Fall 2016

journal VISUAL ARTS

SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS MAGA ZINE FALL 

FAL L 2016 FROM THE PRESIDENT | 3 SVA CLOSE UP | 4

News and events from around the College WHAT’S IN STORE | 10

Products created by SVA entrepreneurs CREATIVE LIFE: Circuit Training | 16 A how-to for film festival hopefuls PORTFOLIO: Rachel Papo | 20 Photographs documenting the lives of homeschooled children SPOTLIGHT: Austin | 32 Six graduates getting creative in the famously “weird” Texas city Q+A: Paul Amenta | 38 An MFA Fine Arts graduate runs a nonprofit supporting site-specific art

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“We’ve entered into a period of ultimate typography.”

RANDOM CHARACTERS | 42

What is generative type?

COLOR COMMENTARY | 48

Works by MFA Computer Art graduates celebrate the department’s past 30 years REALITY SERIES | 58

Illustrator Olivier Kugler’s journalistic method Critical Situation | 65 Jennifer Krasinski and Dejan Lukic on the role of today’s art writer

SUBJECT MATTER:

ALUMNI AFFAIRS | 66

For Your Benefit | Generating Insight: Valuing Arts Education | Donors | SVA Alumni Society Awards Spring 2016 | Notes and Exhibitions | In Memoriam FROM THE ARCHIVES | 80

Recent additions to the Milton Glaser Design Study Center and Archives

“When I heard something interesting, I would just scribble it on my drawing.”

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VISUAL ARTS JOURNAL School of Visual Arts Magazine Fall 2016 Volume 24, Number 2

MYSVA

Alumni re-imagine the SVA logo

EDITORIAL STAFF S. A. Modenstein, senior editor Greg Herbowy, editor James S. Harrison, copy editor Dan Halm, visuals coordinator

VISUAL ARTS PRESS, LTD. Anthony P. Rhodes, creative director Gail Anderson, director of design and digital media Brian Smith, art director Ein Jung, Yejee Pae, Gina Roi, designers

COVER FRONT: Kate Gilmore, Higher Ground

(installation view), 2015, site-specific performance.

BACK: Rachel Papo, Dinnertime (detail), 2012, digital C-print.

ADVERTISING SALES 212.592.2207

CONTRIBUTORS Alexander Gelfand Dan Halm Michael Hoinski Andrew Humphreys Beth Kleber Jennifer Krasinki Dejan Lukic Jane Nuzzo Derek Parsons Jeffrey Perkins Miranda Pierce Angela Riechers Gina Roi Hugh Ryan Charles Snyder Kate Styer Danielle Whalen Michael Yap © 2016, Visual Arts Press, Ltd. Visual Arts Journal is published twice a year by SVA External Relations.

School of Visual Arts 209 East 23rd Street New York, NY 10010-3994 Milton Glaser ACTING CHAIRMAN

David Rhodes PRESIDENT

Anthony P. Rhodes EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT

facebook.com/schoolofvisualarts instagram.com/svanyc schoolofvisualarts.tumblr.com twitter.com/SVA_News vimeo.com/svaedu youtube.com/user/SVANewYorkCity

GINA ROI BFA 2016 Design

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V I SUA L A R T S JOUR N A L

FROM THE PR ESIDENT

HARRY ZERNIKE

Some of our earliest computer art faculty are now considered pioneers of the form . . . .

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s we approach the College’s 70th year, there are many achievements worth mentioning. But since space is tight, I will let the “big picture” statistics tell the story. Our inaugural class, in 1947, numbered 35. All of these students came from the greater New York City area, all to study cartooning and illustration, and all were World War II veterans. In 2015 – 2016, our enrollment totaled more than 9,500. Together, these students represented 47 states, two U.S. territories and 72 countries, and they came to SVA to pursue one of 32 graduate and undergraduate degrees, or continuing education, in a range of fields.

Of these 9,500-plus students from the last academic year, 86 of them (representing five states and eight countries) enrolled in our MFA Computer Art program, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this fall. As with the College at large, MFA Computer Art has seen considerable growth in its time. Founded in 1986, the department offered what may be the first such degree in what was then a nascent field. Today, it has more than 1,100 alumni, and computer-generated art and graphics are ubiquitous. It would be hard to think of the last ad you saw, show you watched, publication you read or designed product you bought

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whose creation did not at some point involve a keyboard and a screen. And the possibilities of the technology continue to grow. As evidence, one need look no further than this issue’s Color Commentary, which presents a diverse, inventive group of works by eight MFA Computer Art graduates from throughout the program’s history.

In 1982, SVA opened its first computer lab and began offering courses in computer graphics. In 1993, our BFA program in the field began.

From the start, we have been committed to regularly updating our studios’ computers and software, so that students always have access to industry-standard technology. And some of our earliest computer art faculty are now considered pioneers of the form, including Laurence Gartel (BFA 1977 Media Arts) and Barbara Nessim, both of whom created posters advertising SVA’s computer-based courses during their tenure, which are reproduced here, at right.

The Color Commentary on three decades of MFA Computer Art begins on page 48.

David Rhodes pr esi de n t

Posters created in 1984 by SVA faculty Barbara Nessim (top) and Laurence Gartel to advertise computer graphics courses at the College.

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CLOSE UP

News and events from around the College

Brand New Boop

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or their final thesis projects, MPS Branding students at SVA are split into groups and assigned to research and plan the rebranding of some real-life person (e.g., Madonna, in 2015), place (e.g., Detroit, in 2014) or thing (e.g., the Transportation Security Administration, in 2013). Usually the exercise is hypothetical—a way to test the skills and knowledge students have developed over the last two years. But this year, one student group joined a property’s representative—King Features Syndicate—to work on a strategy that would actually be implemented. The property? Betty Boop™.

Animator Max Fleischer created Betty Boop in 1930, and the character went on to become a symbol of coy but assured sexuality and an icon of early American animation. In recent decades, working closely as exclusive worldwide agent with property owner Fleischer Studios, King Features has licensed Betty’s logo and image to such brands as Adidas, Coca-Cola and Harley-Davidson. Earlier this year Frank Caruso (BFA 1985 Media Arts), King Features’ vice president of creative, contacted SVA to see whether any students would be interested in working on an effort to reintroduce the character to consumers—and younger demographics in particular. Anna Ogier-Bloomer, a Career Development assistant director,

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V I SUA L A R T S JOUR N A L

OPPOSITE: A Betty Boop model sheet

JESSICA MILLER

that MPS Branding students used as reference for their thesis project, courtesy King Features Syndicate.

LEFT: Assorted Betty Boop merchandise and look books in the MPS Branding students’ work space.

BELOW: From left, students Ryan Hausberger, Vanessa Machir, Lauren Vellek and C. J. Draper look at Betty Boop art with King Features VP Frank Caruso.

For up-to-date news and events, visit

SVA.EDU

JESSICA MILLER

All Betty Boop images ©2016 King Features Syndicate, Inc./Fleischer Studios, Inc. TM Hearst Holdings, Inc./Fleischer Studios, Inc.

facilitated a collaboration with MPS Branding Chair Debbie Millman, and Caruso’s offer became the thesis assignment for students C. J. Draper, Ryan Hausberger, Vanessa Machir and Lauren Vellek.

Through extensive research, interviews and brainstorming, the students put together a brand book for Betty, which they presented to King Features in July. Betty’s true identity, they said, is funny, self-sufficient and streetwise—“the original ‘sass symbol.’” The students recommended that King Features seek out partnerships with brands that embrace and reinforce these attributes.

“When I first sat down with Lauren, C. J., Vanessa and Ryan, they instinctively recognized the importance of Betty Boop and what she represents,” Caruso says. “They also recognized the importance of how a character needs to adapt.

Their research and creative thinking have helped reposition Betty Boop to continue her journey and find her place in today’s Millennial mindset.”

This fall and early next year, King Features is rolling out several collaborations as part of their Betty Boop campaign.

Among them: Betty Boop Red, a custom shade created by Pantone, provider of professional color standards for the design industries, and an original Betty-inspired dress by noted fashion designer and Project Runway judge Zac Posen.

[Greg Herbowy] FA L L 20 16

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CLOSE UP

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Repeat Sales Sunlight streamed through the windows of the Metropolitan Pavilion on West 18th Street in Manhattan last June as shoppers filled the aisles of SVA’s first alumni Makers Market. It was one of the first hot and humid days of summer, and the fair was a welcome reprieve from the weather and a refreshing introduction to the work of more than 50 craft and design talents.

Presented by SVA’s External Relations and Alumni Affairs offices, Makers Market was a one-day “pop-up” venue for alumni who make and sell their own products. These ranged from furniture, jewelry and decorative objects to stationery, self-published books and comics; graduates from all degree programs had been invited to submit work for inclusion. The inaugural event brought more than 800 visitors who browsed and shopped throughout the day.

For Sally Bozzuto (MFA 2013 Photography, Video and Related Media), who began making and selling her handmade botanical cyanotype prints and digitally printed greeting cards, called Rhizosphere Prints, on Etsy earlier this year, the market provided the opportunity for her first in-person sale. “One of the challenges of selling online

is cutting through the noise and getting customers to see my store and products,” she says. “Having a platform to get many potential buyers to see my work was exciting.” (For more on Rhizosphere Prints, see What’s in Store, page 14.)

The 2017 Makers Market will be held next June. Event information, including how to participate, will be announced through email, social media and on the SVA website this coming spring. For a complete list of the 2016 vendors, visit sva.edu/makers-market.

[Kate Styer]

International Trade

During the 2015 – 2016 academic year, SVA was home to students from some 70 different countries, not including the U.S. In order to better foster friendships and cultural exchange among undergraduates of all nationalities, last fall the College’s International Student Office established the Cultural Partner Program.

Co-supervised by international student advisors Yoko Anderson and Angelique Cordero, the program selects a limited number of students through an application and interview process. The group meets monthly to share a meal and discuss cultural topics, sensitivity and awareness, as well as the members’ own personal histories. The students also engage in self- and group-directed

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H E A R D AT SVA

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“New York is a city where [having] a washer and dryer means you’ve made it.”

–DEREK LOVE (MA 2016 Design Research, Writing and Criticism), strategist and creative director. From Vital Signs: 2016 MA Design Research Thesis Festival.

ABOVE: Junko Shimizu and Elena Wen

(both BFA 2003 Illustration), of De Islas, show off their company’s T-shirt designs.

BELOW: Visitors check out the Cloud

Lamp, by Richard Clarkson (MFA 2014 Products of Design).

community service—such as teaching art to preschoolers, volunteering at places like the Food Bank for New York City and helping with neighborhood composting projects. The members enjoy baseball games. visits to restaurant and other recreational outings of various kinds, and provide regular feedback on the program’s offerings, which is used to help determine future activities.

After a successful first year, this fall the program increased its membership from 20 to 30, retaining a number of past participants as “senior” members, who now assist in directing the group’s efforts. One 2015 – 2016 member, BFA Illustration student Gabrielle Tantuico, says she particularly valued the community service aspect of the endeavor, which, she says, “was a lovely reminder that . . . there are still concrete ways that I can effect change, while working to make something of myself so that I can do much, much more.” [GH]

V I SUA L A R T S JOUR N A L

To submit an item to Close Up, send information to

NEWS@SVA.EDU

A selection of work created in SVA’s RisoLAB, by MFA Visual Narrative student Thomas Slattery (BFA 2010 Cartooning) (right), MFA Fine Arts student Zoe Frederick (below, left) and BFA Photography faculty member and 1977 alumnus Joanne Seador (below, right).

Ink Spot L

ast fall, SVA began offering two continuing education courses on printmaking with the Risograph duplicator, a relatively little-known piece of office technology developed in Japan in the 1980s that has proven enduringly popular among zine makers, comics creators and fine artists, as it can rapidly and affordably produce large quantities of brilliantly colored, high-quality works. These classes were held in a new campus facility called the RisoLAB, founded by Nathan Fox (MFA 2002 Illustration as Visual Essay), chair of MFA Visual Narrative, and housed in his department’s space at 136 West 21st Street. Five such courses are in session this fall; one of them, Risograph Printing in the Age of Digital and Mechanical Reproduction, is credit-bearing and open to all undergraduate majors. Additionally, the RisoLAB is open to all MFA Visual Narrative students, two artists-in-residence per semester, and any graduate student who completes a training and pays the lab fee.

In terms of user-friendliness, Risographs occupy a space between traditional, labor-intensive printing methods, like silkscreen or etching, and the push-a-button ease of the FA L L 20 16

modern copier. As with a copier, current-model Risographs duplicate either by scanning and reproducing a physical document or by printing from a digital file. But as with many older techniques, Risographs can only print one color at a time. A Risograph-produced multicolored image, then, is really several monochrome images printed one on top of the other.

“Using the Risograph forces you to think of color differently than if you were coloring by hand or on a computer,” Fox says.

“It’s offset printing, which is how most mass-produced publications are made. So for artists and storytellers, it’s incredibly valuable to have a firsthand understanding of this process.”

Artist Panayiotis Terzis (MFA 2015 Fine Arts), who uses the Risograph in his personal practice, serves as the SVA RisoLAB technician and has taught many courses in the facility. At the close of each semester, he organizes Print Slam, an exhibition and sale of pieces—everything from comics to poetry chapbooks—produced by students on the machines. “Part of our mission is to create a space within the College where creative people from different disciplines can come together and learn from each other,” he says, adding that the Risograph’s oldmeets-new process offers “a great opportunity to think about how digital and print media complement and compete with each other.”

For more information, visit risolab.sva.edu. [GH] 7

CLOSE UP

I Need a Hero, 2015, mixed-media collage. The concept of superheroes is often used in art therapy directives to help participants identify solutions and inner strengths to address insecurities and social difficulties. Artwork courtesy of The Art Therapy Project.

