MYSVA

Shannie C. Mitrovich

BFA 2004 Graphic Design shanniemitrovich.com / @scmcakes

THIS YEAR, the School of Visual Arts celebrates its 75th anniversary, an occasion commemorated throughout this issue, most noticeably on the cover, which features a custom-designed “birthday” cake for the College created by pastry chef and alumnus Shannie C. Mitrovich.

After graduating from SVA, Mitrovich joined an interior architecture firm, where she worked as a designer specializing in hospitality. She found herself drawn not just to the spaces she helped design, but to the chefs and their creations and eventually, contemplating a career change, apprenticed in pastry chef Francois Payard’s bakery on Houston Street before enrolling at the International Culinary Center. For the last 10 years, she has been creating unique cakes for all occasions, including a party celebrating designer Iris Apfel’s 95th birthday and the launch of her fashion line at Macy’s. (That design, which featured a likeness of Apfel and painstakingly constructed sugar-paste “pom poms,” took over a month to make.)

“I love the ephemeral aspect,” Mitrovich says of her work. “My customers enjoy the cakes visually, they enjoy their delicious taste, and then it’s gone forever and I move on to the next project.”

To create her SVA cake, Mitrovich worked with Mark Maltais, art director of the Visual Arts Press, the in-house design studio at SVA, to develop a design meant to recall the labor and materials of a painter or sculptor’s process, incorporating a Swiss meringue buttercream that fades from white into the College’s signature blue, scraped away in places to reveal the layers of cake and buttercream underneath. In July, Mitrovich, Maltais, photographer Sam Morgan and BFA Design student and Visual Arts Press intern Morgan Dyer gathered in a BFA Photography and Video studio to style and photograph the cake for the front and back covers, an unused option for which, along with some behind-the-scenes photos, you can see here. (Special thanks to BFA Photography and Video’s Jahi Sabater, studio manager, and Anton Vancamelbeke, director of operations, for making the shoot possible.) And when all was done the cake was eaten, and now it’s gone forever.

For another behind-the-scenes look at this issue’s cover, visit instagram.com/ svanyc. Happy 75th birthday, SVA!