SVA CLOSE UP

Book Report

In early 2023, the Visual Arts Press, the in-house design studio of the School of Visual Arts, will publish a book of oral history, trivia, prognostications and impossible-to-confirm legends about the College, in celebration of SVA’s 75th anniversary, which is taking place throughout the 2022 – 2023 academic year.

The 300-pluspage book was a collaborative effort, featuring contributions from longtime chairs, faculty, staff and administrators, as well as art, photos and historical materials provided by alumni and the SVA Archives. Its 75 chapters cover everything from SVA’s founding in 1947 to its most notable alumni to its present-day operations and predictions— some serious, some not—for its future.

The commemorative publication will be presented as a keepsake for SVA staff, as well offered as a gift for donors of $75 or more to the SVA Alumni Society’s Support the Talent campaign, which funds student scholarships and awards. For more on Support the Talent, see page 65. To make a donation, visit sva.edu/alumnisociety. [Greg Herbowy]

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News and events from around the College

Precious Medals

FROM TOP The ADC’s 2022 Manship Medallion recipients included SVA’s Gail Anderson (second from right), Richard Wilde (seen here receiving his award from MPS Branding Chair Debbie Millman) and Rich Tu. Photos by Jenna Bascom (BFA 2006 Photography), courtesy The One Club for Creativity.

The Manship Medallion, one of the earliest and most significant honors bestowed by ADC, or the Art Directors Club, the designindustry organization now known as The One Club, was reinstated at the group’s 101st awards ceremony this past May in New York City, now with the purpose of honoring professionals who have played significant roles in growing and sustaining ADC’s mission.

Of this year’s 12 medallion recipients, five had close SVA ties: BFA Advertising and BFA Design Chair Gail Anderson (BFA 1984 Media Arts; see page 42), BFA Design faculty member Paula Scher, SVA Board of Directors member and BFA Design faculty member Eileen Hedy Schultz (BFA 1977 Media Arts), alumnus Rich Tu (MFA 2009 Illustration as Visual Essay) and retired BFA Advertising and BFA Design Chair Richard Wilde (see page 42). Anderson is a current One Club board member and has hosted ADC workshops; Scher has designed for the organization; Schultz, a past ADC president, remains the only woman to have served in the role; Tu is a co-founder and underwriter of a grant program for young BIPOC professionals; and Wilde is a former board member and workshop organizer.

The Manship Medallion is named for its designer, artist Paul Manship, who also created the famous Prometheus sculpture at Rockefeller Center. Like that work, the award references Greek mythology, with its depiction of the god Apollo riding the winged horse Pegasus meant to evoke the creative drive and spirit. [GH]

Coming Attractions

For more information on SVA events, visit sva.edu/events.

i3: Images, Ideas, Inspiration Lectures

MPS Digital Photography presents talks by photographers and other noted industry professionals. Tuesdays, 7:00pm ET, online. Full schedule at sva.edu/events.

MFA Computer Arts Alumni Exhibition

A selection of work by program alumni and work by the late Bruce Wands, MFA Computer Arts chair emeritus (see page 80). Through November 21. SVA Flatiron Gallery, 133/141 West 21st Street.

SVA @ Untitled, Art Miami

Featuring work by eight 2022 alumni from SVA undergraduate and graduate programs. November 29 – December 4. Ocean Drive and 12th Street, Miami Beach, Florida.

The Book Show

A selection of books authored and illustrated by MFA Illustration as Visual Essay students. December 1, 2022 – January 14, 2023. SVA Gramercy Gallery, 209 East 23rd Street.

BFA Interior Design: Built Environments Exhibition

An exhibition of work by program students. December 1, 2022 – January 14, 2023. SVA Flatiron Gallery, 133/141 West 21st Street.

NOTABLE QUOTES FROM COLLEGE EVENTS

HEARD AT SVA

“There is so much worth seeing if your eyes are open— if you are willing to look, and if you are willing to be open to everything that you see.” —Roxane Gay, writer. From Gay’s keynote speech at the 2022 SVA Commencement.

“Make sure that your personal projects express something that’s important to you but push you creatively, so you can show a new style. . . . Commercial folks and editorial folks rarely want to take a chance if they haven’t seen you do it before.” —Aundre Larrow, photographer and commercial director. From a talk hosted by MPS Digital Photography.

“Origami” on Tour

“O rigami in the Garden,” a traveling exhibition of largescale, origami-inspired metal sculptures begun in 2014 by the husband-and-wife team of Kevin Box (BFA 1999 Fine Arts) and Jennifer Box, is having a busy few years. After stops at four venues in 2021, the show popped up in May at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, where it was on view through the summer, and the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley in Winchester, Virginia, where it runs through mid-November. Next year, it moves on to the Huntsville Botanical Garden in Alabama and the Las Cruces Museums in New Mexico. The couple also occasionally welcomes visitors to their three-acre Turquoise Trail Sculpture Garden in Los Cerrillos, New Mexico. For more information, visit origamiinthegarden.com. [GH]

FROM TOP Kevin Box and Jennifer Box, Master Peace and Hero’s Horse, both 2014, powder-coated steel. Courtesy the Atlanta Botanical Garden.

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News and events from around the College

Mariam Ghani, The Worlds We Speak, 2022, debossed ceramic tile, brushed steel. Commissioned by Delta Air Lines in partnership with Queens Museum, New York. Photo by Rank Studios. Ghani portrait by Tommy Lau, courtesy Ghani.

Art on Arrival

This past spring, LaGuardia Airport opened its new Terminal C, serving Delta Air Lines flights, as part of a larger overhaul of the Queens transportation hub. To beautify the space, Delta and the Queens Museum commissioned site-specific installations by six local artists, including SVA alumnus Mariam Ghani (MFA 2002 Photography and Related Media).

Ghani’s contribution, a mosaic titled The Worlds We Speak, is located in the terminal’s baggage claim. Its 700-plus circular tiles are individually engraved with names of the languages spoken in the New York City area, written in each language’s alphabet. The work builds on an earlier language-inspired project Ghani created for the Queens Museum, which documented endangered languages that can still be heard in the borough’s neighborhoods.

Ghani is not the only SVA-affiliated artist to have work featured in LaGuardia’s redesign. Fred Wilson, who has taught in the MFA Fine Arts program, also contributed. And an installation by Sarah Sze (MFA 1997 Fine Arts) has been on view in the airport’s new Terminal B since its 2020 ribbon-cutting. [GH]

On the March

SVA students, faculty and staff walked on June 26 in the NYC Pride March, an annual civil-rights demonstration and celebration of LGBTQ+ community. This year was the College’s first as an official participant in the event. Morgan Dyer, a BFA Design student and intern at the Visual Arts Press, SVA’s in-house design studio, designed a banner for the occasion.

SVA's involvement was made possible by the coordinated efforts of Dan Halm (MFA 2001 Illustration as Visual Essay; BFA 1994 Illustration), project manager, External Affairs; Yvette Joseph, former coordinator, and Jarvis Watson, director, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; Arielle Kempler, associate director, and Abby Wohl, RN, Student Health and Counseling Services; Adam Krumm, assistant director, Residence Life; and Michael Severance (MFA 2013 Art Practice; BFA 2011 Fine Arts), operations manager, Academic Affairs. The SVA marchers were also supported by the SVA Campus Store, SVA Library, Continuing Education, BFA Advertising and BFA Design, Visual Arts Press, SVA Communication and the Office of the President. Plans to march again in 2023 are in the works. [GH]

SVA students, faculty and staff march together in the 2022 NYC Pride March. Photos by MPS Digital Photography Chair Tom P. Ashe.

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News and events from around the College

JUNE 2022 THEATLANTIC.COM

Chasing Joan Didion

What was it that gave her such power?

By Caitlin Flanagan

NOTABLE QUOTES FROM COLLEGE EVENTS

HEARD AT SVA

Cover Story

Artist and BFA Illustration Academic Advisor Wayde McIntosh usually doesn’t accept magazine assignments. “They have a ridiculous time frame,” he says, particularly for his preferred medium, oil paints. But this year, he made an exception for The Atlantic. McIntosh’s portrait of a young Joan Didion—dressed in black and standing alone on a Malibu beach—graced the magazine’s June cover, which featured contributor Caitlin Flanagan’s essay on the late writer’s lifelong history with California.

McIntosh was given less than two weeks for the job. “They originally wanted an oil painting,” he says. “I told them there was no way that would be possible and suggested that I might be able to make something digitally in that time frame. Then they asked if I had worked digitally before. I said, ‘Absolutely not.’”

Nonetheless, he created a digital piece, giving himself a crash course on the Procreate app and, despite the cramming, enjoying the process of experimenting with the software. “It’s definitely something I would do again,” he says.

McIntosh, who got his MFA in fine arts from Yale before joining SVA, focuses on portraiture and figurative work in his practice. Legacy (2017), his painting of friend and fellow artist Jordan Casteel, tied for third place in the National Portrait Gallery’s 2019 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. Last fall, his graphite-and-gold-leaf portraits of SVA Office Services staff—done in tribute to their continued on-campus work during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic— appeared in “Adoration,” an exhibition with fellow artist and BFA Film Academic Advisor John-Michael Byrd, presented by BFA Visual & Critical Studies in the SVA Flatiron Project Space. For more information, visit instagram.com/ waydemcintosh. [GH]

FROM TOP Wayde McIntosh, cover for The Atlantic, June 2022; Andre, 2021, graphite and gold leaf on paper, from “Adoration,” a 2021 exhibition at SVA. “As an illustrator, my biggest challenge is not the drawing part, but the communication part. . . . As a storyteller, the hardest part is finding the right way to tell my stories.” —Feifei Ruan (MFA 2015 Visual Narrative), illustrator and visual story- teller. From a talk hosted by MFA Visual Narrative.

“Sound is contagious. Through the sonic and through sonic practices, you can actually gather people together. . .. So every time you go to the club and listen to Fela Kuti, know that you’re also dancing to resistance. You’re embodying resistance.” —Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, curator, writer and incoming director of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. From a talk hosted by MA Curatorial Practice.

Art Is . . . Timely

Since the last issue of the Visual Arts Journal, two new SVA posters have made their debut in New York City’s subway system, the latest installments in an advertising and public-art campaign begun in the College’s earliest days, when it was known as the Cartoonists & Illustrators School. (The first poster’s tagline? “See You in the Funny Papers!”)

In June, BFA Illustration faculty member Marcos Chin’s poster went up in stations around the city for a summer run. The design featured an illustration of a person wearing a widebrimmed hat and sling bag, surrounded by flowers, evoking the abundant blooms and radiant heat of the season. But the work also carried a personal message, as Chin explains in a corresponding SVA video profile—one that was especially, though coincidentally, resonant, given its debut during Pride Month. “When I was coming up as a young illustrator, whenever I saw pictures in the media, I never saw myself,” he says. “As a gay Chinese person

VAB312-R2 2-sht Davis-60x46.indd 1 8/8/2022 10:35:46 AM Summer and fall 2022 SVA “subway” posters by alumnus and former faculty member Paul Davis (left) and faculty member Marcos Chin (below).

with brown skin, this gave me an opportunity to put that out there so other people who may feel as though they’re not being seen or represented . . . might change their minds.”

In September, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of SVA, a poster by renowned graphic artist Paul Davis (1959 Illustration) was installed. The extra-large work, formatted horizontally to occupy two adjoining advertising spaces on station walls, is Davis’s fourth SVA poster. The distinguished alumnus, who is a member of the ADC’s and Society of Illustrators’ halls of fame, taught at SVA for many years and was the recipient of the College’s 1998 Masters Series Award and Exhibition.

For video interviews with Chin and other past SVA poster artists, visit sva.edu/videos. [GH]

BFA . COMICS 2O22

2022 COMICS AND ILLUSTRATION

BFA . ILLUSTRATION 2O22

Nick Bertozzi

in conversation with

Molly Ostertag + Comics & Censorship

by Bill Kartalopoulos

Yuko Shimizou in conversation with Toma Vagner + Illustration is everywhere by Tim O’Brien

What’s in a Name?

In June, SVA’s BFA Cartooning program—which, along with BFA Illustration, represents one of the two longest continuously taught disciplines at the College—was officially renamed BFA Comics, following approval of the change by the New York State Board of Regents, which supervises educational institutions in the state.

Why the new name? Because, says BFA Comics and BFA Illustration Chair Viktor Koen (MFA 1992 Illustration as Visual Essay), while cartooning will continue to be taught in the program, the word comics better conveys the range of work produced and studied by the department’s students and faculty.

“Comics is the most relevant umbrella term to represent independent, nonfiction, superhero, underground and web comics, as well as graphic novels and all other subgenres of long-form sequential work,” he says. “It represents a deeply respected language of sequential expression, an art discipline, a field of study and a career. This name change will accurately reflect our department’s passion for storytelling, attract great talent in students and faculty but also dynamically position our graduates in the industry, with its many forms and platforms.”

For more information, visit sva.edu/comics. [GH]