Marking a Milestone

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he Art Therapy Outreach Center (ATOC), an independent, nonprofit art-therapy provider located on the SVA campus, celebrated its fifth anniversary at its annual gala this year, held at the Helen Mills Event Space in Manhattan on Thursday, October 20. To commemorate the occasion and mark the start of a new phase, ATOC engaged MPS Branding faculty members Dr. Tom Guariello and Mark Kingsley and a group of the program’s students for a 8

complete rebranding of the organization. The results, unveiled at the gala, included a new name; the ATOC will now be known as The Art Therapy Project.

The Art Therapy Project rebrand was part of MPS Branding’s ongoing mission to provide students with real-world experience.

Students Sam Baker, Natalia Bednarek, Corin Camenisch, Sheila Cannon, Shelli Decker, Ryan Hausberger, Anu Khosla, Anna-Rae Morris and Emeka Patrick all contributed to the effort.

“Branding creates an instant impression on people, conveying a company’s personality and point of view in a way no other communication

can,” says MPS Branding Chair Debbie Millman. By calling the organization a “project,” which implies a work-in-progress, the new name “better reflects the ongoing work of therapy,” says Martha Dorn, the Project’s executive director.

The rebrand also included a review and analysis of ATOC’s print and digital presence, which the MPS Branding team reworked to articulate a clearer mission statement and more focused social-media and promotional strategies. To create a new logo (right) and visual identity, the team collaborated with design firm GrandArmy, founded by BFA Design faculty member Eric Collins.

Moving away from its previous communications approach, which centered on raising awareness of the organization, The Art Therapy Project will now “focus on how our clients and art therapists work together to transform the negative energy of trauma through the creative process,” Dorn says.

[Derek Parsons]

V I SUA L A R T S JOUR N A L

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H E A R D AT SVA

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“We live in an era where the idea is really paramount, and a compelling idea doesn’t require the artist’s own hand at all.”

Coast to Coast In early June, 40 new graduates from nine SVA graduate and undergraduate departments flew to Los Angeles to show their film and animation work in Hollywood.

Spearheaded by Adam Natale, director of the SVA Theatre, and Angie Wojak, director of SVA Career Development, the goal of the twoday event, called SVA Premieres, was to introduce some of SVA’s new filmmakers and their films to members of the entertainment industry.

SVA Premieres was inspired by a conversation that Natale had with Mike Roth (BFA 1999 Animation), co-executive producer of the Cartoon Network’s Shorts Department, at last fall’s After School Special, the College’s annual alumni film festival at the SVA Theatre. Roth suggested

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SVA provide viewing opportunities of recent graduates’ work to members of the industry and Natale ran with the idea.

This fall the idea came full circle when a selection of the work shown at SVA Premieres kicked off the 2016 After School Special, which took place September 15 – 18 and also included virtual reality works; the New York City premiere of Spring Break Zombie Massacre, directed by Robert Carnevale (BFA 1997 Film and Video); and a 30th anniversary screening of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, which features animation by Alex Kupershmidt (BFA 1982 Animation).

SVA Premieres will return to L.A. with a new slate of films next summer. [Jeffrey Perkins]

–MARTIN PURYEAR , artist. From Dreaming Public Art, a symposium

co-hosted by Madison Square Park Conservancy and SVA.

LEFT: Max Colson, still from Poochini, 2016.

ABOVE: Poon Watchara-Amphaiwan, still

from The Creek of Mine, 2016.

Interactive Site

ABOVE, TOP: MFA Interaction Design students

Song Lee (left) and Kohzy Koh present their winning project, WristGuard, at the Interaction 16 conference in Helsinki.

ABOVE, BOTTOM: The logo for the Interaction 17 conference, to be held February 4 - 8 at SVA and the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York City.

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SVA is the official education partner of Interaction 17, the 10th annual conference organized by the Interaction Design Association, a global organization with nearly 80,000 interaction design practitioners as members. More than 1,000 design leaders, professionals and students will convene in New York City February 4 – 8 for this program of workshops, talks and competitions. Liz Danzico, chair of MFA Interaction Design at SVA, will serve as the conference’s education chair.

Interaction 17’s theme—“Make it here. Make it anywhere.”— tweaks the famous lyric in Frank Sinatra’s classic ode to the Big Apple, “New York, New York.” “As everything becomes a point of interaction, ‘anywhere’ becomes a place where design happens,” says Josh Clark, one of the conference’s co-chairs and founder of the interaction design agency Big Medium. Exploring how an environment can shape interaction, and vice versa, the conference will invite participants to look at the city through the lens of interaction design to identify possible future ventures in the field.

This March, at Interaction 16 in Helsinki, MFA Interaction Design students Kohzy Koh and Song Lee won the student design challenge for their project WristGuard, which developed out of an SVA course called Strategic Innovation in Product/Service Design.

Interaction 17 will take place at locations around the SVA campus and at the Metropolitan Pavilion on East 18th Street in Manhattan. For more information, visit interaction17.ixda.org. [DP]

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WHAT’S IN STORE

The latest from SVA entrepreneurs: books, movies, products and more

Burning Both Ends

HABBY OSK etsy.com/shop/sculptureandflame Candle sculptures, $45 – $125 Wax is an important medium for artist Habby Osk (MFA 2009 Fine Arts); its physical qualities lend themselves well to her work’s themes of balance and imbalance and permanency and impermanency. So when she decided to branch out into a more commercial pursuit—something “closely related to my practice, but at the same time blurring the line between art and design,” she says—sticking with the material was a logical choice. Her business, Sculpture & Flame, offers handcrafted candles that can be lit at either end. The pieces, called Burning Both Ends, are all individually crafted and

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available for purchase online and at various stores in her native Iceland.

Osk uses paraffin, soy and stearin waxes in varying combinations to create candles with different transparencies and surfaces—some of them are matte, some quite shiny. Even though all have the same basic U-shape, each has a slight alteration in form, and she uses a variety of dyes to custom-mix the color for every piece.

“I realized that the colors are directly related to the weather,” she says. “I mix darker colors during the winter and brighter hues in the summer.” [Dan Halm]

Lost in R’lyeh

KELLEY HENSING (illustrator) KEDRIC WINKS (author) Atlas Games Card game, $14.95 Ever since its 1928 publication, the H.P. Lovecraft short story “The Call of Cthulhu” has fascinated and intrigued readers. Now, thanks to a new card game, fans of the story can submerge themselves in the saga of the cursed city of R’lyeh (the setting of Lovecraft’s tale), where the predatory entity Cthulhu—who is part octopus, part dragon and part man—lies in wait.

The ultimate objective of Lost in R’lyeh is to escape from the title city. The last player remaining is trapped there forever. Lavishly illustrated by Kelley Hensing (MFA 2010 Illustration as Visual Essay), the game contains 75 tarot-sized cards with names such as Exploring the City, Dark Cult’s Voodoo Rite, Professor Angell’s Investigation and Face Your Darkest Fear. Players can choose between event cards or horror cards as their best route to victory, and may either attempt to escape as quickly as possible or decide to unlock special powers while exploring the metropolis. [DH]

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H E A R D AT SVA

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“Beauty cannot replace functionality, but beauty and functionality together achieve incredibly greater results.”

–GIORGIA LUPI, information designer.

From a talk hosted by MFA Products of Design.

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V I SUA L A R T S JOUR N A L

Still, Looking.

Works 1969 - 2016

BILLY SULLIVAN Edition Patrick Frey Hardcover, 296 pages, $65

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rtist and BFA Photography and Video faculty member Billy Sullivan (1968 Fine Arts) often characterizes his work as a visual diary. So Still, Looking.—a retrospective covering nearly 50 years of his drawings, paintings and photographs—might best be considered as something of a visual memoir (albeit one arranged in nonchronological order).

What a memoir it is. Ever since his days as a student in the 1960s, the Brooklyn-born Sullivan has

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moved among Manhattan’s exclusive art, fashion and nightlife crowds.

His work is accordingly populated with the glamorous bohemians and rarefied spaces that are the stuff of New York City myth, but it is also leavened by depictions of everyday scenes that could be from anyone’s life—birds in the backyard, a dog running on the beach, a vase of flowers on a table.

Still, Looking. juxtaposes the mundane with the romantic in such a way as to erode the distinctions that separate the two. [Greg Herbowy]

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WHAT’S IN STORE

Soundbreaking

MARO CHERMAYEFF and JEFF DUPRE (directors and producers) GEORGE MARTIN (creator) soundbreaking.com Weeknights on PBS November 14-23, 10:00PM ET It might be easier to list the American and British popular music stars who don’t appear in Soundbreaking, an eight-part documentary by Maro Chermayeff, chair of MFA Social Documentary Film at SVA, and Jeff Dupre, Chermayeff’s partner in Show of Force, their filmmaking production company. Whether through original interviews or rare archival materials, the series presents dozens, if not hundreds, of the producers, writers and performers who have shaped the history of what series creator and famed Beatles producer George Martin, who died earlier this year, called “100 years of recorded sound.”

But Soundbreaking’s aim is not to set down a straight chronological survey. Instead, its episodes are arranged thematically, and all organized around the idea that technological advances—whether the development of the electric guitar and the drum machine, or the invention of the Walkman and the MP3—have been the primary driver behind pop music’s progression and expansion. Throughout, varied influential figures discuss their personal and professional experiences with such changes. Rocker Tom Petty airs his grievances with music videos and the lopsided influence they had in the MTV era. Producer and rapper RZA talks about his love for an early-model sampler, which he used to produce some of The Wu-Tang Clan’s best-known songs. And Merrill Garbus (a.k.a.

Tune-Yards) explains how looping pedals, which she uses in live performances to create many-layered rhythms, are integral to her art.

Chermayeff and Dupre, who spent some five years on the series, are now working on several other projects. These include a large-scale documentary on the global refugee crisis and another on how the near-total eradication of polio might serve as an example for how to eliminate disease on a worldwide scale. “Part of our mission,” Chermayeff says, “is to make films for social good.” [GH]

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WARREN PAUL HARRIS— DALL AS, TE X AS © 197 7 WILLIAM K. MAT THIAS

SHORTS

BANANNABONES

SARAH SZE

GHOSTS

PETER KUPER: CONVERSATIONS

Anna Santaguida (BFA 2011 Illustration) etsy.com/shop/banannabones Patches, buttons, stickers and enamel pins | $2 – $10

(MFA 1997 Fine Arts) Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Okwui Enwezor, Laura Hoptman Phaidon Press Softcover, 160 pages | $49.95

Raina Telgemeier (BFA 2002 Illustration) Graphix Hardcover/softcover/e-book, 256 pages | $24.99/$10.99/$10.99

Edited by Kent Worcester (faculty, Art History) University Press of Mississippi Hardcover, 240 pages | $40

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V I SUA L A R T S JOUR N A L

Hydra Table

GARY GIANAKIS hydradesigns.com Adjustable height tables, $1,650

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able heights are usually specific to purpose. A dinner table stands taller than a coffee table, as do most desks. Hydra Tables, produced by a furniture company of the same name founded and run

by Gary Gianakis (BFA 1991 Media Arts), offer an alternative to such single-minded designs. Equipped with a foot-operated hydraulic pump, they can be adjusted from a height of 17 inches to 25 inches or, with the aid of an extension, from 21 to 29 inches. Hydra Tables come

with revolving round or oval glass tops, bases of metal or wood, and Teflon glides on their undersides.

The popular home-decor website Apartment Therapy has called the Hydra “the best moving table we know of.”

Gianakis was inspired to build the Hydra Table after years of living in tight New York City apartments, where one’s living room often also serves as a dining room and office.

Introduced in 1996, the tables are sold directly to corporate clients, and are available to consumers through various interior designers and retailers. In July, Gianakis revealed his latest model, a squarebased table with a cantilevered top, at the Las Vegas Market, a twiceyearly furniture trade show. [GH]

To submit a product for What’s in Store, send information to

NEWS@SVA.EDU

Mossless 4: Public/Private/Portrait

ROMKE HOOGWAERTS and CHARLOTTE COTTON store.mossless.com Softcover, 148 pages, edition of 800, $38 Produced as a companion piece to “Public, Private, Secret,” the first (and ongoing) exhibition at the International Center of Photography’s new location at 250 Bowery in Manhattan, Public/Private/Portrait is the fourth issue of Mossless, a sporadically produced fine-art photography publication created and edited by Romke Hoogwaerts (BFA 2013 Visual & Critical Studies). Hoogwaerts, who also works as an associate photo editor at MSNBC, partnered with the ICP’s current curator-in-residence, Charlotte Cotton, to collect work from more than 60 contemporary pho-

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tographers, writers and painters, all of it relating to how today’s portraiture depicts our public and private selves. (Cotton met Hoogwaerts and suggested their collaboration at Printed Matter’s 2015 New York Art Book Fair.) Mossless 4 features art by SVA BFA Photography alumni Amy Elkins (2007), Zak Krevitt (2014), Molly Matalon (2014), Shohei Miyachi (2014), Signe Pierce (2011), Tim Schutsky (2015) and Caroline Tompkins (2014), and MFA Photography, Video and Related Media alumni Ryan Pfluger (2007) and Pacifico Silano (2012). [GH]

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WHAT’S IN STORE

SHORTS

Chainmail Bikini

HAZEL NEWLEVANT (editor) chainmail-bikini.com Alternative Comics Softcover/PDF, 204 pages, $20/$10 RHIZOSPHERE PRINTS Sally Bozzuto (MFA 2013 Photography, Video and Related Media) rhizospherestudios.com Original cyanotype prints $45 - $65

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DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY Darin Mickey (BFA 1998 Photography) J&L Books Hardcover, 64 pages | $56.50

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38

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Not long after graduating from SVA, Hazel Newlevant (BFA 2014 Cartooning) began working on Chainmail Bikini, a comics anthology about women’s experiences in the world of fantasy-based games—everything from Pokemon to Dungeons & Dragons to video games. “Women and women’s perspectives are underrepresented in gaming,” she says. “We combat a lot of sexism both within the gaming community and within the games themselves.” Nevertheless, she says, countless women have used games to build lasting relationships, cope with real-life struggles and learn more about themselves. The comics Newlevant had read about such experiences were compelling, and she herself had personal stories on the subject that she wanted to tell. “Games helped me connect with friends when I was a lonely homeschooled kid,” she says.

To compile Chainmail Bikini, Newlevant recruited several former classmates as contributors, then solicited submissions through social media and fliers she distributed at comics conventions. (She

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also penned a couple of pieces for the book herself.)

The final work includes pieces by 38 different artists, including SVA alumni Megan Brennan (BFA 2011 Cartooning), Laura Lannes (BFA 2015 Illustration), Molly Ostertag (BFA 2014 Cartooning), Aatmaja Pandya (BFA 2014 Illustration), Anna Rose (BFA 2013 Illustration), Amanda Scurti (BFA 2014 Illustration), Mia Schwartz (BFA 2014 Cartooning), Maggie Siegel-Berele (BFA 2011 Cartooning), Jude Vigants (BFA 2014 Cartooning) and Yao Xiao (BFA 2013 Illustration). A successful Kickstarter campaign (the project was chosen and promoted as one of the company’s “staff picks”) raised the money to cover printing costs, with enough left over to pay each contributor a $500 bonus.

Newlevant is now working on an autobiographical miniseries called No Ivy League (no-ivy-league .com), a coming-of-age story about a pre-college summer she spent working for her hometown’s parks and recreation department. [GH]

MEET THE BOBS AND TWEETS Pepper Springfield (author) and Kristy Caldwell (MFA 2010 Illustration as Visual Essay) Scholastic Inc. Hardcover, 80 pages | $9.99

DIRTY GIRL COLLECTION: NAKED & UNCENSORED Ellen Stagg (BFA 2000 Photography) Goliath Hardcover, 320 pages | $39.99

V I SUA L A R T S JOUR N A L

Lollypups Designer Pet Wear

Even Keel

JOANN LIEBERMAN lollypupspetwear.com Pet clothing and accessories, $24 – $68

EN TSAO evenkeelsoap.com Even Keel bar soaps, $6-10 Soap subscriptions, prices vary

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or JoAnn Lieberman (G 1967), it was her 10-pound bichon frise, named Lacy, who helped spark a change in career. After 30 years of working in New York City’s apparel industry as a textile and surface designer, Lieberman was looking for a new challenge. So in 2008, facing another long New York winter with Lacy, she began creating artsy, free-form sweaters for her pet. Thereafter, whenever they were out together Lieberman would get compliments and queries from other dog walkers; thus Lollypups Designer Pet Wear was born.

Using her business contacts, Lieberman arranged for Lollypups sweaters to be hand-knit and crocheted in Peru, by women who belong to an artisan cooperative that ensures they are paid a living wage. In 2010, she flew to the country to oversee production of the brand’s first line.

After an encouraging initial outing, expanding Lollypups’ offerings was the natural next step.

“I realized early on that because sweaters are a seasonal item, I needed to offer something else,” Lieberman says. Using leftover materials acquired over her years in fashion, she developed harness vests, leashes and other items made of such varied fabrics as woven cotton, gingham, sateen and denim.

In addition to helping make “the canine community” fashionable, Lieberman uses her company as a platform to raise awareness of the number of adoptable dogs in need of homes; she donates a part of her Lollypups proceeds to rescue and adoption events and to no-kill shelters in New York. [DH]

En Tsao (BFA 2011 Graphic Design) grew up in Singapore and moved to New York eight years ago to study at SVA. It wasn’t long before she noticed that almost no Eastern herbology practices were used in the manufacture of U.S.-made skin-care products. This gave her the idea of creating handmade soaps that would give users the benefits of both Eastern and Western cultures.

“Over my time living here, I discovered the abundance of natural resources in the U.S.,” she says, “and started to use it to my advantage: handcrafting soaps using only personally sourced, home-grown or foraged herbs.” To further her knowledge of herbs and their potential applications, she recently enrolled at the ArborVitae School of Traditional Herbalism in New York City. Tsao produces her products seasonally, based on what resources are on offer. Her reservation list online allows people to sign up to have a different bar of soap delivered to them each month. [Jeffrey Perkins]

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Smoosh

ASHLEY RAE PEARSALL heysmoosh.com Smoosh bar soaps, $9 Scrub butters, $18 Smoosh, a line of skin-care products created by Ashley Rae Pearsall (MFA 2012 Computer Art), grew out of her desire to know exactly what she was putting on her skin. That desire—and a dislike of putting cold lotion on her skin—led her to develop a body scrub that both exfoliates and moisturizes in the shower.

“As a designer, I never wanted to limit my exploration to one medium,” FA L L 20 16

she says. “Smoosh allows me to fulfill all of my creative needs. I develop the products by hand, as well as the packaging, the branding, the promo materials and the marketing strategies. Everything! And I love it. It’s my artistic voice to the core.” Fittingly, then, the brand is eponymous—sort of: “Smoosh” was a nickname given to Pearsall by a colleague when she worked as an MFA Computer Art Department staff member, and it stuck.

Pearsall is now developing “an aromatherapy shower bomb” foot treatment, additional scrubs, soap for sensitive skin and almond oil-free preparations for those who are allergic to nuts and nut products. [JP]

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CREATIVE LIFE

Navigating the great wide world of work

SPENCER WORTHLE Y

Circuit Training Making the most of the film festival experience by hugh ryan

It would be hard to overstate the importance of film festivals in the ecosystem of modern filmmaking. They are where important deals are made, where dark horses get discovered, where long-awaited masterpieces sometimes go belly up. Whether you’re a new graduate taking your thesis film out for your first run, or a seasoned vet returning with your latest work, having a good festival game is essential to a career in film. So how do you make sure you stand out from the pack? And which festivals should you go to? We talked to some SVA graduates, and one film insider, to find out.

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BEFORE YOU GO

When David Osit (MFA 2015 Social Documentary Film) made his most recent documentary, Thank You for Playing, he knew two things: one, that he’d be taking it on the festival circuit, and two, that it might not be an immediate audience grabber. “I made a film about a man making a video game about his son who had terminal cancer,” Osit says, “which isn’t exactly March of the Penguins.” Even if the film got accepted at festivals, he knew he’d have his work cut out for him getting bodies in the seats. And Osit was aiming for a big venue for the world premiere: the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival.

For that, he needed to pull out all the stops.

“We hired what’s called an ‘impact producer,’” Osit says— someone who could break his film down into its main themes, and then contact New York City organizations that do work around those themes to see if their members might be interested in attending. (Osit recommends Impact Media Partners and Picture Motion as companies that do this work.) Not only does working with a group like this almost guarantee a great night, it ensures the kind of buzz that brings reviews, audience awards and, ultimately, distribution. It certainly worked for Thank You for Playing, which The New Yorker praised as “unimaginably intimate,” and which Variety called both “compelling” and “poignant.”

If your goal is a distribution deal, Aijah Keith, acquisitions manager at IFC Films, echoes Osit’s advice. “We’re naturally paying a little more attention to films that have representation,” Keith says. It’s another level of vetting for the quality of the film, although she was quick to add that it’s not necessary, just helpful. If you don’t have representation and aren’t sure V I SUA L A R T S JOUR N A L

how to go about getting it, Keith recommends applying to “one of the distribution labs at a major film festival or film foundation.” For example, the Independent Filmmaker Project produces a weeklong program where “they host one-on-one meetings between producers/filmmakers and distribution companies, sales agents, and so forth.”

Unlike David Osit, Exa Zim (BFA 2015 Film) didn’t know that his and fellow classmate Christian Marsh’s short film Alexa to Exa, a “hybrid experimental documentary” that chronicled Zim’s gender transition, would ever show at a festival. “Honestly,” Zim says with a laugh, “I was just hoping to graduate.”

But Zim agrees that even if you don’t have a long lead time, or the money to hire professionals, it’s still important to prepare a festival squad before you start out.

“Have a support team,” he

OPPOSITE: Thank You for Playing directors Malika

Zouhali-Worrall (center) and David Osit (right) talk with critic Eric Hynes at the 2015 Camden International Film Festival.

TOP: Stills from Thank You for Playing.

ABOVE: Alexa to Exa director Exa Zim at the 2016 BFI Flare festival.

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emphasizes, not just to help with the business, but to help you rebound emotionally if and when your film is rejected—and it will be rejected, if you’re applying to a lot of festivals (which you should be, Zim says).

Alexa to Exa’s producers were friends of Zim’s who’d donated their time to help with the festival process because they believed in the project. After every rejection, they and Zim figured out ways to narrow their focus in order to increase their chances of getting accepted.

“If you filmed in Denver, look for festivals in Denver,” Zim recommends. Or if your film deals with LGBT themes, look for LGBT festivals or festivals with LGBT-specific programming built into their structure. Research festivals’ previous winners, and see if you think your film would be appreciated by the same kind of audience. It’s advice that

H E A R D AT SVA

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“Write what you know if what you know is interesting. If not, find something else.”

–SALMAN RUSHDIE, author. From a talk co-hosted by

The Modern School of Film and SVA.

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has worked well for Zim. To date, Alexa to Exa has been in more than 20 festivals, and he estimates it has been accepted a remarkable 40 percent of the time.

ONCE YOU’RE THERE

CHRIS K WON

Elizabeth Ku-Herrero (BFA 2015 Computer Art, Computer Animation and Visual Effects) was part of the four-person SVA team—which included her classmates Thaddaeus Andreades, Nicholas Manfredi and Marie Raoult— that made the animated short Taking the Plunge,

which premiered at the Aruba International Film Festival in 2015 and went on to be the only student film to ever win the Art Directors Club Black Cube Award. She too did extensive research into festivals, but in her case it was to prime herself for the conversations she hoped to have when she was at them. Festivals “provide a way to take a step back from your work and see what else is being created,” she says. For that reason, it’s important to see the other films and meet the other artists.

Osit emphasizes that these connections are not only informative, they also pay off—they are a chance to meet collaborators for your next project, or perhaps get hired onto someone else’s film in a technical or support capacity. “When I go to fes­ tivals with a film, I’m just as much there for my next film,” he says.

And you shouldn’t limit yourself to only meeting other artists. “I love it when filmmakers reach out,” says Keith at IFC. Although

TOP, MIDDLE: Stills from Alexa to Exa. BOTTOM, LEFT: From left, Taking the

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Plunge directors Nicholas Manfredi, Marie Raoult, Elizabeth Ku-Herrero and Thaddaeus Andreades at the 2016 Student Emmy Awards.

BOTTOM, RIGHT, AND OPPOSITE: Stills from Taking the Plunge.

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festivals are always busy, she loves to get to know the artists personally when she can. However, she warned that if you plan on hiring a sales agent for your film, they might discourage that kind of contact. “They want to make sure the right messaging is going out,” she says.

One final word of advice from all of our experts: have fun. “Give yourself some props,” says Zim. “You

worked hard to get there— you deserve it.” Whether it’s your first festival or your 30th, use the time to replenish your energy, reconnect with your love of filmmaking and gear up for your next run. ✸ HUGH RYAN has written about

politics, culture and history for The New York Times, Smithsonian and Vice.

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F OU R F I L M F E ST I VA LS

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That Should Be on Your Radar . . .

BFI FLARE “The British Film Institute’s LGBT showcase is empowering, and full of great mixers to meet other queer film folks.” –Exa Zim SLAMDANCE “Slamdance is a smaller film festival that happens at the same time [and in the same place] as Sundance. Because there have been a few discoveries out of that festival, buyers show up. I know I frequent their films while I’m there.” –Aijah Keith HOT DOCS “Hot Docs is the largest documentary festival in North America. It’s less about the industry, and I love it.” –David Osit SILK ROADS FESTIVAL “The Silk Roads Festival in Dublin was great, because they make a really big effort to bring in a truly international group. On top of that, the culture of the Irish is mind-blowingly welcome.”

–Elizabeth Ku-Herrero

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PORTFOLIO

Rachel Papo by dan halm

IN

2010, to escape the hustle and bustle of Brooklyn, photographer Rachel Papo (MFA 2005 Photography, Video and Related Media)

moved with her husband and infant daughter to Woodstock, New York. One afternoon at a neighborhood café, Papo started a conversation with a bright and charismatic five-year-old girl named True. It turned out that True was being homeschooled, a practice Papo knew little about. Homeschooled children do not learn in a formal setting, but instead are taught outside the classroom by a parent or tutor. Intrigued, Papo spoke with True’s mother and, with her permission, visited the girl’s home to take photographs capturing her nontraditional educational experience.

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Rachel Papo, Snickerdoodle cookies, 2012, digital C-print.

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Spending the day in True’s world and seeing up close her vitality, enthusiasm and imagination piqued Papo’s curiosity—as did the idea of homeschooling, since the photographer herself had an academic-minded upbringing. “Half of my family are teachers and we all went to school and university,” Papo says.

“So at first I didn’t see how this could be a positive thing for a child.” However, based on her time with True, she decided to seek out other members of Woodstock’s homeschooling community, and began what became a two-year project of documenting their lives, with a special focus on True, photographing her in every season and attempting to capture every activity that she did. The result of that work can now be seen in Homeschooled (Kehrer Verlag, 2016), Papo’s second book, published last month.

“Rachel decided to explore this controversial topic in depth in order to challenge her own prejudgments on the issue,” says Brian Clamp, director of ClampArt, Papo’s New York gallery.

“However, as she got to know her subjects, the photographs became less about homeschooling and its successes and failures, and more about the children as individuals—their personalities and interests—and the magic of growing up surrounded by nature.”

While working on the project, Papo says, she “was having mixed feelings all the time. . . . But then I would see the children and how intelligent, mature, thoughtful and sensitive they are and think, ‘This is amazing for them.’ . . . The children were all really special, no matter what the parents’ ideas [for homeschooling] were.”

“I’m just an observer and pretty much reporting what I see and feel,” she says. In her eyes, Homeschooled is very much in line with two of her other major projects: one documenting the lives of 18-year-old female Israeli soldiers—published by powerHouse Books as Serial No. 3817131 in 2008—and the other on students at the renowned Vaganova Ballet Academy in St. Petersburg, Russia. “The dominant thing in my work is 22

my emotions toward these children,” she says. “They are under these institutions that they can’t really do anything about. . . . I feel some kind of sadness in those situations.” In the past, she has chosen subjects with whom she can personally identify— she both served in the Israeli army and studied ballet as a child.

But despite Papo’s unfamiliarity with homeschooling, she was still able to find a connection with the children she photographed, as they brought back memories of being their age.

While her work for Homeschooled offered her plenty of exposure to what most would call an unorthodox method of education, it still left her with questions. Homeschooled children “do seem to have freedom, because they are not in school,” she says. “But are they free, or are they actually jailed in a different way within their own house or within their own family? Who’s more free, the ones who are out in the world?”

Papo finished photography for the project in 2013, when her family moved again, this time to Berlin, for its arts community, relative affordability and family-friendliness. While there, she began selecting images for the book and reestablishing contact with her subjects and their families, asking them to reflect on their lives and education for the book’s text. “People were really curious, beyond the pictures, to know more about the children,” she says. “So it was a very interesting process and I think [putting together] the book really helped me to understand it further.”

As for True, now nine, Papo is looking forward to reconnecting with her when she’s back in the States. “I can’t wait to talk with her, because when I left she was six and just a little kid. Now I’m sure she has a lot more to say.” ✸ ABOVE

Rachel Papo, Iris, 2011, digital C-print.

OPPOSITE, TOP TO BOTTOM

Rachel Papo, Roan’s room, 2011; Roan with Kilda and April, 2011, digital C-prints.

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Rachel Papo, Three weeks after Roscoe went to sleep, 2013, digital C-print.

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Rachel Papo, Rosabel outside her house, 2013, digital C-print.

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Rachel Papo, True’s window, 2012, digital C-print.

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ABOVE

Rachel Papo, True in her backyard, 2011, digital C-print.

OPPOSITE, TOP TO BOTTOM

Rachel Papo, Roan with the outhouse guestbook, 2012; Homework, 2012, digital C-prints.

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Rachel Papo, Grisha and his sister with a squirrel (detail), 2012, digital C-print.

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S

TLIGH

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PO

AUSTIN Visual Arts Journal continues to spotlight cities and countries where SVA alumni live, work and contribute to the local art and design scene. In this issue: Austin, home to the following six graduates who live and work in Texas’ capital city.

by Michael Hoinski

KATHRYN McELROY MFA 2014 Products of Design

athryn McElroy is ahead of the curve, because she helps shape the curve. In 2014, she was part of SVA’s first class to graduate with an MFA in Products of Design, a program with a holistic point of view, examining the physical, digital and business sides of product design. “We were kind of inventing the program as we went,” she says. “It was very self-driven, so we were given the opportunity to explore.”

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innovation. She opens a laptop with a unicorn sticker on it to demonstrate the visual-recognition project she is working on.

McElroy is a design lead and UX “user experience” designer for IBM’s Watson Platform Services. She serves in an intermediary role, working to improve the programming experience for developers who use Watson.

Defined as a “set of smart algorithms that can understand, reason and learn,” Watson is technology that digests swaths of information and interprets it for users, through machine learning and natural language. For example, a physician may

use Watson to comb through data from medical journals, patient records and clinical trials.

McElroy could have stayed in New York and worked at IBM there, but Austin was a draw for the Indiana native.

“The tech scene here is growing like crazy,” she says. In addition to her Watson work, McElroy, who also holds a BS in environmental design and an MA in visual arts, has written her first book, Prototyping for Designers (O’Reilly Media), to be published later this year. “There’s a lot that I want to do,” she says. “I’m driven to take on challenges and push myself outside of my comfort zone.”

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K ATHRYN McELROY PORTR AIT BY ALLISON LEHMAN

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McElroy has transferred that experience into a dynamic role with IBM. After graduating, she joined a new design team there, tasked with changing the way the century-old company has done business. “IBM used to invent technologies and then figure out ways to sell those technologies,” she says. “Now we identify the problem first and then find the correct technology.”

McElroy sits in a glasswalled conference room in a building on IBM’s sprawling North Austin campus. On one wall is a painting of a duck, accompanied by the line “How to Stuff a Wild Duck,” an IBM mantra encouraging

NICOLE LLOYD BFA 2004 Photography

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icole Lloyd sits in the dining room of her South Austin home, which doubles as her office. There is a figurine of a cat on a windowsill nearby. The cat is a Japanese good-luck talisman, called a maneki-neko. “I saw it at a place in Japan and I was like, ‘I want that one,’” Lloyd says, recalling a recent vacation with her husband to visit his family. “But it wasn’t for sale, so I made my husband’s cousin drive me all around looking for this exact one.”

Lloyd, a former art producer for advertising agencies including Deutsch and DDB, makes her living as a photo producer,

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working directly with photographers. Through her company Hello Pictures, she assembles crews in remote locations to execute complex shoots for print campaigns. Determination and resourcefulness—mixed with luck—have made her a cool customer in a pressure-cooker work environment. In the past year, she has coordinated far-flung fashion shoots for the clothier Vineyard Vines—one in Sea Island, Georgia, the other in Portland, Maine. She also worked on an Austin shoot for the carmaker Lincoln. “I got to close down the South Congress Bridge,” she says.

“It was fun to make these epic shots in the middle of the city where I live.”

In addition to her work with Hello Pictures, Lloyd recently launched Make Create,

an invite-only talent network for photo producers working all across the U.S. It features professionals in fields including lighting, makeup and wardrobe. “Your team is so important,” she says. “You can’t pick just anyone.”

Lloyd graduated from SVA wanting to be an artist, and despite the demands of her commercial career she still finds time for personal work.

“I can never stop making

photos, because something inside of me would die,” she says. “But I found my way into this other career path, and coming from SVA was great because I got a full understanding of how photography is made, both in the commercial and art worlds.”

BELOW: A Hello Pictures shoot for

department store Von Maur.

BOTTOM: Nicole Lloyd, Randall with Firewood, 2014.

Nicole Lloyd portrait by Chris Stanford.

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BUG DAVIDSON BFA 2006 Film and Video

B

ABOVE, TOP TO BOTTOM: Bug Davidson, still from

Nothing Like Ivanhoe, 2012; Home, 2015, mediumformat photograph.

OPPOSITE: Still from Anchored Vessels and Vessels Aground (Rule 30), 2015, a collaboration with dancer and choreographer Dany Casey.

Bug Davidson portrait by Becky Davidson.

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ug Davidson just got back from a residency in rural Mexico and is nursing a summer cold with a beer at Ruby’s BBQ, near the University of Texas at Austin campus. An experimental filmmaker and performance artist, Davidson describes a piece they (Davidson prefers “they” to gender-specific pronouns) enacted at the residency, in which they offered free amulets to people in the local town square.

“They were handmade trinkets that had a piece of writing in them,” Davidson says. “It translated from Spanish to say, ‘Amulets for weirdos.’ I had a great experience with two young people who were really thankful for the message, basically: ‘You’re not alone.’”

A failed agriculture science student at Texas A&M, Davidson—who’s gone

by Bug ever since getting hit by a Volkswagen as a

teenager—applied to SVA after being encouraged by a girlfriend who had gone there. “I was like, ‘I’ll go to New York,’” Davidson says. “‘Why not?’ So I signed that promissory note.”

Davidson’s art used to focus pointedly on LGBT issues but is now broadly influenced by history and music.

For one performance piece, Davidson picked movies from their parents’ era—films that contained hate speech and violence toward queer people—and then watched that footage over and over.

“The implication being this was something that I grew up with and it became so ingrained in who I am and how I see myself,” Davidson says.

Davidson had just learned that a current piece, a video sculpture, had been accepted into the 2017 Fusebox Festival in Austin. The work likens Bonnie and Clyde—as humans, not criminals—to Davidson’s mother and father.

A video wall will broadcast 40 unique channels, featuring audio, actors and dancers. “I love narrative cinema, but my ideas don’t really come out that way,” Davidson says.

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SHEA LITTLE BFA 2000 Graphic Design

JANA SWEC BFA 2001 Fine Arts

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hen Shea Little moved back to Austin after graduating from SVA, he noticed the influx of artists relocating to his hometown was disproportionate to the limited number of galleries.

So he and his now-wife, Jana Swec, whom he met at SVA, set about addressing that deficiency. With a third practicing artist, Joseph Phillips, they bought a cheap space in East Austin and got to work.

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“We had this two-bay warehouse,” Little says. “We lived in one half and had our studio in the other half. We’d make art, clear out our living side, and have pop-up shows.”

In 2003, the trio built on the momentum generated by those shows, held at what they called Bolm Studios, and started the East Austin Studio Tour (EAST), a free, annual, self-guided event spanning two weekends (followed in 2012 by the West Austin Studio Tour). In its first year, EAST involved 28 studios; last year, 460 participated. In 2007, the partners formed a nonprofit called Big Medium, now one of the city’s preeminent arts organizations. In addition to supporting the aforementioned studio tours, Big Medium produces the Texas Biennial exhibition and maintains a compound called

Canopy, which comprises a gallery space, artists’ studios and a fancy coffee shop.

Little and Swec both attended SVA by happenstance. Swec, a painter and illustrator, grew up near San Francisco knowing she wanted to go to art school. “I was only good at a few things and art was one of them— and I always wanted to go to New York,” she says. Meanwhile, a visit to Little’s high school by an SVA representative was enticement enough for him to complete his one and only college application.

“I said if I don’t get into SVA, I’ll reconsider my career as an artist,” he says. “But if I do, then I’ll just follow this path.”

Visitors attend “Melissa Brown: Future Past,” a 2016 exhibition at Canopy, the gallery and studio complex of Austin arts organization Big Medium.

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CAPRICE PIERUCCI MFA 1989 Fine Arts

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awdust covers the windowsills; metal clamps wait to cinch wood fragments; buzzing fans swoosh particles in the air. In her studio behind her house in South Austin, Caprice Pierucci, a sculptor who uses her band saw and sanders to turn pieces of birch and pine into elegant, molecular forms with names like Dream State and Silver Lining, is readying works for an upcoming show at the Diehl Gallery in Jackson, Wyoming.

Originally a fiber artist, Pierucci transitioned into her current medium while attending SVA. “One day the wood just took over,” Pierucci says. “I didn’t really know how to work with it, so I was making it up as I went along. When my instructor, [wood sculptor] Ursula von Rydingsvard, saw what I was doing, she told me to get these.” Pierucci picks up one of three handheld Makita

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sanders. “Instantly the work became less architectural and more organic.”

Equipped with a BFA, Pierucci had been working in Austin with her mother, a weaver, when she decided to pursue her MFA in order to teach art. Her mom kept pushing her to move to New York. “The idea was that I would go to New York and then when I came back here I’d be like, coming from New York.”

Now a lecturer at Texas State University, Pierucci considers one of her commercial disappointments as an artist to also be one of her greatest accomplishments. In 2015, Callan Contemporary, a New Orleans gallery that represents Pierucci, showed her work at Art Basel in Miami, only the gallery didn’t sell a single sculpture. “But they said more people took selfies with my pieces than any others,” she says. “So you know that’s a good sign, right?”✸ MICHAEL HOINSKI is a regular

contributor to Texas Monthly and The New York Times. He lives in Austin.

ABOVE: Caprice Pierucci, White Delicate Loops, 2015, pine.

BELOW: Caprice Pierucci, White Cycle, 2015, pine.

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Q+A PAUL AMENTA

ALOIS KRONSCHL AEGER

A

by danielle whalen s the curator and co-founder, with Tom Clinton, of the Grand Rapids-based nonprofit organization SiTE:LAB, Paul Amenta (MFA 2000 Fine Arts) is at the center of an unusual and growing contemporary art scene in Michigan’s second-largest city. SiTE:LAB unites artists and communities through the creation of temporary, site-specific art installations, opening up avenues for collaboration among art-makers and the local cultural, educational and business associations.

After receiving his BFA in fine arts from Grand Valley State University in Michigan, Amenta moved to Seattle to work as an assistant for the installation artist Beliz Brother and was inspired to focus on his own site-specific work for architectural spaces.

From Seattle, Amenta moved to New York City, where he enrolled at SVA. In 2006, after a few years in New York, Amenta returned to Grand Rapids, his hometown, where, in 2010, he established SiTE:LAB. Through his work with the organization, he has 38

brought such artists as Kate Gilmore (MFA 2002 Fine Arts), Daniel Rothbart and Mark Dean Veca to the area, where they have, respectively, painted a house bright pink and held daily performances inside, covered an abandoned auto-body shop with vibrant murals, and cut a hole in a building’s ceiling to create an oculus.

This September, SiTE:LAB once again took part in the annual three-week art event and competition ArtPrize, which attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors to the Grand Rapids area. SiTE:LAB has cemented itself as an important part of ArtPrize, having been named “Best Venue” by the event’s jury for four years running. This year, the nonprofit also received a major grant from the National Endowment for the Arts’ Our Town program; the support will go toward sustaining SiTE:LAB’s education initiatives, a crucial component to its community-geared projects.

Earlier this year, as SiTE:LAB prepared for ArtPrize, Amenta spoke with Visual Arts Journal about his organization’s past, present and future.

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FILIPPO TAGLIATI

People tend to think of the United States’ “art world” as being restricted to New York, Los Angeles and, to an extent, Chicago.

Where does Grand Rapids fit in?

How did you come to found SiTE:LAB?

It all stemmed from a sculpture class I was teaching at Kendall College of Art and Design here in Grand Rapids. It was my second semester there and I realized the students weren’t really engaged with anything outside of the institution, so I would set up trips to museums and introduce them to artists beyond the college. Then I thought it would be interesting if they developed their own exhibition. I found a site and organized a show of undergraduate sculptors, putting the students in charge of every stage of the process. Nearly 500 people came to the opening, and they kept coming up to me asking when the next show was. They were clearly hungry for this type of activity. After that, I was doing two to three projects a year, first with students, then at an organization called ACTIVESITE, and finally with SiTE:LAB. In 2009, ArtPrize was announced, and this gave me an opportunity to tweak what we were doing. One thing that I thought was missing here was exhibitions of challenging work by artists from outside the community. So I reached out to artists to come to Grand Rapids and do these big, crazy projects that had a real collaborative spirit.

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BL ANE DE ST CROIX

There are several college and university programs that energize art activity here, with the main scene being led by a “do-it-yourself” mentality. The big difference between Grand Rapids and a place like New York or LA is that there is a lack of commercial gallery activity here. As a result, people do their own thing—there are a lot of small, pop-up galleries, and people take it upon themselves to make things happen, and to will a community into existence.

Then there’s ArtPrize, which began eight years ago. It has created a platform for some of the things that had already been happening to become bigger and more focused. The city transforms itself for three weeks and suddenly has the energy of a much larger place.

TOP: A 2015 performance for Monika Wuhrer’s “The cHURCH OF MONIKA,” an

ongoing series that the artist brought to a de-sanctified Catholic Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, as part of SiTE:LAB’s Rumsey Street Project.

ABOVE: A view of Diana Shpungin’s Drawing of a House (Triptych), a 2015 Rumsey Street Project installation.

Can you talk a bit about SiTE:LAB’s current effort, the Rumsey Street Project?

About a year and a half ago Habitat for Humanity contacted SiTE:LAB and invited us to use three acres of rundown property they had bought and were planning to redevelop. The result is the Rumsey Street Project.

Rumsey Street consists of abandoned buildings, most of them houses, although there’s also a small church and an auto-body shop. Habitat for Humanity had purchased it and wasn’t planning to start construction until 2017. They asked if we would be interested in occupying the site for two years. We took a tour and I immediately said, “Yes, let’s do it,” without really thinking about the complexity of the project. It was just a great opportunity.

After that, we started working extremely hard to understand the neighborhood. We wanted to make sure we were good neighbors, since we would be there so long. We began going to neighborhood meetings and having Habitat introduce 39

FILIPPO TAGLIATI

Getting back to SiTE:LAB’s community outreach—since you’re returning to Rumsey Street for a second year, I assume the reception from locals to last fall’s shows was positive and no group was against you coming back again?

We would have listened if that had been the case. What I’ve found to be even more helpful than attending community meetings is simply our being present there. This was a totally abandoned street—all the streetlights were turned off. Now I’m there almost every day working on something, whether it’s cleaning a house or working on a lawn, and people walk down the street and say hello. To me, that’s been the most compelling thing. When we first arrived, you didn’t see anybody walking down that street, whereas now there are kids playing soccer in one of the open lots and mothers pushing strollers down the sidewalks, even at night. I know most of the locals, or am at least on a waving basis with them. They probably think, “There’s that crazy guy again, painting a house pink!”

FILIPPO TAGLIATI

Just another day in the neighborhood. . . .

ABOVE AND OPPOSITE: For her 2015 ArtPrize-winning Rumsey Street Project

installation, Higher Ground, Kate Gilmore painted a house bright pink and hung swings for performers to ride.

TOP, RIGHT: A view of Nick Kline’s Rumsey Street Project work Stripes for St. Joseph, 2015.

us to key community players. In the past, we’d come in to a location, do our thing, and move on. With this project, we really felt like we needed to do our due diligence and integrate ourselves into the community to make people feel comfortable with us being there.

Because all of the buildings on Rumsey Street will be torn down as part of Habitat’s redevelopment, we have a lot of leeway with what can be done in these structures. I’m able to offer an artist an entire building to do whatever they want.

Last year, the projects were very ambitious and laborintensive, yet somehow we were able to pull it off. We’re an all-volunteer organization, with no paid staff. We do it out of love and dedication.

What are you planning for Rumsey Street this fall when ArtPrize returns?

We’ve got a number of interesting collaborations planned, including ones with the Grand Rapids Art Museum, the Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, and a local organization called DisArt, which advocates for people with disabilities to have greater access to art and art-making. We’re also working with the Gordon Matta-Clark estate, which is allowing us to show some of his films in mini-theaters that we’ve set up in the auto-body shop.

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Exactly! So there’s been a transformation. We got all the lights turned back on, and people feel safer. Some of the early meetings were interesting because we were anticipating some pushback. During one meeting, there was a woman who clearly had something she wanted to say. She waited until the end to speak and stood up and began, “I’ve been biting my tongue this entire evening. . . .” I looked over to my partner, Tom Clinton, and we both expected a tongue-lashing, but instead she said, “I just want to thank you guys for bringing ArtPrize into our community.” They really welcomed us. I’m sure there are people with reservations, or who aren’t interested in contemporary art, but because it’s a Habitat project it’s all been very positive. If this had been some developer coming in to build condos, we never would have done this.

Our community outreach has also led to responses that have given even deeper meaning to some of the artists’ projects. For instance, the church on the property used to be for a Catholic congregation. They actually outgrew the structure and had to move to a larger building a bit farther away. We brought in Nick Kline, who is predominantly a photographer but created a piece where he painted the exterior of the church in stripes.

Every day, people would come up and tell stories about their memories of the church, such as, “My son was baptized here” or, “I was married here.” You could tell that people had a strong emotional connection to the place, and not just in a nostalgic way. We all have feelings of nostalgia for houses we’ve lived in or areas in which we grew up, but there was something more going on here. People missed that church, even if they attended the new, bigger and better one. It’s so interesting that it took this art project to reveal that. ✸ DANIELLE WHALEN (BFA 2013 Visual & Critical Studies) is a

market editor at Art+Auction and writes for Modern Painters and Blouinartinfo.com.

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GR ANT CARMICHAEL

random CHARACTERS The Development of Generative Typography

BY ANGELA RIECHERS

OPPOSITE: A character set for Generative Sans, a Type Director’s Club Award-winning typeface developed by Leon Butler at SVA’s 2015 Typography as Language summer residency program.

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local gothic

hamburgers crinkle-cut french fries vanilla milkshake

cola hot-dog napkin Sample words in Local Gothic, a randomized typeface created by Christian Schwartz and inspired by the mismatched letters on a Pittsburgh restaurant’s sign.

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erhaps more than any other area of design, the advancement of typography has been tied to the available technology: the physicality of punch cutting replaced by the ephemeral vector outlines of digital typefaces, the demands and possibilities of the printed page

joined by those of the screen. Over the last decades, designers have been experimenting with the creation of what have been called “generative” typefaces, created mainly through coding and algorithms. Generative fonts redraw and can even randomize their letterforms during the typesetting process, adding elements of uncertainty, chaos and surprise to the traditionally precise, specific discipline of type design.

The idea of a self-adjusting typeface is not new. During the 1980s, when all forms of digital type were in their infancy, Dutch designers Just van Rossum and Erik van Blokland introduced a font called FF Beowolf. To create it, Rossum and van Blokland altered the standard programming in a PostScript outline font, the technology of which allows for the scaling up or down of letterforms, to allow a degree of unpredictable randomness that occurred after the type was set. “Beowulf changed as it went from the computer to the printer each time,” says graphic designer and typographer Dan Rhatigan, “so the look of the character shapes could never be duplicated.

The process was based on a nowobsolete version of PostScript, though, so it was very particular to its time and technology.”

As printer drivers and operating systems became more advanced and learned to ignore non-standard data, designers interested in creating generative type began writing the necessary FA L L 20 16

programming to get the job done.

Advances in OpenType, the scalable file format developed jointly by Adobe and Microsoft (and the current industry-standard technology), made many more options possible, including allowing a typeface’s programming to randomly cycle through a series of 20 or more glyphs, or symbols, for each letterform. While not truly generative, in that the letterforms themselves are not being redrawn each time they appear, this approach makes possible multiple variations within a block of text set in the same typeface.

In 2005, type designer Christian Schwartz revived a typeface he had first drawn when he was still in school, inspired by the jumble of mismatched and movable letters on the sign for a Pittsburgh hamburger joint. Schwartz called his creation Local Gothic, giving each letterform a different character width and stroke weight; when randomized via a program by fellow designer Tal Leming, the typeface became odder

still. “Local Gothic has a pile of alternatives for every letter that you can cycle through,” says Tobias Frere-Jones, principal of Frere-Jones Type and one of the most prolific and prominent type designers working today. “The effect is like a movie theater marquee where they’ve lost some of the letters and they have to use a ‘3’ backwards to make an ‘E.’ Christian made use of a vernacular of things being repurposed on the fly.”

In 1993, Frere-Jones himself designed something similar for British designer and art director Neville Brody’s experimental publication Fuse: a face called Reactor, which essentially destroyed itself as it was put to use. Inspired by a burning building and its ruins, Reactor features what appear to be random blots of gunk that show up and accumulate as more text is entered.

More recently, type designer Toshi Omagari created Cowhand, a display typeface meant to be used for headlines and at larger sizes. All words typed in Cowhand are of equal width, whether 45

they contain one character or 20 (the maximum the font allows).

During the time he spent at SVA’s four-week summer Typography as Language residency last year, Leon Butler, principal of Bold Visual Narrative studio in Galway, Ireland, developed a typeface he named Generative Sans.

“I was looking at my own practice as a designer and thinking about new tools and skills I could add,” he says. “And I thought, How could I harness new technologies and apply them to a traditional craft like type design?” Butler devoted

a vehicle, it’s a process, it’s a means to an end, and it should be considered just one part of the tool kit.” One potential application: typefaces that alter themselves to better suit the format. “Erik van Blokland [an educator, computer programmer and typeface designer] has been doing some things lately with responsive lettering that changes depending on the view size of the screen,” Dan Rhatigan says.

“We’ve entered into a period of ultimate typography,” says Paula Scher, a Pentagram partner and, like Jen, a

Using generative typefaces is a cool trick— but what do they bring to a design that a designer couldn’t bring on his or her own? his residency to writing a code that would redraw a letterform each time it was typed, so that every character, while based on an existing foundational typeface, would be unique. Generative Sans won Butler a Type Director’s Club Award of Excellence in its 2015 Communication Design Competition.

Purpose is a nagging question when it comes to generative typefaces. Yes, using them is a cool trick—but what do they bring to a design that a designer couldn’t bring on his or her own?

“Basically, generative type is similar to any other creative tools we have,” says Pentagram partner and BFA Design faculty member Natasha Jen (BFA 2003 Graphic Design), “be they analog or digital, a paintbrush or a computer. It doesn’t have any inherent value in itself.

You need ideas to give it meaning. It’s 46

BFA Design faculty member. “People understand and can differentiate form for the first time as we’re moving from a verbal culture to a super-sophisticated visual one. I find I have to redraw or customize everything for my client’s ‘ownership’ of it. It’s changed the way we think about typography.” In her recent redesign of the visual identity for The New School, a private university in New York City, Scher’s objective was to create something that would be reflective of the university’s stated commitment to innovation, academic freedom and experimentation, and adaptable enough to evolve over time. One element of the identity is Neue, a bespoke variable font she commissioned from type designer Peter Bil’ak. Neue’s letterforms, based on Bil’ak’s font Irma, are governed by a custom algorithm that alternates

regular, extended and very extended widths of the same font within a block of type.

“A lot of this generative stuff is not type—it’s illustration,” says typographic artist and graphic designer Yomar Augusto. “The final result is an illustration piece, creating visual content from typographic elements. . . . It’s beautiful, but it’s not straight typography anymore.

There’s so much more you can do if you base it on actual content, say, the data of your bank account. What if the location and movement of your body could generate typography? The beginning and end of the code are question marks. The data can keep changing, forever different, and that’s amazing.”

The future will likely bring more typefaces with generative, responsive and reactive qualities driven by clear and practical intent, though at the moment, most of what’s happening is theme and variation, such as designer Ellmer Stefan’s Pyte Foundry project.

Every Monday in 2016, Stefan is introducing a new digital typeface based on the same underlying “skeleton” font but made unique through alterations to the individual letters’ parts, such as their stems or serifs. The resulting character sets, available for free download, show a surprising variety of forms and textures.

Perhaps the best way of thinking about generative type is as a kit of parts that allows designers to quickly create alternatives and versions while retaining control over the results, even as more vexing questions remain. What is the type reacting to as it generates itself? Is it something external, like the content or the format of the page? Or is it just reacting to itself? And what is the role of the human designer in all of this? Does generative type represent a loss of control and creativity, or is it a great tool for exploring and experimentation? These issues will give type designers plenty to think about in the years ahead. ✸ ANGELA RIECHERS (MFA 2010 Design

Criticism) is an art director and writer and the coordinator of Typography as Language: Theory and Practice, an SVA Summer Residency Program.

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ABOVE: Cowhand, a typeface by Toshi Omagari.

All words typed in Cowhand are of equal width.

OPPOSITE: Sample typefaces from designer Ellmer Stefan’s Pyte Foundry project (left), and sample text in Neue, a bespoke variable font created by Peter Bil’ak for Paula Scher’s redesign of The New School’s visual identity.

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COLOR COMMENTARY

30 by alexander gelfand

Years of MFA Computer Art

This fall, the MFA Computer Art Department at SVA is celebrating its 30th anniversary. Begun in 1986, the graduate program—the first MFA in the field—now claims more than 1,100 artists, animators, designers and programmers as alumni. These alumni have gone on to direct and animate award-winning films, create innovative works of digital art, and more.

To commemorate this milestone, MFA Computer Art is mounting an exhibition of alumni work—on view from October 22 through the end of November at the SVA Flatiron Gallery and Flatiron Project Space, with

an October 28 reception at the MFA Computer Art Lab, all at 133/141 West 21st Street. The department is also producing a video documentary on some of the program’s more notable graduates; it premieres December 1 at mfaca.sva.edu.

To further mark this anniversary and demonstrate the breadth of achievement of the department’s alumni, Visual Arts Journal asked eight MFA Computer Art graduates to select and talk about one of their favorite works. The results are presented here, in this issue’s Color Commentary.

NAKYUNG LEE (2016)

‘Nowhere.’ (No Where, Now Here), 2016, performance with digital art and sound.

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owhere. (No Where, Now Here), the thesis project by 2016 Alumni Scholarship Award recipient Nakyung Lee—who attended SVA after studying fashion design in her home country of South Korea—combines new media and performance art to explore Eastern and Western concepts of suffering as intrinsic to the human experience and a path to inner peace. But despite the weighty philosophical aspects of the material, Lee says, “the technical part was the hardest thing for me to figure out.”

She began by composing an electronic score containing seven instrumental layers, and drawing a series of images inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy (skulls, flames) and Buddhist thought (mandalas). A friend rendered those drawings in 3D, and Lee employed additional software to apply effects to the images based on the sounds in her score; for example, low-frequency sounds make the images shake, while high-frequency ones distort them. In addition, Lee enlisted the help of the South Korean dancer and choreographer Youngeun Kim to create a series of gestures that represented Dante’s famous journey through purgatory and hell while at the same time reflecting aspects of Buddhist thought.

To create the piece, a dancer performs Kim’s choreography to Lee’s soundtrack as the images are projected against a white wall, while Lee herself makes adjustments to the visuals in real time. Having presented it as part of the MFA Computer Art class of 2016’s thesis showcase last spring, Lee is currently submitting ‘Nowhere.’ to arts festivals.

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KAMIL NAWRATIL (2013)

Perception of Consequence, 2013, multimedia installation.

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amil Nawratil’s interactive new-media piece Perception of Consequence (which was also his MFA thesis project) grew out of a philosophical argument he had with a friend—a fitting origin, since the principal “characters” in the work, a pair of blobby animated creatures composed of a mysterious fluid, seem at times to be locked in conflict.

The argument was a heady one—“one of those debates you have when you’re 19 or 20,” Nawratil says—and concerned self-organized systems, a topic of particular interest to the artist (the name of his studio, VolvoxLabs, refers to a type of unicellular algae that forms large, freshwater colonies). Inspired, he set out to create a piece in which shapes that were bound by the rules of physics moved from order to chaos and back again—a journey that could represent the physical state of a bunch of molecules or, more abstractly, the emotions of two people in a relationship.

Nawratil created the basic animations using one particular piece of software, then used another to ensure that the movements of the shapes’ waterlike matter were physically realistic, and rendered the results in 3D. The resulting work is projected onto a custom-built wooden structure, the wavelike shape of which visually echoes the free-flowing quality of the images playing across it. An electronic score accompanies the piece in surround sound, and is synced to the animation by a computer program that also controls a pair of fans. The fans’ wind speed and direction coordinate with the movements in the video, adding a tactile element. Nawratil has mounted Perception at Copenhagen’s Re-new digital arts festival and at the 2013 SIGGRAPH Asia Art Gallery in Hong Kong.

Today, VolvoxLabs specializes in providing these kinds of immersive, multimedia experiences for clients such as American Express, Samsung, and superstar chef Ferran Adrià, blending visual effects with physical fabrication and sound. “We’ll work with anything we need for a particular project,” Nawratil says.

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JENNIFER YIU-CHEN YANG (2012)

After effects art for Marco Brambilla’s Apollo XVIII, 2015, multimedia installation in Times Square.

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ALL APOLLO XVIII IMAGES COURTESY OF MARCO BR AMBILL A

ennifer Yiu-Chen Yang is accustomed to working big for her motion graphics work, which often combines abstract shapes with figurative imagery. After graduating from SVA, a fellow alumnus recommended Yang for a job creating video animations for Beyoncé’s live shows, including such high-profile outings as the entertainer’s 2013–2014 Mrs. Carter Show tour, 2014 On the Run Tour (with her husband, rapper Jay-Z) and 2016 Formation World Tour, as well as her acclaimed performance of “Crazy in Love” at last year’s Budweiser Made in America festival.

Yang’s work for Beyoncé combines art projected onstage, to synchronize with the live choreography, and motion graphics displayed on multiple LED screens arrayed behind the singer and her ensemble.

Similarly, it was a Beyoncéaffiliated director who recommended Yang to video and installation artist Marco

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Brambilla, who had been commissioned to create a work for Times Square Arts’ Midnight Moment, an ongoing effort by the New York landmark’s sign operators to screen custom-created, technically innovative content every night on more than 20 electronic billboards and kiosk screens in the square.

Brambilla conceived his Midnight Moment project, Apollo XVIII, as an imaginary moon shot—a virtual version of a planned 1970s mission to the moon that NASA never got around to launching.

Yang’s role was to fit Brambilla’s vision into the square’s many different shaped screens. After experimenting with various approaches to composition and storytelling, she ultimately deployed a combination of real, archival NASA footage and computergenerated animation onto the “canvas” of electronic signs placed around the square in a way that gave spectators the feeling they were witnessing an actual launch of a Saturn V rocket.

“It was a challenging project,” Yang says. “But nothing can compare to the moment when I saw all of that hard work shown in Times Square.”

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DUSTIN GRELLA (2009)

“Animation Hotline,” 2011 – present, online animations.

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n 2011, Dustin Grella, an animator and documentary filmmaker, was busy touring festivals with his thesis work, the animated short Prayers for Peace (2009). He found that he was not, however, making anything new. So he enlisted his old SVA instructors to help circulate a telephone number for which he’d set up a voicemail account, then created brief animations based on the messages that strangers left.

After posting his initial efforts to Vimeo and Facebook, the project took off, and Grella has since produced more than 170 shorts—all clocking in at around a minute or less—for what he calls his “Animation Hotline” series.

To create videos for the series, Grella and the team at his Bronx-based operation, Dusty Studio, photograph individual drawings, made with chalk on slate, that illustrate the story told on a voicemail message. The images are then digitized, edited and strung together, producing films that unspool at 12 frames per second. Lately, Grella has been experimenting with animating paper cutouts and paintings. (“If your work isn’t evolving and changing, it gets stale,” he says.) But the films themselves remain intimate vignettes from individual lives—like Ticket (2011), Grella’s personal favorite, in which a homeless woman tells the story of being invited to attend the theater for the first time.

Grella continues to collect stories for the series, which he distributes himself via the Dusty Studio’s website and various social media platforms. (He also occasionally sets up booths at events like Sundance and the Hamburg Short Film Festival, creating brief animations on the spot.) But he hopes “Animation Hotline” gets picked up by an established distributor that could provide an online home for regularly scheduled releases—like a webisode series “or a comic strip,” he says.

To watch selected “Animation Hotline” shorts, visit animationhotline.dustystudio.com. To leave a message on the hotline, call 212.683.2490.

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FEDERICO MUELAS (2002)

Blue Flower/Flor Azul, 2012, permanent public art installation.

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lue Flower/Flor Azul has deep roots. Installed on one side of George Pearl Hall, home of the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, the multimedia work by Federico Muelas—a new-media artist and faculty member in SVA’s BFA and MFA Computer Art departments—is based on his thesis project, Dripping Sounds (2002), which used light sensors to generate electronic sounds based on images of ink dripping into water.

In fact, the building’s architect specifically requested something similar to Dripping Sounds when he commissioned Muelas to make the work. But when he got the assignment, Muelas says, the technology for an expanded version—in particular, the material for a large, energy-efficient screen that would be clearly visible in daylight and the circuitry required to control it—“didn’t yet exist.” It took Muelas and 30 collaborators from across the United States, Australia and England four years to develop it.

Blue Flower/Flor Azul employs a 900-square-foot screen composed of 3,740 pixels made from low-power LCD film, along with a graphics card—a circuit board that generates imagery—that Muelas and his team designed. When electrified, the pixels act as mirrors, reflecting whatever is in front of them. When turned off, the pixels are white. During the day, the installation’s screen displays animations that silhouette the ever-changing forms of blue ink as it diffuses in a volume of water, the ink appearing in white. At night, all the pixels are turned off and nearby projectors cast full-color video of the ink onto the screen.

Day and night, speakers broadcast a soundtrack that corresponds to, and indeed is generated by, the images being displayed on screen. To create the sounds, Muelas used sensors to measure the intensity of light passing through the ink, and employed computer software to convert those shifting intensities into musical notes. For Muelas, it’s all part of his ongoing effort to use art “to understand how nature behaves.”

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ANDY DECK (1993)

Crow_Sourcing, 2012 – present, software, data, and web, installation and print media.

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s a media artist and writer, Andy Deck has long been interested in environmental themes such as extinctions and global warming. So when Turbulence, a nonprofit organization dedicated to commissioning Internet art, asked him to create a piece involving social media, he decided to use the opportunity to get human beings to think more about other species.

For nearly five years, Deck has been tweeting well-known expressions involving animals (“as the crow flies,” “take the bull by the horns”) from the Twitter account @crow_sourcing, and inviting people to visit a Turbulence-hosted website featuring silhouettes of the animals, where they can add and annotate their own related sayings. (The site can be seen at artcontext.net/crow_src.) Hence the title, Crow_Sourcing: the work uses crowdsourcing to collect and comment on idioms and ideas related to animals.

For an interactive physical version of the piece that was shown at the Furtherfield Gallery in London in October 2012, Deck added barcodes to the silhouettes, printed them on cards and hung them on a wall nearby. (The work was later mounted at the Shot Tower Gallery in Columbus, Ohio, as well.) Visitors called up the animals’ related idioms on a tablet computer by scanning the barcodes and were invited to write additions directly on the gallery wall.

Now Deck is in the process of transforming Crow_Sourcing into a book—though given the hundreds of contributions he’s received from around the world, his goal of sticking to one page per animal is proving to be a challenge.

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© DISNE Y • PIX AR

NANCY KATO (1991)

Character animations for Finding Dory, 2016.

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n the 16 years she has been with Pixar, Nancy Kato has worked on nearly every feature the animation studio has made—including Finding Nemo, to which this summer’s hit Finding Dory is the sequel. By the time Kato sets to work animating a character like Dory, much of the groundwork has already been laid: the script has been 56

written, the voice actors have recorded their dialogue, and even the camera angles have been laid out. But the character herself has not yet come to life. “We know what’s supposed to happen,” Kato says, “but we don’t yet have the ‘acting.’ ” As a character animator, it’s Kato’s job to provide precisely that.

“We’re like the actors behind the camera,” she says.

With a static digital 3D model of her character as her guide, Kato begins the

animation process by filming herself as she experiments with different gestures and facial expressions. Once she has an idea of how her assigned character should move and react to her scene partners (in the case of the scene shown above, it’s an octopus named Hank), she roughs out a sequence with animation software using simple geometric shapes.

Only once the results meet with her satisfaction will she then painstakingly craft a

more fluid and fully realized version.

Her colleagues in lighting and effects add further touches, such as realistic shadows and bubbles. When all that’s done, the postproduction crew renders the high-resolution version of the movie that will ultimately appear in a theater near you.

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JOHN F. SIMON (1989)

Expanded Palette, 2016, high-density urethane, medium-density fiberboard, Flashe and acrylic.

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xpanded Palette is a wall-mounted sculpture that emerged from artist John Simon’s daily drawing practice, a meditation-like exercise in improvised sketching that has provided the fodder for all of his recent work. (His book on the subject, Drawing Your Own Path: 33 Practices at the Crossroads of Art and Meditation, is due out next month from Parallax Press.)

The composition on which

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Palette was based belongs to a group of what Simon calls his “expansion drawings,” which symbolically represent the breaking of limits—whether of color and form, or of our planet’s natural resources. Trained as both an artist and a geologist, he has long been sensitive to environmental issues.

Simon himself has been pushing boundaries—those of computer-assisted art— for a long time. A pioneer of software art, he taught himself to write code in the early days of PCs, created his own animated drawing tools, transformed desktop computers into works of art

that used algorithms of his own design to generate ever-changing images, and eventually moved into fabrication, writing programs to control laser cutters and automated routers in order to produce pieces like this one.

For Expanded Palette, the artist scanned his original drawing, converted it into a 3D shape on his computer, and then fed that shape to the automated router in his studio. The router carved the piece from a two-inch block of high-density urethane, after which Simon sanded and painted it. “It’s all just one piece of material,” he says. ✸

ALEXANDER GELFAND

has contributed to The Economist, The New York Times and Wired, among other publications.

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OPPOSITE: An excerpt from Olivier Kugler’s

illustrated feature on Syrian refugees living on the Greek island of Kos, published in the February 2016 issue of Harper’s Magazine. The work is part of the illustrator’s larger, ongoing project on the refugee crisis.

REALITY

Olivier Kugler’s Journalistic Illustration

S E R I ES IN

BY A N DR EW H U M PH R EYS

2009, illustrator Olivier Kugler (MFA 2002 Illustration as Visual Essay) flew from his home in London to Istanbul, then traveled by train to Tehran. While in Tehran he met a local truck driver who invited him along on a four-day drive across Iran, north to south, to deliver a load of bottled water to Kish, a small island in the Persian Gulf. Kugler recorded this unusual journey and turned it into a 30-page piece of beautifully drawn reportage that was published in the French international affairs magazine XXI. FA L L 20 16

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Not only did the story take top prize in the 2011 V&A Illustration Awards, given by the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and considered within the UK to be the industry’s highest honor, it was something of a personal milestone for the artist, because it was the culmination of a much greater journey, one that began at SVA in 2000.

Born in 1970 in Stuttgart, Germany, Kugler began his working life as a graphic designer, but soon found himself bored with the field, and applied for and won a scholarship to SVA’s MFA illustration program. He wanted, he says, to “become a better draftsman.”

While at SVA, he spent much of his time sketching at locations around New York City, and as he drew he found himself eavesdropping on conversations around him. “I didn’t do it consciously,” he says, “but when I heard something interesting I would just scribble it on my drawing.” His instructors and fellow students thought the quotes a novel touch, and it was clear to Kugler that the words added a narrative element that set his work apart.

If you look at his portfolio, it is clear Kugler loves machinery. Not the shiny new kind, but things old, battered and rusted. And in New York, on the route from his Spanish Harlem apartment to the nearby subway stop, he found a parking lot that was home to some particularly appealing wrecks. So on one chilly winter’s day, he set down his camping chair, settled on a particular junked car that caught his fancy, and began drawing. He’d been working about an hour when to his surprise one of the car’s doors opened and a man stepped out. He was homeless and the car was where he slept. Kugler asked the man if he could draw him and the man said yes, for $10. Kugler paid and the man introduced himself as Alberto and began to tell his story: how he was from Puerto Rico and had been a chef until he became

Another excerpt from Kugler’s February 2016 Harper’s portfolio.

Since graduating, Kugler has lived with his girlfriend in London, working for clients from all over the world, including GQ (Germany), Harper’s, Le Monde Diplomatique, The New York

“I didn’t do it consciously, but when I heard something interesting, I would just scribble it on my drawing.” a drug addict and ended up on the street, scavenging the neighborhood for saleable junk. As Alberto talked, Kugler continued to sketch. “I didn’t plan it,” he says now, “but in the end I had a series of drawings about this one guy and his life story. It turned into a visual essay.”

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Times and The New Yorker. Most of the commissions have been for spot illustrations, but in 2005 a supportive editor at the UK newspaper The Guardian gave him valuable page space to develop his signature style of portraiture, in a series that ran as “Kugler’s People.” In this

series, Kugler drew his sitters in their everyday environment—the gym, a prison cell or a trailer park—cramming the frame with all manner of background detail. Squeezed in and around all this are hand-lettered passages of transcribed conversation. Not only do you see Kugler’s people, you listen to them, too.

The Guardian has also assigned him to report on the “new” China, in 2005, to follow British politicians on the campaign trail, in 2011, and to file from Cairo’s Tahrir Square in 2012 during the Egyptian revolution. But, not surprisingly, given the European tradition of graphic novels (bande dessinée), it was a French publisher—XXI magazine—that gave him his first opportunity to create a longer-form piece of work.

V I SUA L A R T S JOUR N A L

Rough drafts of the compositions on the preceding pages, from Kugler’s sketchbook.

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The opening spread for Kugler’s February 2016 Harper’s feature, which gives a bird’s eye view of a Syrian refugee camp on Kos.

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V I SUA L A R T S JOUR N A L

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63

A rough sketch, with notes and reference photos, for Kugler’s illustration on the previous spread.

XXI is a beautifully produced, squarebound brick of a magazine that uses only illustration to accompany reporting from around the world. It is a type of periodical sadly absent from the English-speaking (or -reading) world. Two years after publishing Kugler’s account of his Iranian road trip, XXI ran another 30-page story of his, this one on a week spent in Laos shadowing a French veterinarian who was treating elephants that worked in the region’s logging industry.

Now Kugler is planning another story for XXI, except this time 30 pages will constitute only a brief extract of a much larger endeavor. In December 2013, as part of an effort to publicize its work, the international humanitarian aid organization Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) sent Kugler to make drawings in the Domiz refugee camp in Iraqi Kurdistan, to help publicize its work with the people living there. Over the course of two weeks, he met and interviewed Syrians who had fled their country’s ongoing civil war. Kugler has since traveled to Greece, Switzerland, Germany and France, interviewing more refugees as they make their way north, looking for a safe haven. Portions of this work have been published in Harper’s Magazine, in March 2014 and in February of this year.

Selected pages are reproduced here. His 64

plan is to bring all of these stories together in a book that puts a human face on what is turning out to be the greatest movement of displaced people across Europe since World War II. It is an almost overwhelming undertaking, although in some ways Kugler’s process is simplified by the economic realities. Although he is aided by a grant from Arts Council England, a national arts-funding organization, he is funding the project as he goes along and relies on commissions, mostly from Doctors Without Borders, to gain access to the refugees and to pay his way.

His method of working involves little in the way of preplanning. He simply walks around looking for objects or settings that he would like to draw, a list that might include cars and bikes, pipes, wiring, workshops, barber shops, tea carts, stoves, boats and general clutter.

Once he has found something of visual interest, he will strike up a conversation with whomever is nearby, using the services of a translator to ask questions.

Instead of a sketchbook, he carries a digital recorder to tape his interviews, and a camera. Sketching, he says, is inefficient when he has such limited time on the ground. Instead, he takes hundreds of photographs. Each evening, he reviews the day’s work and plots scenes in a notebook, sketching rough compositions and

page layouts. Only when he is back in his East London studio does he begin making line drawings based on his photographs.

These are then scanned and imported into Freehand, an old competitor program to Adobe Illustrator that is no longer commercially available. Working with a program like this allows Kugler to move elements around onscreen in search of the ideal composition, and also to add color.

He has set himself a 2017 deadline to complete his refugee book but acknowledges that if he isn’t careful, it could just go on and on. “This is a problem I am facing at the moment,” he says. “I don’t know where to ‘draw the line.’”

External forces might conspire to shape his schedule for him: later this year his girlfriend is moving to Ghana to take a new job, and Kugler—as well as their young son—will be going, too.

Rather than worrying about the disruption it might mean for his work, he is excited by the prospect. “I’ve just seen a story on the BBC,” he says. “There are some Syrian refugees who wound up in Ghana.” ✸ ANDREW HUMPHREYS is a London-based

travel journalist and author who is also a fan of graphic reportage. He is the founder of Paradise Road publishing house.

V I SUA L A R T S JOUR N A L

SUBJECT MATTER

As the art world increasingly becomes another arena for international high finance, and as collectors and curators assume increasingly public roles, where does the art critic fit in? Visual Arts Journal asked two MFA Art Writing faculty members how they envision the role of art writers today, and whether they think there is a “crisis” in contemporary criticism.

SAR AH TRIGG

Critical Situation

SVA faculty on the latest in their field

Jennifer Krasinski Writer and art critic for The Village Voice

The art world is what it is, and it’s always been what

➧➧it is. I say this not out of complacency, but because it’s

imperative for critics to understand the complexity of the many systems that surround art-making—to see everything as clearly as possible, while still standing firmly and fearlessly in their place within it. I happen to believe that culture is healthiest when dissent is strong, and that isn’t the case in America at the moment. I see too many artists suffering from riskaversion and other self-imposed limitations in the pursuit of success. What confuses matters is the appearance of dissent that dominates contemporary art—the art that’s made by the so-called “bad boys.” It’s part of the job of critics to encourage risk, and to call it out when it isn’t really there.

Few critics are paid a living wage to do what they do, but there’s a gift hiding in that unjust reality: writers are in some ways freer creatures. We can think and say exactly what we wish because what’s to lose? Don’t ever underestimate what that means for the quality of one’s life and mind—and for the world at large.

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Dejan Lukic

Writer, anthropologist and co-director of Vitalist Cuisine

Crisis is a term found in many aspects of life, from

➧➧economic to political to personal. For me, it is a useful

term outside the world of academic disciplines, where it has been overused. Etymologically, crisis comes from the Greek word krisis, which means “decision.” In the classical era it was used to refer to the turning point in a disease—the time at which it was determined whether the patient lives or dies.

Crisis now indicates the need for a decision that will lead to change; it is an active point.

When it comes to writing about art, I think our job is to reveal the ideas that lie dormant in the work and slightly intensify the sensations found in it. Writing about art is an active engagement with the image. Art is often also a creative response to a social or personal crisis. Even if it is just a matter of overcoming or inventing a certain style, the artist is still inevitably plugged into the political and economic forces of her or his day. In this way, I see art writing as a form of crisis itself—a form of alleviation and affirmation, even when it goes against the grain of institutions or markets or the acceptable styles of the day.

65

FOR YOUR

CONNECT

BENEFITS

Update your contact information sva.edu/alumni

Alumni mixers and networking events

Tell us about your projects, exhibitions and accomplishments alumni@sva.edu

Lifetime access to SVA email Subscriptions to the alumni newsletter and the Visual Arts Journal

Join us for mixers and networking events sva.edu/alumni-events

Career Development workshops and access to the job board

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Weekly model drawing sessions

@sva_alumni facebook.com/schoolofvisualartsalumni @SVAalumni Alumni of the School of Visual Arts

Access to the SVA Library 20% tuition discount on SVA Continuing Education courses 10% discount on SVA-branded products at the SVA Campus Store

For complete details visit sva.edu/alumni

66

Questions? Contact SVA Alumni Affairs at 212.592.2300 or alumni@sva.edu

V I SUA L A R T S JOUR N A L

ALUMNI AFFAIRS

89%

of alumni report they had a good or great experience at SVA

Generating Insight: Valuing Arts Education A message from Jane Nuzzo, director of alumni affairs and development at SVA

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   Â

✱

The SNAAP results are in! SNAAP, the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project, is an annual survey and institutional improvement resource administered by the Indiana University School of Education’s Center for Postsecondary Research. By gathering and presenting data on career preparedness and satisfaction from alumni of a number of U.S. arts schools, the project aims to measure the effectiveness of current curricula and compare institutions’ educational experiences.

In 2015, SVA participated for the third time in the survey’s administration.

Overall, some 40,000 alumni, representing 53 institutions, responded, and nearly 2,000 of them were SVA graduates. On behalf of the College, I want to thank all who took the time to complete the survey and provide their valuable feedback; it will help inform the direction of SVA’s programs, alumni engagement and career development services in the years to come.

Highlights from the 2015 SVA institutional report have been visualized here in an info-graphic. Key findings and data from all participating institutions can be viewed at snaap.indiana.edu.

For more information about staying current and connected, and for a complete list of alumni benefits, visit sva.edu/alumni. Questions? Call 212.592.2300 or email alumni@sva.edu.

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THE SVA EXPERIENCE How do you rate your overall experience?

UNDERGR ADUATE

WOULD RECOMMEND

43%

E XCELLENT GOOD

84%

45%

FAIR

11%

POOR

2%

GR ADUATE

of alumni would recommend SVA to another student

47%

E XCELLENT

42%

GOOD FAIR

9%

POOR

2%

JOB SEARCH UNDERGR ADUATE

When did you obtain your first job ?

1%—Did not search for work after leaving program 4%—Have not yet found work

3%—Pursued further education

9%—After more than a year

In four to 12 months

Prior to leaving SVA

18%

GR ADUATE

38% 27%

In fewer than four months

4%—Did not search for work after leaving program 5%—Have not yet found work 5%—After more than a year

In four to 12 months

OVERALL JOB SATISFACTION

79% 68

Alumni reporting overall job satisfaction with their current job

1%—Pursued further education

17%

38%

Prior to leaving SVA

30% In fewer than four months

V I SUA L A R T S JOUR N A L

PREPAREDNESS Artistic technique

How well did SVA help you acquire or develop the following skills?

59%

34%

44%

37%

19%

VERY

SOMEWHAT

LITTLE

8% VERY

SOMEWHAT LITTLE

UNDERGR ADUATE

Creative thinking and problem solving 63%

31%

57%

34%

VERY

SOMEWHAT

7% VERY

GRADUATE

Interpersonal relations and working collaboratively 22%

41%

36%

32%

40%

28%

VERY

SOMEWHAT

LITTLE

VERY

SOMEWHAT

LITTLE

8%

SOMEWHAT LITTLE

UNDERGR ADUATE

LITTLE

UNDERGR ADUATE

GRADUATE

Technological skills 34%

40%

26%

39%

VERY

SOMEWHAT

LITTLE

VERY

UNDERGR ADUATE

GRADUATE

Networking and relationship building 40%

22%

16%

39%

45%

31%

SOMEWHAT

LITTLE

VERY

SOMEWHAT

LITTLE

VERY

GRADUATE

UNDERGR ADUATE

41%

28%

SOMEWHAT

LITTLE

GRADUATE

DUE TO ROUNDING, TOTALS MAY NOT ADD UP TO 100%.

Inventing new methods for unconventional solutions

What did SVA coursework emphasize?

43%

41%

16%

48%

38%

14%

VERY

SOMEWHAT

LITTLE

VERY

SOMEWHAT

LITTLE

UNDERGR ADUATE

Generating new ideas or brainstorming 64%

30%

66%

VERY

Taking risks in coursework without fear of penalty

30%

6%

GRADUATE

48%

37%

15%

56%

35%

VERY

SOMEWHAT

LITTLE

VERY

SOMEWHAT

4%

SOMEWHAT LITTLE

VERY

UNDERGR ADUATE

SOMEWHAT LITTLE GRADUATE

10% UNDERGR ADUATE

LITTLE

GRADUATE

CURRENT WORK Are you working as a professional artist?

UNDERGR ADUATE

67% C U R R E N T LY A R E

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GR ADUATE

17%

16%

P R E V I O U S LY H A V E

NE VER HAVE

74%

13% 13%

C U R R E N T LY A R E

P R E V I O U S LY H A V E

NE VER HAVE

69

DONORS

The SVA Alumni Society gratefully acknowledges these SVA alumni who gave to the society from January 1, 2016, through June 30, 2016.

Two new award funds were established with the SVA Alumni Society this year. Sally Holst, parent of 2016 graduate Hannah Holst, founded the Hannah Knighton Holst Award to benefit BFA Visual & Critical Studies students. Thomas and Georgeann Carnevali established a fund in memory of their son Thomas Carnevali, Jr., who was a second-year student at SVA when he was in a fatal car accident.

The Thomas J. Carnevali, Jr., Memorial Award will benefit BFA Advertising and BFA Design students.

Lili L. Almog BFA 1992 Photography

Hilary J. Corts BFA 2010 Photography

Alexander Knowlton BFA 1987 Graphic Design

Gail T. Anderson BFA 1984 Graphic Design

Kimberly Costa / Honizukle Press BFA 2004 Animation

Emily M. Langmade MFA 2013 Fine Arts

Anonymous (3) Jason Bakutis BFA 2011 Computer Art, Computer Animation and Visual Effects James L. Barry MFA 2004 Illustration as Visual Essay Alexandra M. Barsky BFA 2013 Computer Art, Computer Animation and Visual Effects Matthew J. Barteluce MFA 2010 Illustration as Visual Essay Brittany G. Bartley BFA 2008 Photography Leroy Biles BFA 1988 Photography Mark Bischel MFA 2000 Illustration as Visual Essay Danielle M. Bliss / Wishbone Letterpress BFA 2005 Graphic Design Scott T. Bluedorn BFA 2009 Illustration Sally Bozzuto MFA 2013 Photography, Video and Related Media Jane Brill-Kellner E 1981 Shannon A. Broder BFA 2011 Visual & Critical Studies MFA 2016 Fine Arts

Charles Curcio BFA 1983 Illustration Adrien A. Dacquel BFA 2011 Illustration John DeLuca BFA 1980 Photography Christopher Dimino BFA 2002 Graphic Design Rachel June Donovan BFA 2003 Graphic Design Jeanne Finneran-Millett BFA 1985 Media Arts

Ella M. Laytham BFA 2013 Design Lillian Lee / Soluna Soluna MFA 2011 Design Hrafnhildur Ósk O. Magnúsdóttir MFA 2009 Fine Arts Nelson F. Martinez BFA 1988 Advertising Candace Mate MFA 1985 Fine Arts

Pamela Fogg BFA 1989 Graphic Design

Patrick McDonnell (alumnus) and Karen O’Connell BFA 1978 Media Arts

Marie Fonseca BFA 1983 Graphic Design

Gianna G. Meola BFA 2014 Illustration

Pikshuen K. Fung MFA 2015 Fine Arts

Gary Messina G 1969 Advertising

Catherine GilmoreBarnes BFA 1986 Graphic Design

Jenny Moradfar Meyer BFA 1980 Illustration

David Haas E 1974 Eric L. Hamilton BFA 1990 Media Arts MFA 1993 Illustration as Visual Essay Steven L. Hamilton MFA 2015 Products of Design M. Benjamin Herndon BFA 2012 Fine Arts John Hoffmire E 1975

Linda Saccoccio MFA 1991 Fine Arts

Michael Campbell

Fitgi Saint-Louis BFA 2011 Graphic Design

Century Elevator

Kaori Sakai BFA 2009 Graphic Design

Exclusive Contracting

Jenna L. Salvagin BFA 2011 Photography Herb Savran BFA 1977 Film and Video Philip Scheuer E 1981 Illustration Robert V. Schnabel BFA 2003 Advertising

Carrickmore, LLC DaVinci Artist Supply First American Equipment Finance General Plumbing GHP Haffey Architects and Engineering, PLLC Mercedes Herrero-Ku Hodes / Lynn Greenbaum

Eileen Hedy Schultz BFA 1977 Graphic Design

Sally Holst

Ashley Seil Smith MFA 2014 Illustration as Visual Essay

J.S. McCarthy Printers

Jimmy S. Seo BFA 2000 Graphic Design Junko Shimizu / De Islas BFA 2003 Illustration

Hudson Square Delivery Raja Jaber Glenn Jacobson Manfred Kirchheimer Laurence G. Jones Architects, PLLC Leeder Furniture

Janet Ludwin

Dominique R. Palladino MFA 2015 Fine Arts

Jocelyn Tsaih BFA 2015 Design

Li Min

Sunyoung Park BFA 2014 Computer Art, Computer Animation and Visual Effects

En Q. Tsao BFA 2011 Graphic Design

Ashley R. Pearsall MFA 2012 Computer Art Eric Perez BFA 2009 Graphic Design

Richard Clarkson MFA 2014 Products of Design

Lyn M. Hughes BFA 1981 Photography

Jackie Seow and Rick Pracher BFA 1984 Graphic Design BFA 1987 Media Arts

Rivka Katvan BFA 1979 Photography

Stephanie Psarros BFA 2010 Fine Arts

Dionisios Kavvadias BFA 1997 Computer Art

Patrick G. Rafanan MPS 2015 Fashion Photography

70

Farrell Brickhouse

Bunny Tobias G 1963 Fine Arts

Rui Ying Huang BFA 2006 Graphic Design

Daniel J. Cooney BFA 1998 Cartooning

B. Borlongan

Theodore Padavano BFA 1984 Illustration

Frank Caruso BFA 1985 Cartooning

Amy L. Klein BFA 2006 Photography

Marc Rubin BFA 1982 Advertising

Jessica F. Moral BFA 1999 Cartooning

David Hollingsworth BFA 2004 Graphic Design

Roseann Consolo BFA 1979 Advertising

Shepard Rosenthal BFA 1975 Graphic Design

We also thank these parents and friends of SVA who supported the SVA Alumni Society.

Ellen Su BFA 2013 Computer Art, Computer Animation and Visual Effects

Julia C. Buntaine MFA 2014 Fine Arts

Joseph G. Cofone BFA 2013 Design

Federico M. Romero MFA 2002 Computer Art

Linda Petrillo E 1969

Jorge Luis Rodriguez BFA 1976 Fine Arts

Levien & Company Lipinski Real Estate Advisors, LLC Lynn and Jim McNulty S. A. Modenstein Morrison Cohen, LLP

Len Uline E 1969 Graphic Design

Yasujiro E. Otsuka

Astrida Valigorsky MFA 1996 Photography and Related Media

Paterson Papers

Matthew L. White MFA 2008 Fine Arts

Ralph A. Ottaiano Random House, LLC S. DiGiacomo & Son, Inc. Signature Financial, LLC

Mark Willis BFA 1998 Illustration

Spacesmith, LLP

Jamilla Wu BFA 2015 Illustration

Telcar Corporate Interiors

Judith A. Yamamoto BFA 1981 Fine Arts (E) denotes an evening program student.

(G) denotes a graduate of the certificate program.

TD Bank, N.A. The Thomas Group The Thomas J. Carnevali, Jr., Memorial Foundation, Inc. Loraine and Michael Ungano, Sr. Will and Ann Eisner Family Foundation V I SUA L A R T S JOUR N A L

SVA ALUMNI SOCIETY AWARDS SPRING 2016

Thanks to generous contributions from alumni and friends of the College, each spring the SVA Alumni Society distributes several awards honoring current and graduating students. The accolades include the Alumni Society Merit Award, for a BFA candidate who demonstrated community building and leadership excellence while at SVA; the Brian Weil Memorial Award, for a graduating BFA Photography student; the DaVinci Award, for BFA Cartooning and BFA Illustration students whose final projects are illustrated books or graphic novels; the Richard Wilde Award, given to third-year BFA Advertising and BFA Design students; and the Silas H. Rhodes Memorial Award, established in memory of SVA’s founder, given to third-year BFA Visual & Critical Studies students who demonstrate excellence in writing.

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Alumni Society Merit Award Sandy Ng, BFA Fine Arts Brian Weil Memorial Award Lilian Wyse, BFA 2016 Photography and Video DaVinci Award Alex Graudins, BFA Cartooning Richard Wilde Award Maria Rose, BFA Design Silas H. Rhodes Memorial Award Margo Greb, BFA Visual & Critical Studies Lily Maslanka, BFA Visual & Critical Studies

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT

Sandy Ng, Shrine (installation view), 2016, laser-cut wood lanterns and panels; Margo Greb, Psychosis (installation view), 2016, constructed box, black light, glowing liquid, performance; Maria Rose, The Modern Chair—Exhibition MoMA, 2016, poster; Lilian Wyse, Democratic Socialism, 2015, wheat paste poster; Lily Maslanka, I Am No Feeble Christ, 2016, ballpoint pen on T-shirt; Alex Graudins, page from TV Head #2: Fearleader, 2016, digital comic.

You can help support the next generation of creative professionals by donating to the SVA Alumni Society at sva.edu/give. Be assured that 100 percent of your contribution will go to future award recipients.

71

ALUMNI NOTES & EXHIBITIONS

To submit items for consideration for Alumni Notes & Exhibitions, email alumni@sva.edu

GROUP EFFORTS Andrea McGinty (MFA 2014 Fine Arts) and Emily Weiner (MFA 2011 Fine Arts) were featured in “20 Emerging Female Artists to Keep on Your Radar,” Artnet News, 12/9/15.

Susanna Beltrandi (BFA 1990 Fine Arts) and Karen Gibbons (MPS 2005 Art Therapy) had work included in “11th Annual Small Works Show,” 440 Gallery, NYC, 12/10/15-1/10/16.

Janet Hansen (BFA 2007 Graphic Design), Adalis Martinez (BFA 2013 Design), Alex Merto (BFA 2009 Graphic Design), Zak Tebbal (BFA 2015 Design) and Rachel Willey (BFA 2012 Graphic Design) were featured in “The Best Book Covers of 2015,” The New York Times, 12/11/15.

Gin Chen (BFA 2013 Advertising), Minju Cho (BFA 2015 Advertising), Lauren Hom (BFA 2013 Advertising), Duek Hyun Kim (BFA 2015 Advertising), Kirk Liu (BFA 2013 Advertising) and Alberto Reyes (BFA 2012 Graphic Design) received Communication Arts Advertising Annual Awards for their project, “Cut Short,” 12/16/2015.

Melanie Crean (MFA 1998 Computer Art), Irvin Morazan (BFA 2003 Photography) and James Scruggs (BFA 1979 Film and Video) received 2016 Creative Capital Awards in the Emerging Fields category, 1/12/16.

Alumnus Asya Geisberg (MFA 1999 Fine Arts) presented solo exhibitions by two fellow MFA Fine Arts alumni at her eponymous NYC gallery: Matthew Craven’s (2010) “Quiet Earth,” 1/14-2/20/16, and Gudmundur Thoroddsen’s (2011) “Dismantled Spirits,” 4/75/14/16.

Leah Dixon (MFA 2014 Fine Arts) and Ashley Garrett (BFA 2008 Fine Arts) had work included in “Sibling Rivalries,” Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA, 1/16-3/12/16.

Several alumni participated in the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, 1/21-1/31/16: Bennett Elliott (BFA 2010 Film and Video) was co-producer of Kate Plays Christine (2016), which won a Sundance U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Writing; Dana Kalmey (MFA 2013 Social Documentary) was associate producer of Trapped (2015), which won a Sundance U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Social Impact Filmmaking; Lindsay Richardson (MFA 2014 Social Documentary) was associate producer of Life, Animated (2015); and Michael Simmonds (BFA 2000 Film and Video) was director of photography for White Girl (2016). In addition, Ja’Tovia Gary (MFA 2014 Social Documentary) participated as a Sundance Documentary Fellow for her feature The Evidence of Things Not Seen (2014).

Daria Irincheeva (BFA 2013 Fine Arts), Gregg Louis (MFA 2009 Fine Arts), Jenny Morgan (MFA 2008 Fine Arts) and Laura Murray (BFA 2012 Fine Arts) had work included in “This One Is Smaller Than This One,” Postmasters, NYC, 1/30-3/12/16.

Daniel Maldonado’s (BFA 1997 Film and Video) H.O.M.E. (2015) and Judy Schiller’s (BFA 1980 Photography) It Happened in Havana: A Yiddish Love Story (2014) all screened at the Queens World Film Festival, NYC, 3/19/16.

Noa Charuvi (MFA 2009 Fine Arts), Sharona Eliassaf (MFA 2011 Fine Arts) and Emily Weiner (MFA 2011 Fine Arts) had work included in “Equinox,” The Willows, NYC, 3/19/16.

Dan Halm (MFA 2001 Illustration as Visual Essay) co-curated “Unearthed,” which included work by Catherine Stubbs (BFA 2015 Illustration), