni Magazine

DRAWING + COMPOSITION SEMESTERS

Fall Spring

I

X X

CREDITS

2.0 2.0

STUDIO HOURS

6 hrs

per week

In Drawing and Composition, students develop the ability to confidently organize and construct a drawing (and drawing-driven painting) in which spatial organization is supreme. They visually communicate from a chosen point of view and construct the perspective that goes with it. By observation of increasingly complex still life set-ups, they develop the ability to depict the three-dimensional world in roughly three zones: foreground, middle ground and background. On field trips, they sketch and create mixed media drawings. Media experiences shift from initial graphite line, to charcoal tone, pastel color, Adobe Ilustrator, and mixed media water-based painting. In the final landscape project, they create a threedimensional illusion of the world through diligently rigorous observational accuracy synthesized with their own unmistakable personal mark-making.

Otis College of Art and Design Alumni Magazine

students blend information, blur boundaries, and expand domains

FORM + SPACE SEMESTERS

Fall

X

Spring

X

CREDITS

2.0 2.0

STUDIO HOURS

6 hrs

per week

F

Form and Space is a uniquely challenging course for many students because it focuses on three-dimensional design, or composition in-the-round, a method of visual organization that manifests clearly from all angles and perspectives. This demands visual sensitivity that counters today’s highly pictorialized experience.

Form and Space introduces students sequentially to the exciting possibilities of form-making. They investigate primary building blocks of Western form such as cubes, tetrahedra, and polyhedra as a basis for composition, use negative and positive volume interactions to activate forms and the spaces between them, and develop relationships between liner, planar, and volumetric elements to engage all three in complex, visually organized, and beautifully constructed compositions.

Students then apply the fabrication, visual organization, and spatial skills gained from early compositions to more individualized and expressive works: connotations of meaning in form result from themes that inform visual and media decisionmaking, the human body is used as a basis for design in fabrics and fibers, and architectonic scale is achieved by means of modular construction, or multiples. By the end of the 30-week course, students transfer compositional, fabrication, and meaning-making skills to all endeavors of art and design to heighten the visual and expressive quality of their work in any discipline or media.

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Feature

Spring 2011

LIFE DRAWING SEMESTERS

Fall Spring

L

X X

CREDITS

3.0 2.0

PRINCIPLES of DESIGN STUDIO HOURS

SEMESTERS

Fall 6 hrs

per week

Learning to draw from the human figure is at once natural and overwhelming. Each successive layer or mark translates the 3d skeleton to the 2d picture plane, and then the figure is depicted in a system that indicates perspective and volume.

Life drawing is based on the principle of structural drawing as students analyze the figure in order to plot visual relationships and positions in space.

They begin drawing from the inside out— starting with the gesture, and considering proportion and scale. As they develop the drawing, they add muscular structure.

They gain an understanding that the Otis system of life drawing is transferable to any object they wish to record by observational drawing.

Spring

D

X

CREDITS

2.0 —

STUDIO HOURS

6 hrs

per week

Developing facility in twodimensional design is fundamental to the study of visual arts. We live in a three-dimensional world, so translating that world into reductive twodimensional forms is basic to constructing a visual language. Although paint is the most-used medium in two- dimensional designs, other mediums as well as digital skills such as Photoshop are introduced.

Students learn basic organizing principles based on visual patterning, and study and apply symmetries, compositional weightings, rotations and tessellations, as well as value, color, and scale to enhance meaning in their compositions. They examine line, form and value, and the stylistic attitudes of design.

During the first semester, students visit a museum for a lecture on the semiotics of visual construction. In the second semester, Connections through Color and Design, they begin the Integrated Learning sequence, in which they solve problems presented by their community partner.

They also participate in an intensive study of color theory and continue developing Photoshop skills.

I went to business school for two years, and the entire time I was painting and creating things. Then I decided that’s what I wanted: to do what I love as a career.

7 OMAG

Kyle O’Malley, Foundation student

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Feature

Otis College of Art and Design Alumni Magazine

CREATIVE PRACTICES + RESPONSES SEMESTERS

Fall Spring

C

X

CREDITS

— 2.0

PHILOSOPHY

STUDIO HOURS

6 hrs

9 OMAG

Spring 2011

per week

Creative Practices and Responses is an individual educational adventure. In this second-semester elective, students respond to two prompts: the first involves line and the development of iterations in the creative process, the second considers pattern, research and project development.

Students are free to create their own projects using any material and process.

They identify and question individual assumptions to break out of familiar ways of making and thinking. As they move beyond their comfort zones, they become increasingly aware of the value of observing their thinking process to develop a creative practice that is constantly refined, and redefined.

Otis' Foundation Program integrates critical thinking with aesthetic practice.

As Chair Katie Phillips explains, "Aesthetic fundamentals have not changed, but the way we teach them has." Foundation faculty members have been working on the problems associated with teaching and learning for many years, and consider education their life’s work. They have developed a research-based first-year curriculum that promotes individual expression by helping students to move from solving problems posed by instructors to defining and solving problems for themselves. Students learn to become successful students of art and design by critiquing their own work and pursuing a spirit of investigation.

The alignment of Foundation and Liberal Arts and Sciences leads students to examine how meaning is constructed during the creative process. The program supports students in the development of strong critical thinking skills through courses such as Critical Analysis and Semiotics and Introduction to Visual Culture, in which they learn both to question everything and to see that everything is connected. It is important that future artists and designers recognize the relationship and interplay between text and image, making and thinking. In the spring semester, the Form and Space project, “The Meaning of Form,” reinforces critical thinking in preparation for more individualized final projects.

After the Foundation year, students have built a strong and broad base on which to continue developing their individual voices in the major of their choice.

“Aesthetic fundamentals have not changed, but the way we teach them has.”

YouTube

Tips from the Pros Several Foundation faculty members,

Gary Geraths

Chris Mounger

many of whom have been teaching for

Structural Life Drawing

Graphite Pencil Value Drawing

more than 30 years, have created YouTube

140,000 views

“how- to” videos that have attracted

Portrait Drawing

thousands of viewers.

80,000 views Planar Head Drawing

37,000 views Barry Fahr

Cross Contour Drawing

30,000 views Randy Lavender Building a Six-Inch Cube

7,500 views

19,000 views Gouache Color Harmony

20,000 views Gouache Value Step Scales

23,000 views Chris Warner Digitally Photographing 2d Art

7,500 views

OMAG 10

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Spring 2011

College News

11 OMAG

Do it now Think Different: Profit, People and the Planet

Rosemary Brantley with Scott Williams (’90), Design Director for Olympic Apparel at Nike in Beaverton, Oregon

No Finish Line

Designing for Athletes and the Planet Where do I start? asked Fashion Design faculty member Jackie Wickser during a visit to the Nike cafeteria in the first week of her two-month sabbatical. The company’s commitment to sustainability in everything they do was evident in the variety of clearly labeled recycling bins and the eco-friendly cutlery, plates, bowls and cups. She quickly became part of the flow of ideas, meeting designers in the Advanced Innovative Technology Group. Their Considered Design Project, led by Rick MacDonald, represents Nike’s ongoing commitment to sustainable design innovation.

For the Hurley Nike project, students produced sketches that incorporate reversible fabrics and detachable elements

“Now that I know more about the importance of sustainability, I approach design differently,” says fashion designer Rosemary Brantley, Chair of Otis Fashion Design. “The new ‘triple bottom line’ is profit, people and the planet. If you take care of people and the planet, profit will follow.” She believes that we have no choice, that tomorrow is the new now, and that the whole fashion system has to change. Brantley is certain that sustainability is the megatrend that will dominate the fashion industry for years to come.

Working with Isabel Toledo and Patagonia, students designed multi-functional garments such as this jacket that becomes a parachute

Over the last seven years, Brantley has introduced design problems that address issues of local traditions and production; building supply communities; recycled, vintage, and found materials; and reuse, with mentors such as Alabama Chanin, Todd Oldham, Anthropologie and Yeohlee Teng. Last year, working with industry leader Patagonia and avant-garde designer Isabel Toledo, students designed multi-functional, fashionable garments, with the goal of doing the least harm to the environment.

Otis students are on the front line of these changes in the industry. “Regeneration—Revolution,” their current project exemplifies this shift. As Brantley explains, “For the past twelve months, with support from Nike and Hurley, we have retooled our curriculum to teach the Whole System Change—a business model that considers profits, people and planet altogether. What can we create that reduces waste, uses less resources, and is more respectful of human life? Because of Nike and Hurley’s generosity, not only are talented and deserving students receiving scholarships for an innovative design education, but those students will eventually make our world a much better place.”

Students are working in three teams in collaboration with Hurley Senior VP of Design John Cherpas and design team members Nimma Bhusri and Nadid Barienbrock; Nike VP of Apparel Product Creation, Diana Crist, and Director of Design Connections at Nike/Hurley/Converse/Umbro, Betsy Parker. The teams consider garment design in terms of its regenerative, heirloom, and sustainability aspects, with a focus on youth appeal. They explore personalization, self-expression, consumer participation, and input. Using reversible fabrics and clean stitching, they create garments with a “second life” rather than a “closed look.” Their designs incorporate seasonless looks; wrapping, tying and folding for flexible fit, detachable collars and cuffs; educational care labels; and repair kits. Youth leads the way, as Hurley’s tagline “Microphone for Youth” proclaims.

Convinced that consumer habits are changing, Otis fashion design students intend to educate shoppers about the environmental issues that design and fabrication pose, including washing, excessive consumption of low-priced clothing, and the value of “heirloom” and multipurpose clothing. Their goal is to design investment-quality garments with sustainable materials and methods, always considering the global impact. Some were inspired by last June’s clothing diet, the “Six items, 31 days” web-based experiment in which people all over the world selected six garments, wore only these garments for a month, and blogged about their experiences. As one student states, “There is much more consumer awareness of ecological impact, and multifunctional fashion is becoming a trend.”

As they phrase it, “When it comes to finding the best solutions for both athletes and the planet, there is no finish line.” For example, Nike has recycled the ground-up soles of 21 million shoes for flooring in 285 sports courts. Their football jerseys for South Africa 2010, made from 100% recycled polyester, diverted 13 million plastic bottles from landfill.

Wickser soon began working with Nike’s Advanced Innovative Technology and Materials team, experimenting with woven fabric rather than knits, to come up with high-performance garments. Woven fabric is more eco-friendly than knits because it uses less yarn.

Nike’s “Whole System Change” approach depends on changes in technology. Using 3d software, their tech designers create patterns and sew them together, place the garments on an avatar, and motion-test them with the 3d figures, all within virtual reality. They send the virtual designs to Nike offshore prototype centers so that the contractors can more closely execute their prototypes.

For the last six years, Scott Williams (‘90) Design Director for Olympic Apparel, has worked with industrial and fashion designers to meet Nike’s goals of performance and sustainability. Designed and built over seven years with a six million dollar investment, Nike’s environmental apparel design tool measures and reduces the impact of their products on the environment. Their designers evaluate new sports apparel design based on the “considered index,” which measures pattern marker efficiency (waste), garment treatment (dyeing, laundering, distressing), and materials (chemical and energy consumption, water use).

As CEO Mark Parker stated, “We’re equally committed to leading our industry in climate change and sustainability. We’re entering a new era of open-source collaboration that commits to sharing intellectual and patent property. It’s the kind of behavioral change that can help lower carbon emissions, reduce waste, and close the loop on the resources required by product manufacturing.” Nike’s invitation to Wickser and Department Chair Rose Brantley to visit their Oregon campus and present “old school” hands-on techniques such as draping was one step in the whole system change that is now firmly implanted in Otis’ curriculum. This collaboration and sharing of ideas will inspire others in the fashion design industry to move more quickly toward a sustainable future.

OMAG 12

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The Clay’s the Thing

by Alexandra Pollyea

“Clay in L.A.,” a one-day symposium, drew several hundred ceramics fans to Otis on March 12. Panelists included Adrian Saxe, Peter Shire, Jo Lauria (MFA ‘90), and Boardman Visiting Artists Ruby Neri and Adam SIlverman.

“I never took ceramics and I really want to learn,” says painting major Marcela Gottardo. “I want to see how I like the materials and how I feel I can send my message through this medium.”

“It’s a totally different mindset from painting,” explains Carlos Ochoa, painting major. “It helps me out as a painter to think in three dimensions.”

Boardman Artist in Residence Adam SIlverman works with fine arts students (inset, student in Ruby Neri’s ceramics class)

Otis College of Art and Design Alumni Magazine

College News

The experiences of these students and many more signal the rebirth of clay at Otis over the past five years. Long revered for artist/ teachers Peter Voulkos and Ralph Bacerra and their students who revolutionized clay as art, Otis now reflects 21st-century realities.

All students can take clay electives—and focus on studio ceramics if they wish—but the possibilities of clay in the context of product design as well as fine art are significant new developments. Several faculty members have spearheaded this resurgence, with the generosity and vision of the Boardman Family Foundation, which has funded a Visiting Artists series, the “Clay in L.A.” symposium, and the purchase of kilns and other key resources. Clay was also integral to many of the sculptures in the elegant retrospective “Splendid Entities: 25 Years of Objects by Phyllis Green” at Otis’ Ben Maltz Gallery through March.

“Joan Takayama-Ogawa, Associate Professor, Liberal Arts and Sciences and I started talking a few years ago about wanting our students to work in clay again,” notes Fine Arts Department Chair Meg Cranston. “It’s a natural for a young artist because it’s plentiful, inexpensive and malleable. And of course we have this wonderful history at Otis.”

The goals for the return of clay at Otis were much larger. “We decided that we would develop a program that looked at clay’s industrial and fine arts uses, and maybe discover a middle ground,” explains Cranston. “One student could use rapid prototyping to make ceramic tiles for interiors or other industrial purposes, and another could hand-build a sculpture; and they could be working together in the same room. We’ve shown that students using clay in different ways can live peacefully together.”

Fine Arts now offers at least one clay/ceramics course every semester. “Ultimately, the palpability of working with clay is profoundly rewarding,” observes Cranston. “If you grew up playing video games and pushing buttons, it feels good to work with clay.

You use your body in all media but in clay in particular because it has weight. It is a body; it doesn’t want to stand up; it doesn’t want to do things; it is very much itself.”

In the inaugural Boardman Visiting Artist series last fall, students in painter/sculptor Ruby Neri’s class made large-scale sculptural objects, primarily hand-built. This semester, Adam Silverman, an artist who is studio director of Heath Ceramics, is working with students to understand clay as a material that can be used on its own or in combination with other materials. He aims to have students broaden their scope, in keeping with the name he has given the course, Clay: Thinking and Making. “In a lot of schools, you take wheel throwing 101, learn how to throw a cylinder, how to throw a bowl, and how to throw a closed shape form. I want this course to be in the service of something greater. The end isn’t a cylinder.”

Silverman asked students to choose a piece of music and respond to it. Some based their project on the title or the lyrics; others focused on the rhythm, beat, or timing; one is doing a political critique. In the first few classes, Silverman demonstrated slip casting, wheel throwing, slab making, and hand making, presenting the range of methods. “So now they’re all slogging through the reality,” he notes. “I try to keep them realistic.” On a recent field trip to a group exhibition by artists (primarily painters) working in clay, Silverman observed that the students “all had some ‘aha’ moments.”

Joan Takayama-Ogawa came to Otis as as a Continuing Education student intent on learning glaze chemistry. She became a ceramics major, and joined the faculty, teaching over the years in several departments. Her ceramics classes include a Product Design elective, where students use 3d software and render by rapid prototype, then cast in plaster and create multiples. “We are making things that I would not be able to make by hand,” says Ogawa. Learning the process helps students become much more informed designers.”

One aspect of clay she has noticed over the years is its capacity to help students develop fine and gross motor coordination. “I can’t think of any material but clay that can give feedback as to how good your hands really are, and how well your hand and your mind work together,” says Ogawa. “Within the first class I can see growth in students’ abilities; their hands actually start talking with their brains.”

She has also observed that clay builds the capacity of students to withstand disappointment. “We say fail and fail often; just do not fail every time. Clay creates a tight community. We share the triumphs that come out of the kiln.”

Lois Boardman, of the Boardman Family Foundation, has a long association with clay. Her interest began when she was living in Lausanne, Switzerland, and took classes in ceramics at a grocery store below the apartment where she and her family were living.

After she returned to Los Angeles, she worked in a studio downtown run by Dora De Larios and Cliff Stewart, and went on to Chouinard, where she studied with and became good friends with Ralph Bacerra. She continued her studies with him when he moved to Otis.

Although she terms herself now a “talking potter,” Boardman is as captivated as ever with the material that delighted her many years ago. “To be able to see the possibilities and then do something about it immediately is a really a big thing. Working with clay is the link to going into art, because it’s a tactile experience. It’s the bridge if you want to do something with your hands.”

Boardman and her husband Bob felt compelled to step up for the burgeoning clay program at Otis. She appreciates the contemporary approach of the offerings. “It’s invaluable the way it is being set up. If you want to go into studio ceramics, that’s fine. But to be able to know contemporary technology is very important as well.”

No discussion of clay at Otis would be complete without mention of the kiln in the parking structure. Explains Joan TakayamaOgawa, “When we moved from downtown to the our current location, by accident we put one of the kilns that Pete Voulkos, who started Otis’ ceramics program in 1954, built in the core of the structure. It’s entombed. I look at it now and then and say, ‘We’ve come a long way.’”

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Spring 2011

Phyllis Green, Bonnet, 2001, ceramic and acrylic with steel base Phyllis Green, Lulu, 2003, ceramic and acrylic

Splendid Entities:

25 Years of Objects by Phyllis Green at the Ben Maltz Gallery, January 18 - March 19

I’ve never had the chance to see all my work together before. I can remember the excitement of making them. Twenty-five years is a long time but it seems shorter to me. When I embraced ceramics again it was particularly to challenge the notion that considers clay and other materials made out of craft as women’s work or second class. It’s privileged in the art world now. There’s a lot of interest in clay from students.

Phyllis Green, Artist

Read full interview with Phyllis Green at otis.edu/green

installation view of “Splendid Entities” at the Ben Maltz Gallery

It’s unusual to see a show with so much ceramics, and wonderful that Otis is exhibiting Phyllis’ work. She is a great example for our students.

The world has come around to her.

Meg Cranston, Chair, Fine Arts

She has spent 25 years finding her voice, expressing herself, and finding the issues that interest her. The exhibition reveals a dedicated self-investigation that included clay as well as flocking, velvet and concrete polymers.

What she has done in her own work is what we at Otis do—help students find their voice and discover the media they need to project their ideas.

Meg Linton, Director of Galleries and Exhibitions, Ben Maltz Gallery

Phyllis’ show is a great springboard – her work bridges the gap between the decorative and the contemporary art worlds. It was an enriching experience to work with an artist who has a definite vision of who she is and what her work says.

Jo Lauria (MFA ’90), Independent curator, art and design historian, and co-curator of “Splendid Entities”

Phyllis is a good example of an artist who employs clay in a thoughtful and meaningful way.

Adam Silverman, Studio Director of Heath Ceramics, Boardman Artist in Residence

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Otis College of Art and Design Alumni Magazine

College News

Dismantled

Figuration and Configuration: Tufting, Darting, Pleating, and Tucking

Bachman and Krista Caballero to present DISMANTLED, an innovative visual arts collaboration. As students across California faced tuition hikes, emerging artists from Otis participated in an exploration of public education, critical pedagogy, and the privatization of our school system.

This statewide project acknowledges California’s unique history while simultaneously questioning what the future holds if our institutions of learning are no longer shaped by the core principles of accessible and affordable education for all. It was shown in San Diego in November and in On display in downtown Fresno

Fresno in early December.

DISMANTLED employs outdoor projection and performance to

– Neda Moridpour, Graduate Student

It was important to bring DISMANTLED to Fresno, CA because there is a struggle for education in the Central Valley. By projecting onto the city’s vacant Metropolitan Museum of Art, DISMANTLED not only brings this struggle to light, but calls for action from every person on the street.

What are the limits and supports from the university of art practices that function as institutional critique?

– Ricardo Dominguez, Educator

The goal of action is not to preserve public education, but to wrest public life from private powers, with the educational sphere being one arena for that effort.

– Ken Ehrlich, Artist and Author

Her father told her that they built the University walls higher than the prison because guarding thoughts is much harder than guarding crimes.

–Community member

– Teresa Flores, Graduate Student

Sherry said, “I heard the most beautiful music; it made me cry. It was his first lesson—he’s in prison for murder, age 15. What if he had met the piano before the gun?”

– Community member

For the first exercise, they investigated the techniques of tailoring, upholstery, and weaving, and explored various ways in which these techniques may evolve three-dimensionally at the scale of interiSharon Johnston and Nader Tehrani with Donghia master class students

of assembly.

In the second half of the Master

tradition to contemporary techniques. His

Class, the five teams of students proposed

most recent projects include the Macallen

interventions between two buildings

Building in Boston, the first Leadership

on Otis’ campus, producing form and

in Environmental and Energy Design

structure using the upholstery techniques

(LEED)-certified condominium building

of tufting, welting, pleating, darting, and

and the first phase of the Tongxian Art

tucking. The interventions included cano-

Center in Beijing.

pies, a wall transforming into a canopy

Sharon Johnston, partner of John-

and an eroded tunnel-like form (with

stonMarklee, presented projects ranging

portions of floor, walls and roof) squeezed

from residences in Santa Monica, Kauai

between the two buildings.

and Buenos Aires to a winery in Tuscany

Tehrani and Johnston concluded

and an art foundation in Rome. She spoke about working with artists, fabricators,

Combined Perspective on Geometry and

and engineers to customize and integrate

Perspective, a lecture at the Museum of

formal, material, and component-building

Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Though

systems, and explained the office’s engage-

Tehrani and Johnston work on opposite

ment with sustainable design incorporat-

coasts, they had collaborated on the

ing environmentally-friendly materials

Brown vs The Board of Education raise awareness and incite questions.

award-winning eco-conscious design for

and construction techniques.

Audience members can participate in the project’s ongoing interviews as

Helios House, a BP gas station in L.A.

students and families burdened by debt, financial aid, and access to education. Highlighting populations the government and media often ignore, DISMANTLED integrates interviews from a cross-section of Californians

DISMANTLED opened my eyes to different challenges of education in California and how access can be blocked by systems of power. I learned that one should take action for her/his belief rather than neutrally sit around and watch the failure of the system. As an immigrant, this project was a launching point for my own education in a new environment as well as an imperative source of new methodologies for teaching.

inquiry: figuration and configuration.

their residency with Nip Tuck Diptych, a

frame key issues such as the severe cutbacks in funding, charter schools, Graduate students installing at UC San Diego

considered two modes of architectural

geometry, material behavior, and methods

Architecture/Landscape/Interiors students in this year’s Donghia Master Class, led

by Nader Tehrani and Sharon Johnston, investigated adjoining practices—between furniture, upholstery, and tailoring—“as a way of expanding our domain, challenging the way in which the industry is accustomed to build, and speculating on how techniques from digitization to the handmade may offer new opportunities for fabrication, and imagining design methodologies beyond the fundamentals taught in the academy today.”

15 OMAG

Class participants, working in teams,

ors and architecture, developed through

by S.A. Bachman

In 2010/2011, MFA Public Practice students worked with artists S.A.

Spring 2011

with provocative visual analysis. In addition, images of blowing bubble gum and superhero school uniforms, along with historical footage from

—Nader Tehrani and Sharon Johnston

The Angelo Donghia Foundation has

well as contribute to the creation of a site-specific installation. Projection

that is the first LEED-certified gas station

supported the Designer-in-Residence Pro-

sites serve as gathering spaces for sidewalk conversations and run the

in the U.S. Its canopy of 90 solar panels

gram for three years. Previous Designers-

gamut from neighborhood storefronts to museums, colleges and libraries.

supplies energy for the station, landscape

in-Residence were Eva Maddox, a princi-

California educators including Peter McLaren, Gilda Haas, Janna Shad-

planting is drought tolerant, and recycled

pal of Perkins+Will, Chicago, in 2008-09,

dock Hernandez and Ricardo Dominguez have informed this project. The

glass is mixed into the concrete pavement

and LTL Architects, New York, in 2009-10.

Scan-Tron Video animation was courtesy of Jen Schmidt.

to stem heat gain.

As a component of the Residency, the

Tehrani, currently principal of

Angelo Donghia Foundation initiated and

NADAA and Professor and Head of the

has supported the Donghia-Otis Portfolio

Department of Architecture at the MIT

Awards. Master class students prepare

School of Architecture and Planning,

portfolios in advance of the course, and

spoke of his exploration of material quali-

the Donghia Designers review and select

ties in conjunction with both traditional

the winners. This year four students were

and digital techniques of design and as-

presented with Portfolio Awards, includ-

sembly. He showed projects from around

ing the first-place $3,000 scholarship won

the world that marry local craft and

by Senior Sam Tanis.

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College News

Spring 2011

17 OMAG

The Creative Economy web site, funded by the James Irvine Foundation, was designed by hello design of Culver City

Proving the Power of Art and Artists 2010 Otis Report on the Creative Economy stills from “Share the Facts” animation. See the full presentation at otis.edu/econreport

Resounding applause greeted the message “Creativity cannot be outsourced.

Innovation stays onshore,” at the release of the third annual Otis Report on the Creative Economy of the Los Angeles Region. The capacity audience at Zipper Hall, Colburn School, gathered on November 11 to hear NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman, University of Minnesota Professor Ann Markusen, and Irvine Foundation President James Canales speak about “The Power of Art and Artists.”

Days before the event, gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown stated that “creativity and imagination are what California needs.” The data produced by the LAEDC for this report provided real numbers to support his assertion.

Creativity is serious business in Southern California: one of six jobs in the

region are in the creative sector; it is the second largest business sector in the region; impact amounted to $286.3 billion in 2010; the average salary in digital media is $136K, and this sector has the highest growth prospect through 2014 (10.4%). In fact, despite manufacturing downturns, employment in the creative sector is projected to grow faster than other sectors in the next five years.

Creativity provides a long-range and sustainable competitive edge for the U.S. economy. As Rocco Landesman stated, “When you bring arts organizations and arts workers into a neighborhood, the place changes to a vibrant and sustainable community.

The arts complement and complete other sectors of the economy.” Ann Markusen’s policy brief, Los Angeles:

America’s Artist Super City, demonstrates that artists are L.A.’s hidden developmental dividend, and offers policies and programs to make the region a more supportive place for artists. Her analysis indicates that L.A. has the largest pool of artists of any U.S. metropolitan area; gained two artists for every artist who left from 1995-2000; and has a concentration of artists that is eight times as prominent as in the U.S. as a whole.

According to President Hoi, “The Otis Report measures more than the impact of the creative economy. It is the story of possibilities made real by a combination of education, talent, entrepreneurial drive, and opportunities.

The lives, work, and achievements of creative professionals, such as Otis alumni, illustrate the power of the arts and artists in our economy, culture and communities.”

The Otis Report focuses on Southern California and its role as a global cultural capital. As arts sector leaders increasingly understand, acknowledge, and champion their financial value, they will influence policy makers, business leaders, and other key constituencies.

Otis’ advocacy role for the creative economy is consistent with the spirit of innovation that guides the College’s approach to 21st century education.

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Spring 2011

19 OMAG

by Kali Nikitas, Chair, Graduate Graphic Design

Sarmista Pantham was

Only the Beginning

selected as one of “20 under 30” in PRINT magazine’s annual international competition, New Visual Artists Review.

For the last thirteen years, the magazine has identified the most promising rising talents in graphic design, advertising, illustration, digital media, photography, and animation under the age of 30 from

and industry professionals.

Berlin

Diane O’Rourke

Sam Anvari

3

UC Irvine

“The MFA program opened my mind to new ways of thinking about design and entirely new ways of making work.

It probably sounds cliché, but I truly feel that a new world opened up to me as a result of my experiences with my classmates and instructors. Much to my surprise and delight, my studies at Otis have led me to continue as an artist and pursue a second MFA, this time in studio art at UC Irvine where I am focusing primarily on drawing and painting.”

3

Ramon is in New York, working in his studio, teaching, and skiing through the snow. The rest of his time has been spent doing work for the Brooklyn Philharmonic.

Hazel Mandujano

LACMA

“The MFA Graphic Design program has really shifted my point of view on the possibilities of all design and how it is defined. Currently I am doing post-graduate studies at The Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam with instructors Daniel van der Velden and Rob Schroder. It’s great to be surrounded by different perspectives. During my time at The Sandberg I will develop a project that I began in my final summer in the MFA program, a free arts educational program for young girls in under-resourced areas of Los Angeles.”

Gilbert Garcia

“During the past two years I’ve learned a new meaning for the word “design.” I’ve learned that a designer can use any material at hand to establish communication and engage with society. The MFA program has helped me to build my self-confidence and make quick judgments based on thorough research.

Last year I began working under the supervision of professor Dr. Erik Spiekermann, studying “P-English” (Persian-English) and researching the phonetic usage of the Latin alphabet used by Persians to communicate in Farsi over the Internet. This is a typographical (typo-grapheme) approach to write a non-Latin language that has no standard yet. My internship at Edenspiekermann AG in Berlin also involves an info-graphic poster design, and micro website designs, as well as the design for an exhibition in March 2011 at the Bauhaus archive in Berlin.”

Los Angeles

“A distinct characteristic I particularly enjoyed about the MFA program is the bond between the students. We were actively involved with one another in a shared environment, creating a true sense of “family.” During these eight weeks, we grew and developed as creators.

I currently work at LACMA on a number of projects, ranging from website banners, installation graphics, special event brochures, and the monthly film series posters.”

Sarmishta Pantham

3

Amsterdam

3

Ramon Tejada

directors, designers, critics,

3

New York

nominations made by art

3

The MFA Program in Graphic Design graduated its first class in the summer of 2010. I am happy to say that I could never have anticipated so many successes from a newly formed program.

Several of the alumni and current students have already begun their careers and post-graduate adventures that speak to the spirit of diverse practices that are embraced in our curriculum.

Coursework, visiting artists, workshops, hosting international symposia, and field trips have all been major contributors to defining our graduate program.

Students have lectured nationally and internationally; published texts; won national and international awards for their work; been selected as top talent and won prestigious scholarships. It is with great pride that I introduce to the reader a selection of stories.

We trust that it’s only the beginning...

“As an independent design consultant, my current practice includes print design, apparel design, identity, graphics and illustration for fashion as well as personal work such as souvenir design. My clients are the fashion brand Bebe, Otis (poster above), and a yet-to-be-launched cultural non-profit organization. I am also doing further research and collaboration on my thesis project, a design-based schooling system for a “globalized” India.

Having been an apparel designer for almost seven years, it was extremely exciting to have spent the last two-and-a-half years at Otis, experiencing the crossovers between different design disciplines with my classmates while adding several layers to my interests such as education and culture. I have discovered that the parameters of these disciplines, whether through real-time projects or in theory, are sometimes in collision, sometimes in harmony and at other times mutually exclusive.”

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Spring 2011

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by George Wolfe

A Magnet for Controversy In 1992, Kent Twitchell (‘77) was awarded damages for the destruction of his mural The Freeway Lady, making him the poster boy for the protection of murals as public art. In 2008, using innovative legal tactics, he settled a landmark lawsuit for the painting-over of his mural portrait of artist Edward Ruscha. Over the years, Twitchell has been on the front lines of public art activism, steadily carving a niche in the history and legal matters of mural art. You might think he’s a natural rabble-rouser with a bulldog-like persona.

But the mild-mannered artist simply notes: “I don’t think of myself as an activist at all. Sometimes you’re forced to respond because not to do so would result in even worse conditions for yourself and/or others.”

“The Mural Conservancy of L.A. was born out of the Freeway Lady’s demise. Bill Lasarow, publisher of Art Scene (and founder of MCLA in 1987), and arts attorney Amy Nieman (one of its original board members) raised their voices to get me to see the importance of standing up for artists’ rights. She made me understand that although property owners have the right to do as they wish, the law states that they must be civilized and perhaps notify the artist, who may want to remove the mural, or at least document it one last time. It hit me that all good laws simply keep us at least acting civilized, even during times when we don’t feel like it.”

Years later, when the Ruscha case came to light, Twitchell had legal experience under his belt.

Even though pushing the boundaries—for art’s sake —is something that he’s proud of, he nonetheless acknowledges “it wasn’t a very productive time for my art. It’s hard getting into and then staying in the art-making zone while pursuing a lawsuit, but it’s good that we did it.”

And although his 2009 Berlin Wall project didn’t involve activism, he ended up in the middle of a slight controversy—this time about art censorship. The Wende Museum of the Cold War, which sponsored the project, requested that Twitchell complete only the Kennedy half of his Kennedy-Reagan diptych, due to space limitations. To quell the firestorm, Twitchell’s solution was to include portions of both presidents, each on a single wall panel.

“Originally, Thierry Noir and I were asked to paint on an exact replica of the wall that was to be made, to cover ten segments (approximately 12’ x 4’ each). Thierry was possibly the first artist to paint on the Berlin Wall. He could see the ugly face of tyranny each time he looked out his kitchen window.

One night in the mid-‘80s he painted a cartoon face on it so it wouldn’t seem so intimidating. It’s kinda like picturing a mean boss wearing long underwear.

Eventually he and other artists painted more and more. Justinian Jampol, Wende Museum founder and City Councilmember Tom LaBonge invited me to paint on an exact replica of the Wall as part of L.A.’s celebration of the 20th anniversary of its tearingdown. Berlin then offered to ship pieces of the actual wall. I found out that ten segments were coming, and decided to paint half faces, leaving segments for other artists. Artists Farrah Karapetian and Marie Astrid Gonzalez were selected to join us. I requested a particular photograph of Kennedy from the Wende and visited the Reagan Library to study a chunk of the real wall and look for Reagan images that had the same lighting and perspective as my JFK portrait.”

These days, Twitchell is working on a mural that includes George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin in the main lobby of the Bob Hope Patriotic Hall in downtown L.A. He also plans to paint a new and larger version of the The Freeway Lady, slated for a new building at L.A. Valley College. And his Steve McQueen Monument is almost fully restored, having been painted over by accident. Twitchell has been working on it with Fresco School, which now oversees most of his mural projects, allowing him to spend more of his time doing the art.

Twitchell also wants to paint a monument to his mentor Charles White (on the south wall of the original Otis Art Gallery, overlooking Wilshire Blvd).

As part of Twitchell’s graduate thesis project, he drew a twelve-foot version of White that is now part of LACMA’s permanent collection. “That’s the pose I want to use for the mural, casting a shadow off to the west,” says Twitchell. “The school is now the Charles White Elementary School. Seems like a good fit.”

Reminiscing on how he got to the present, Twitchell recalls, “Before Otis, I was considered a leading street artist, but that meant nothing serious then (1975). Today it’s all the rage, but in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s when the LA Fine Arts Squad (Terry Schoonhoven and Vic Henderson) worked in Venice and Ocean Park, and I worked in Downtown L.A. and Hollywood, we were considered second-class by most of the ‘artworld.’ Rozelle and Roderick Sykes and Alonzo Davis (‘73) painted amazing murals in South Central L.A. Alonzo, both artist and administrator at his Brockman Gallery Productions, changed the face of South Central. In East L.A., the Goez Gallery, David Botello, Willie Herron and Los Four (Carlos Almaraz, (‘74) Judithe Hernandez (‘74), etc.) did street art of another kind. Judy Baca came along, carved out the Citywide Murals Program and later

Right: mock up; Above: Twitchell at work on Kennedy portrait; Left: final Berlin Wall mural, sponsored by the Wende Museum to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the removal of the Wall

SPARC, and was instrumental in getting grants and government funding for mostly Latino murals. Jane Golden started painting murals under Citywide in the mid ‘70s and is now in Philadelphia running the most successful murals program in the world. Baca’s murals programs brought large numbers of artists into the murals movement, and all these traditions together made L.A. the ‘Mural Capital of the World.’

One reason I decided to attend Otis was to get scrubbed down with an MFA. I’d continue doing my street art afterwards, but maybe with a chance of being considered as serious as the artists painting pictures for galleries. I remember while putting the finishing touches on my Steve McQueen Monument in 1971, someone came by and told me there was a picture of it on the Otis bulletin board. I was elated. To think someone at Otis actually liked it! So, four years after the McQueen mural and one year after the Freeway Lady, I decided I needed a shot of seriousness and applied to Otis’ grad school. I didn’t take myself seriously enough to explore and push.

Otis had successful artists who also taught, wrote books, etc. and I needed to be accountable to people like that in order to get to the next level. At Otis I met Charles White, who started my love for drawing.

His love for and experience with murals gave me more confidence that I was on the right track, just doing what was natural for me—street art—but then, suddenly, I wanted to master color, to paint in the streets as if it was for a museum. I may not have done that on my own.”

Otis had successful artists who also taught, wrote books, etc. and I needed to be accountable to people like that in order to get to the next level.

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Spring 2011

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After The Fall: From Punk to Pornetration to ‘Let’s Be Facebook Frendz’!!

Editor’s Note: These are excerpts from a lecture given by Visiting Critic in Fine Arts, Dick Hebdige, at the Broad Stage in November.

See video excerpt otis.edu/academics/ fine_arts/faculty.html and read entire lecture otis.edu/hebdige

Or how contemporary art and media culture, ideas about and attitudes toward youth and youth culture, consumerism, embodiment and bonding, the power of perversion, the politics of insubordination, friendship, sex and love have changed in the three decades since punk first exploded on the scene

Many 21st century cultural phenomena

I’d like to end by shifting the focus to the

would probably have remained unthinkable if UK punk hadn’t come along to violate what used to be called ‘good taste’ and ‘good manners’ to wage war on what Norbert Elias called ‘the civilizing process.’ Such a list would definitely include, somewhere near the top, reality TV shows like Jersey Shore and Jackass along with indiscriminate public disclosure and what I call pornetration—the penetration of the public sphere by pornography via the internet.

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place where I live a lot of the time now in the States—with some remarks on the subcultures I’ve become affiliated with or have been living alongside for the past ten years or so in the Mojave Desert, because I believe that continuities and discontinuities with ‘70s punk are discernible there, too. North of my house is Joshua Tree, 800,000 acres of protected wilderness, some of it sacred territory to the nomadic bands of Cahuilla Indians who’ve inhabited the region for hundreds of years—a pristine New World paradise. Nearby is the 29 Palms Marine Base—960 square miles of military-owned desert —an area larger than the state of Rhode Island on which the military test weaponry and rehearse for engagements with the enemy in other deserts on other continents. I’m situated geographically, ideologically, spiritually in a sense in a place that’s somewhere near the current epicenter of what I like to call the apocalyptic drama of American becoming. I always say if the wind is in the right direction I can stand on the edge of my property and lean out into Armageddon.

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I know this sounds curmudgeonly and I’m Why punk? Because punk is in a sense how I got to this country, thanks to a skinny little book (Subculture: The Meaning of Style) published in 1979, when I was young, that’s shaped the way I live and what I am.

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A moment’s reflection is enough to establish that so much, in fact, has changed since 1979 that we might as well be living on a different planet. In the intervening decades we’ve witnessed, among other things, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the World Trade Center and the organized Left; the global spread of Starbucks and smoking bans; the rise of neo-tribalism, ethnic cleansing, the internet, the cell phone, iPod, iPad, MySpace, mega-churches, and the War on Terror. We’ve seen the rise and fall (or maybe just the rise and stall) of financial derivatives, sub-prime loans and beyond-our-means easy credit consumerism. We’ve witnessed the return with a vengeance on a possibly unprecedented scale of high seas piracy, slavery and child soldiers.

We’ve seen the global spread of fun-

damentalisms of every stripe, the rise and fall—at least the rise and stall—of U.S. global economic dominance and during those three decades we’ve also witnessed, at a somewhat lower level of world historical significance, the stabilization to permanence of punk as fashion statement (or alternatively as anti-fashion) statement, as marketable music genre, as casual leisure option and secessionist lifestyle choice. That same period has also witnessed the invasion of the international art-andfashion conscious mediascape by Japanese digital imagery and narrative forms—anime and manga (visual novels), video game scenarios—the digital tooning—as in cartooning—of self-presentation, social networking and self-imagining protocols and the associated rise within the globally expanded confines of the art world of Japanese Business Art superstar Takashi Murakami.

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not saying that punk is singlehandedly responsible for the global jihad but I don’t think it would be stretching the point to suggest that UK punk offered one or two quite pointed and heavy duty provocations to the international community of the modest, the pious, the God-fearing and authority-bound.

But the economy of scale that really seems to count from the interested vantage points of the multitude of monitoring agencies that cluster on the internet is the individual user: the cookie cut-up on-line user profile that gets updated, tracked and monitored with each keystroke, download, posting, purchase, Google search or credit card application. Make no mistake, when we gaze up in wonder at the night sky while out there in the wilderness on a camping trip or into the clear blue light of the cell phone as you upload a text while sitting in your car stuck in traffic, something beyond human, something post-human, something alien (if you like) that couldn’t care less about our individual welfare is looking back unblinkingly at us.

---------------------------------------------

Beyond servicing the military there is very little real

punks were always positioning themselves at the awkward point of intersection between the politics of identity and the politics of consumption and consumerism

economy this far out in the upper desert. There are a lot of artists and musicians drawn to the scenery and low property prices. There are bikers, recreational vehicle enthusiasts, Vietnam vets, Native Tribes people, tweakers, second home owners, retired military personnel and a lot of people who washed up here simply because they had no place else to go. There’s a growing nucleus of neo-homesteaders, eco-pagans, secessionists, home schoolers and burners (as in Burning Man desert counter-cultural survivalists) that congregate round a thriving local music scene.

The desert is where both the buck and the bucks stop in terms of consumption and consumerism.

It’s where people with few resources make do and mend, get by and entertain themselves. It’s where you can see laid out as in a diagram the unsustainable consequences of spendand-burn consumerism. For instance there’s a mountain of garbage growing visibly higher week by week out at the municipal dump on the Joshua Tree Mesa. You haul your garbage up there and they just rake it in, cover it with dirt and add another layer the next day. It’s in your face, not out of sight and out of mind. The deserts of the American southwest are on the front line of suburban sprawl and it’s here that the sub-prime mortgage crisis has hit deepest and hardest. In places like Las Vegas and Phoenix and Riverside, foreclosure rates are running at more than 30%.

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1970s punk was never just about appropriating commodities to construct new social identities—repurposing utilitarian designs, for instance, as some kind of purely decorative arts project— making safety pins and bin liners into fashion statements. It was also always about the politics of consumption and consumerism, not just the politics of identity. To put it more precisely, punks were always positioning themselves at the awkward point of intersection between the politics of identity and the politics of consumption and consumerism. ‘70s punk as a prophetic End Time discourse always involved an ethically based critique of and resistance to late capitalist spend-and-burn disposability and waste. It staked its claim in the dirty unwanted and unwashed remainder of hippie Utopianism—in everything the organic movement defined itself against—in plastic and industrial detritus. They stuck their face in the mess we’ve made of things, then stuck their face in your face.

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Otis College of Art and Design Alumni Magazine

Development

25 OMAG

Spring 2011

by George Wolfe

ANNUAL GIFTS PROVIDE SUPPORT TO A VARIETY OF AREAS, INCLUDING:

Mei-Lee Ney and the Art of Legacy

Some work at developing their art. Others work at developing their business. Rare are those such as Mei-Lee who are committed to bridging the chasm between the worlds of business and art.

Scholarships soul by connecting us to the universe and

And with regard to Mei-Lee’s

to each other in the global community in

philanthropic involvement, she adds,

which we share similar thoughts and feel-

“Including Otis as part of my Living

ings, no matter how different our cultures.”

Trust, via the Legacy Society, is my way of

Mei-Lee has never been content to sit on the sidelines, even while making

to a better world, of giving back and being

significant contributions to the College

on the side of what’s good in life. What’s

via Otis’ Legacy Society. Her multi-leveled

good in life is what makes you happy. I

involvement with the College runs deep.

don’t mean the happiness that comes from

The Saturday art history class with teacher

transient experiences (although I have

Bill Kelley changed the way she looks

nothing against them). There is a happi-

at art. She eagerly awaits Otis’ annual

ness that sticks with you from the joy of

Creative Economy Report event, which

learning and understanding and feeling at

she believes just keeps getting better. She

peace with yourself and the world. While

has also enjoyed Otis-sponsored lectures,

this is always a work in progress, the arts

in particular the one by French intellectual/

facilitate that process like nothing else

philosopher/journalist Bernard-Henri Lévy.

can. My gift to the Otis Legacy Society

She looks forward to activities with the

is one of the ways I can give meaning to

Patrons Circle, which she joined in 2010.

my own efforts and life. I enjoy thinking

Other annual events on her calendar

whom I’ll never know, but whose lives

Show and the annual year-end exhibition

I’ve been able to touch and influence by

by graduates.

supporting Otis. Small stories can have big me feel that I can leave something behind

different departments and to share in the

that will continue to benefit mankind and

excitement of the students whose work is

make the world a better place.

know that he always advocates for the

ity. The students’ excitement rubs off on

Legacy Society to think about what the

greater good, not for his own benefit. He

all the visitors. I love to ask students ques-

arts mean to society and how graduates

arts. Five years ago, at a dinner party

embodies what the arts aspire to do—to

tions about their work and hear what they

of art colleges can and do make contribu-

hosted by friend Lyn Kienholz, she met

make us better human beings.

have to say. I still enjoy two paintings by a

tions to our society. Donors should take

senior that I bought three years ago— even

the time to learn more about Otis and its

more so now than when I first saw them.”

leadership, and evaluate for themselves

to tour the Otis campus.

“I was so impressed by the energy I

“

I would encourage those thinking about becoming involved with the Otis Legacy Society to consider what the arts mean to society and how graduates of art colleges can and do make contributions to our society.

”

about becoming involved with the Otis

is an investment adviser who loves the

“I was drawn to the concept that Otis educates and hones the talents of young artists who will contribute toward making

Alumni participation affects Otis in many ways. Your gifts to Otis underscore the value of your education.

Every gift, no matter the size, makes a significant difference in the lives of Otis students. Your contribution also helps us increase our alumni participation rate— a key statistic used by corporations and foundations for awarding grants.

“I would encourage those thinking

ity! Every floor of Otis is abuzz with activMei-Lee Ney, who hails from Hong Kong,

Otis President Samuel Hoi. He invited her

New initiatives, such as Integrated Learning

impacts. And on a larger scale, it makes

work of the graduating classes in the

on display. The air is filled with electric-

Campus upgrades

about the lives of the students, most of

are the Scholarship Benefit and Fashion

“It’s always very inspiring to see the

Technology for teaching and learning

participating and making a contribution

“And the Scholarship Benefit, with

whether this is an art institution that can

felt as I observed classes in progress and

the world a better place because the arts

its fashion show and silent auction, is a

fulfill its mission. I believe that if they do,

saw work by students,” recalls Mei-Lee.

have simply made my life richer and given

knockout every year—nothing short of

they will discover—as I did—that Otis is a

“As Sammy and I became better friends,

me greater balance. I firmly believe that

spectacular. The highlight is the fashion

place bursting with creativity, a vision for

I learned more about Otis and admired

societies would wither and die without the

show, in which student designs are

a better future and a deep love for the arts

its mission—and also developed great

arts. They express and reveal not only the

displayed on the runway by professional

with the kind of leadership that can chan-

confidence in its ability to execute it under

best of humanity, but also the worst. The

models who really help bring the fashions

nel this spirit into creations that will ben-

his leadership. Sammy is one of the most

beauty found in art, including art that’s

to life. The designs are sophisticated,

efit us all. By leaving something behind

effective leaders I’ve ever met, this sounds

interwoven into everyday objects, gives

hip, and in many cases, stunningly beauti-

that helps make the world a better place,

like an overstatement, but it’s not. Every-

us great joy. If we didn’t have the arts, and

ful. The entire evening is quite a blast.

donors will receive in return the lasting

one who knows Sammy likes and respects

places like Otis, we’d lose the link to the

I also love seeing the excitement of the

happiness of making their own lives a lot

him, and wants to follow his lead. People

essence of our humanity. Art feeds the

winners of the student design awards.”

more worthwhile.”

For information on the Legacy Society, please contact Sarah Russin, Assistant Vice President, Institutional Advancement, (310) 665-6937 or srussin@otis.edu

WAYS TO GIVE

01 The easiest and most convenient way to give is by visiting our secure giving site at otis.edu/givenow.

otis.edu/ givenow

02

By Mail

03 Call in your gift to the Annual Giving office at (310) 665-6869.

310.

665.

6869

Your participation makes a difference.

It doesn’t matter how much you give.

OMAG 26

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Alumni Around the World

Otis College of Art and Design Alumni Magazine

CANNES

A Cinematographic Experience Olivier Chatard | Fine Art (’07)

section:

Alumni Around the World

Spring 2011

BERLIN

Different Yet Familiar Kelly Akashi | Fine Art (’06)

In June 2008, I moved with Nate Hess (’06) from my

exceptionally free class structures, enjoying the social

hometown of Los Angeles to Berlin, both of us in search

lessons behind the regular monthly class dinners and

of something different from L.A. The super-low rent and

frequent bar nights, as well as the customary studio

abundance of galleries (traditional, phantom, and DIY in

dinners, breakfasts, and lunches, where we would often

spades) were of interest, not to mention the abstract novel

attempt to make Mexican food in Germany, and drink

concept of starting a new life, one detached from ours as

espresso in between, and with, every meal. It goes without

college art students. Many of the most visible contempo-

saying that I ended up taking quite a liking to the notably

rary artists in Europe reside in Berlin but Nate and I began

international student body. I respect them immensely as

to long for a more centralized art community, eventually

artists, and some have become my closest friends.

applying to the most visible and experimental fine art

Do we intuitively connect our actions to something bigger?

How spontaneous and determined must we be to achieve and create what we feel?

My four months back in Los Angeles have been

academy in Europe, Städelschule, in Frankfurt am Main,

extremely busy. I immediately began writing, and was

which was originally suggested to me by my Otis mentor,

awarded a Durfee ARC grant for my recent show at 3001

Alex Slade. It goes without saying that we were both utterly

Gallery at USC. Artist Morgan Cuppet (’08), with whom I

floored when we received our acceptance letters from our

have been in close conversation during these past few

respective professors.

years, along with artist and professor Sharon Lockhart,

In the ensuing year, I adapted to the harsh, hyper-

invited me to install my first solo L.A. show at USC, and

critical Städel environment and came out of it with a more

later invited Nate to exhibit in the neighboring space,

As a creative artist, these two questions have always resonated with me. The definition of

clear and confident understanding of what I want from life

Station. I was able to pursue a project long under

“to create” is “to bring into being.” And that is exactly what drives me — consistently

and why I make art. Being back in school was very familiar

development on southern California pastiche architecture,

pushing my boundaries to pursue and effect innovation.

to me. The feel of the institution, its cold white walls and

working with artist and designer Aida Klein (’05) on the

exposed construction, the mentorship, the peer competi-

design and fabrication of six elaborately joined frames.

topic for my senior thesis. I researched the pressing issues concerning water on our

tion and air of anxiety all reminded me of my past

Life back in L.A. has been eventful, and I’m happy to be

planet, and created an interactive visual tool to convey that information. My efforts were

experiences inside these sorts of spaces. I navigated the

driving around my hometown again.

Possessing a keen interest in environmental issues, I selected water awareness as the

successful, and I was honored by 1st prize in an artistic design competition sponsored by the gaming company Electronic Arts. It was then that I decided to create a film one day that would represent our everyday life in relation to water.

After graduating from Otis and working at Yahoo! for two years, I decided to produce and film this short film. Although I had no prior movie production experience, I had a specific vision in mind; guided by my intuition, I set forth to transform “Awareness” into

“The Grand Elegance,” exhibition by

reality. (The best advice I can offer any artist is to trust in and connect with yourself and

Kelly Akashi at the Beige Cube, run

your artistic visions, no matter what hurdles may seem to exist).

by Philip Zach, Frankfurt, July 2010

I began work on a storyboard, cast two amazing actors, Zoi Kottas and Olivier Riquelme, and asked my very good friend Laurent Vizzacchero to work on editing. With less than $1,000, I filmed “Awareness” in just four days. After several months of editing and many hours creating the 3d effect at the end, I was finally pleased with the result.

My friends who saw it encouraged me to submit it to various film festivals.

“Awareness” was pre-selected for the International Green Film Festival in Seoul, South Korea, and the Awareness Festival and the New Media Film Festival in Los Angeles.

And, much to my surprise, it was selected for screening at the Short Film Corner of the internationally prestigious Cannes Film Festival.

The journey was an extraordinary one. In addition to walking the red carpet and screening “Awareness” to many industry professionals, we attended workshops and Chatard in Cannes with actress Zoi Kottas

27 OMAG

conferences, and met some of the world’s most intriguing and talented producers, directors such as Woody Allen, and actors such as Benificio Del Toro. The world-class festival-related nightlife in stunning Cannes topped off the experience.

My experience in Cannes taught me a great deal. The most important lesson for me, however, was just how critical it was to me to convey the message embodied within “Awareness.” My insistence on following my goals and belief in what I created sustained me. We all possess hopes, dreams and ideas that need to be expressed in some artistic form. “Awareness” was, for me, an inimitable opportunity to give a voice to my vision of the crucial role water plays in our lives.

We are water. It is our common bond, uniting us as human beings and as citizens of this planet. “Awareness” celebrates life and describes what water means to us. It acts as a bridge between people and their emotions. I wanted to make people vibrate with their inner choir, as if they are seeing and experiencing the beauty of life. (We all deserve seven minutes 19 seconds of good in our life).

Presenting “Awareness” at Cannes was more than just a personal and professional coup; it was an opportunity to share my vision of the intersection between beauty and advocacy. And it has also inspired a new film, which is currently in production. But that, as they say, is another story… oliandjoe.com

I adapted to the harsh, hyper-critical Städel environment, and came out of it with a more clear and confident understanding of what I want from life and why I make art.

OMAG 28

section:

Class Notes

Otis College of Art and Design Alumni Magazine

section:

Class Notes

Spring 2011

29 OMAG

ALUMNAE ALUMNUS ALUMNI ALUMNA The Otis Times, the new alumni blog, launched in October as a forum and format for alumni to share news and opportunities, post images and video, and connect with fellow alumni. Please continue to use the Otis Alumni Facebook page to keep in touch with us. Go to otis.edu/alumni for links to both The Otis Times and Facebook. Let us hear from you at alumniupdate@otis.edu Edith Beaucage (’10 MFA Fine Arts) in her studio

Annetta Kapon

Joseph Sola

Andy Manoushagian ’09 MFA Public

’85 Fine Arts

’99 MFA Fine Arts

Practice, Paige Tighe ’10 MFA Public

“The Measure of Value”

“I found some Bic pens by the

Practice and Hataya Tubtim ’10 MFA

Las Cienegas Projects, L.A.

railroad tracks”...

Public Practice as Pedestal & the All

The Happy Lion, Chinatown, L.A.

Girl Band

Lawrence Gipe

“A Little Louder: Performance in

’86 MFA Fine Arts

Juan Capistran

Conversation”

Tucson Museum of Art

’99 Fine Arts

Kristi Engle Gallery, Highland Park

Hespe Gallery, San Francisco

2010 California Biennial Orange County Museum of Art

’89 Fine Arts

Lee Clark

“First Month Free”

“The Word of God: Sandow Birk’s

’01 Fine Arts

Extra Space Storage, L.A.

American Qur’an”

Sylvia White Gallery, Ventura Jonathan Stofenmacher

The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh Karen Nakashima

’10 Fine Arts

David Gallup

’02 MFA Fine Arts

“Walks Through Walls”

’90 Fine Arts

James Gray Gallery, Santa Monica

Highways Performance Space, Santa Monica

“Channel Islands” Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art,

Tofer Chin

Pepperdine University, Malibu

’02 Fine Arts

Edith Beaucage

“Courtesy Valley Phone”

’10 MFA Fine Arts

Reserve L.A.

“hurluburlu”

James Thegerstrom

CB1 Gallery, L.A.

’91 Fine Arts

(‘96, Fine Arts) Untitled, 2010 acrylic, acrylic ink and embossed drawing on duralene

SOLOISTS John M. White ’69 MFA Fine Arts “Lifelines: A Retrospective Exhibition of Performance, Installation, Sculpture, Painting and Drawing” Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena Harrison Storms ’72 MFA Fine Arts “John’s Canyon” Thomas Paul Fine Art, LA

Judithe Hernandez

Myrna Katz

’74 MFA Fine Arts

’80 MFA Fine Arts, ’78 Fine Arts

“La Vida Sobre Papel/Life on Paper”

“Alchemy”

National Museum of Mexican Art,

Ann 330 Gallery, L.A.

Chicago Mineko Grimmer Kerry James Marshall

’81 MFA Fine Arts, ’79 Fine Arts

’78 Fine Arts

“Dialogue”

Vancouver Art Gallery, British Columbia

Koplin del Rio, Culver City

Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle

“Gongs.Wires.Bamboo.”

Main Gallery, Irving Arts Center, TX

Bruce Yonemoto ’79 MFA Fine Arts

Mark Dean Veca

Alexander Gray Associates, N.Y.

’85 Fine Arts

Matthew Warren ’09 MFA Fine Arts and Sergio Bromberg ’10 MFA Fine Arts

Sandow Birk

Sandeep Mukherjee

Deborah Sabet (’05 Fashion Design) “Glee” star Darren Criss wore Sabet’s label District Homme to the 2011 Grammy Awards

Kirk Von Heifner (’06 Fashion Design) Design Director, Fall 2011 collection for eco-conscious brand Vicarious by Nature

“Bound”

Mary Younakof

Gallery 825, L.A.

’06 MFA Fine Arts “The Chromatic Convergence Project”

Camille Rose Garcia

Pacific Design Center, West Hollywood

’92 Fine Arts “Snow White and the Black Lagoon”

Kuger Peterson

Michael Kohn Gallery, L.A.

’06 Fine Arts “DON’T BE EVIL”

Dana Montlack

Urban:Sanctuary, L.A.

’94 Fine Arts Joseph Bellows Gallery, Art San Diego

Alexander Kroll ’08 MFA Fine Arts

Trine Wejp-Olsen

“Unfoldings”

’94 Fine Arts

CB1 Gallery, L.A.

“Volcanic Puffs and Other Tales” George Billis Gallery, L.A.

“When the Shit Hits the Fan” Suzanne Caporael ’79 MFA Fine Arts “The Memory Store”

Western Project, Culver City Scott Derman (‘05, Toy Design) Porkchop Spaceship from “Toy Story 3”

OMAG 30

section:

Class Notes

Otis College of Art and Design Alumni Magazine

section:

Class Notes

31 OMAG

Spring 2011

Read entire essay at otis.edu/PST

ALUMNI CONNECT LA Aaron Kupferman

Ruben Ochoa

’05 Digital Media

’97 Fine Arts

Compositing Lead, Sony Pictures

One of 21 shortlisted artists for the Future

Imageworks team for “Alice in

Generation Art Prize (Victor Pinchuk

Wonderland,” winner of Academy Award

Foundation)

Ashkahn Shaparnia

’00 MFA Fine Arts, ’93 Fine Arts

’06 Fine Arts

Completed documentary, “Red Hope?

Designed skate shoes as a guest artist for

The Blacklisting of Hope Foye: Her Story,

Circa Skateboards

Her Songs”

Chin Ko

Ben Go

’06 Digital Media

’00 Digital Media

Visual Development Artist, Dreamworks’

Director, Brand New School “Honda

“Megamind”

CVR-V” ad featured in Regional Super Bowl Spot

SF

’10 Digital Media

Kenneth Cowan

3D stereoscopic compositor, “Chronicles

’06 MFA Fine Arts and

of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader”

Whitney Stolich

IN PRINT

Seleted for “Jeunes Talents” Project, France

Alonzo Davis

Jules Rochielle

’73 MFA Fine Arts, ’71 Fine Arts

’09 MFA Public Practice

The Bamboo Muse, Blurb

LACE Residency, “Portable City Projects”

Terrance Zdunich

Hazel Mandujano

’98 Communication Arts

’10 MFA Graphic Design, ’03 Fine Arts

5th issue of The Molting, “Mother’s Day”

and Sergio Bromberg ’10 MFA Fine Arts Residents at Sandberg Institute,

MFA) and based on her book. Work by Tami Demaree (’03 MFA), Rashell George (’05), Fay Ray (’02), and Liz Young (’84) was featured. Marco Rios (’97) is Gallery Curator, and the book was designed by Hazel Mandujano (’10 MFA, ’03).

New York At Haunch of Venison, alumni and members of Otis’ Patrons Circle heard from architect Steven Learner (’86), who designed the gallery.

San Francisco Masami Teraoka (’68) spoke to alumni at the Catharine Clark Gallery’s exhibition of his work.

COOL DESIGNERS

Blaine Fontana

Eduardo Lucero

Amalgamate, Zero+Publishing, Inc.

’89 Fashion Design Fall/Winter 2010 Collection at BOXeight’s “Fashion: Refocus” for L.A. Fashion Week Derek Thompson

Amsterdam

’02 Communication Arts Andrew Clinico ’10 Fine Arts Aaron Philip Clark

Member of Incan Abraham band,

’08 MFA Creative Writing

described on NPR as “Deftly infusing

The Science of Paul: A Novel of Crime,

generations of rock music into a graceful

New Pulp Press

and subtly innovative product”

’94 Communication Arts Pixar story artist lectured and led workshops on creature design and storytelling at Otis

IN THE NEWS

IN MEMORIAM

Eloy Torrez

Paul Soldner

’77 MFA Fine Arts

’56 MFA Ceramics

Documentary “Eloy: Take Two” follows

Ceramics pioneer passed away in his

the L.A.-based artist in his journey to cre-

home in Claremont, CA in January. Paul

featured in Fashion Week N.Y.

ate art and music

was Otis’ first ceramics student and stud-

Zoe Hong

Kim Gordon

Consuelo Asper Valdes ’01 Fashion Design “Coco Lancellotti” Spring 2011 line

’02 Fashion Design Collection featured in “Project San Francisco” runway show Hillary Coe ’04 Digital Media Art Director, ad campaign for “Call Of Duty: Black Ops”

ied with Peter Voulkos. ’77 Fine Arts

Karly Kojimoto

Solo show, “The Noise Paintings” at John

’09 Digital Media

McWhinnie Gallery, N.Y.; designed three

Passed away in Hawaii, June

limited edition pieces for Italian luxury

Beginning in October 2011, Pacific

an artist and still work in clay. It was that

Standard Time: Art in LA 1945-1980,

vision that made the difference. If you

a Getty initiative, will explore and

think about innovation, it’s always about

celebrate the legacy of contemporary art

that—it’s about a contextual shift. It’s not

in Southern California. For far too long

in the old linear progression.”

The gravitational pull of Voulkos’

and art movements—some of which have

energy was powerful. Billy Al Bengston

spread far beyond its geographic borders

(’57) remembers the moment he and

—have been under-recognized and under-

fellow Otis student Ken Price (’57)

documented.

witnessed a demonstration Voulkos

Critic Arthur Danto has defined

gave when he first arrived in L.A.

the “art world” as composed of artists

Bengston found his own medium as one

performance)

and “certain curators, dealers, critics,

of the leading lights of the Finish Fetish

Left: Feminist Art Workers (Cheri Gaulke), Heaven or

collectors.” Here in Southern California,

movement in the 1960s, which used new

Hell?, 1979 (photo from performance)

we would add a handful of colleges and

materials such as paints designed for the

Images © Feminist Art Workers (Nancy Angelo, Candace

universities that have contributed to

automotive and aerospace industries.

Collection of Woman’s Building Image Archive at Otis

’04 MFA Fine Arts

by John Souza and Annie Buckley (’03

when he met Voulkos, who arranged a

Angelica Furiosa), Nothing to Say?, 1977, (photo from

Compton, Cheri Gaulke, Vanalyne Green, Laurel Klick),

Brian Cuartero

the exhibition Psychic Outlaws, curated

scholarship. “The main thing for me was

minimally equipped. He returned to Otis

the achievements of this region’s artists

Above: Feminist Art Workers (Nancy Angelo as Sister

At the Luckman Gallery, alumni viewed

By Scarlet Cheng

and decorative, and the classroom was

“Voulkos’ vision was that you could be

Christopher Rowland

Los Angeles

At the time ceramics was craft-oriented

to get off the craft track,” Mason says.

for Outstanding Visual Effects

NY

Otis in the Art Scene of Southern California

the essential strength and vitality of our

Another landmark for the school

cultural universe—with Otis College of Art

was when Ralph Bacerra took over the

and Design key among them.

ceramics department in 1983, with an

Since 1918 Otis has served as an

aesthetic as precise and deliberately

incubator for innovation. In the post-

exquisite as Voulkos’ was rough-hewn

war era, pivotal was the arrival of Paul

and spontaneously expressive. Bacerra

Voulkos in 1954 to set up the ceramic arts

covered smooth surfaces with eye-

department at the Los Angeles County

popping geometric forms created through

Art Institute (later Otis). His work with

multiple layers of over-glazing. He

ceramics had quickly moved into

drew freely on both Asian and Western

the sculptural. Assembling, tearing and

motifs. He, too, touched the lives of

gouging pieces of clay, he created an

many students, including Paul Soldner

On October 1, Otis’ Ben Maltz Gallery will open the exhibition Doin’ it in Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman’s Building, a project directed by Meg Linton, Director of Galleries and Exhibitions, and Sue Maberry, Director of Library and Information Technology. The Woman’s Building (WB) was a public center of women’s culture founded by artist Judy Chicago, art historian Arlene Raven, and designer Sheila Levrant de Bretteville in 1973. Others who were part of this pioneering institution are Leslie Labowitz-Starus (’72) and Chair of Graduate Public Practice Suzanne Lacy. Doin’ it in Public contextualizes and pays tribute to the groundbreaking work of feminist artists and art cooperatives at the WB from 1973-1991. The WB was an epicenter of explosive art making and political activism that reverberated across the nation and continues to effect the art world today.

The exhibition is part of Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980, an unprecedented collaboration that brings together more than 60 Southern California cultural institutions for six months to tell the story of the birth of the L.A. art scene. Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America. Additional support for Doin’ It in Public has been provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts, The Henry Luce Foundation, Supporters of the Woman’s Building and the Barbara Lee Family Foundation.

aesthetic that paralleled the Abstract

(’56), who went on to make ceramics or

Expressionist movement in painting

teach or both. Although they made very

on the East Coast. The work was

different art, Voulkos and Bacerra shared

revolutionary, especially because clay

the ethos of hard work, combined with a

was generally considered more craft

fearlessness in using any and all material

than art in those days.

that served their expression.

Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980

Hammer Museum, UCLA

Doin’ it in Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman’s Building

American Museum of Ceramic Art, Pomona Paul Soldner (’56), Billy Al Bengston (’56), John Mason (’56), Ken Price (’57)

label Sportmax, and performed at the

John Hebard

As plans for the fall Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A.

Hollywood Bowl with Sonic Youth

’71 Fine Arts

1945-1980 exhibitions unfold, Otis has learned about

Passed away in August, 2010

many institutions that will feature alumni. Keep your

johnhebard.com

eyes open for alumni and faculty work in many other

Carlos Almarez (’74), John Mason (’57), Ken Price (’57), Billy Al Bengston (’56), Norman Zammitt (’61)

museum and gallery shows!

Getty Research Inst.

Getty Museum

John Baldessari (’58)

www.pacificstandardtime.org

Through his own work and its

–

exposure in art galleries, Voulkos

Lynn Zelevansky, former LACMA

challenged this concept and

curator, wrote “But even under the

revolutionized the practice of ceramics.

best of circumstances, museums only

He also deeply influenced a generation

provide part of the support needed for

of students, among them John Mason

contemporary art. In the absence of a

(’57) and Ken Price (’57), two of the most

diverse critical press and a strong art

respected ceramic artists today. While

market, since the 1920s the [art] schools

their work is very different from Voulkos,’

have been the glue that has held the Los

they internalized the lesson that an

Angeles art world together.”

artist can harness any materials to his or her expression.

Yes, the glue, and the spawning ground and laboratory for new ideas and

Mason had been interested in

ways of working, as well as the incubator

ceramics the first time he attended

of the young talent that will lead us

Otis, travelling from Nevada in 1949.

through this new century.

Alonzo Davis (’73)

Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego

Santa Barbara Museum of Art

Robert Irwin (’50)

John Altoon (’49)

Leslie Labowitz-Starus (’72), John White (’69 MFA)

Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach

Scripps College Williamson Gallery, Pomona

LACMA

Carlos Almarez (’74), Gil de Montes (’74)

John Mason (’56), Ken Price (’57)

Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena

UCLA Fowler Museum

LACE

Patssi Valdez (’85)

Laguna Art Museum Robert Irwin (’50), John Mason (’56)

Museum of Contemporary Art Bas Jan Ader (’65), Billy Al Bengston (’56)

John Altoon (’49), Ken Price (’57)

Patssi Valdez (’85), Carlos Almarez (’74)

Pomona Museum of Art

Vincent Price Art Museum, Monterey

Robert Irwin ’50), Bas Jan Ader (’65)

Tyrus Wong (’32), George Chann (’42)

Wendy Given ’02 MFA Fine Arts “Wake, 2010” C print

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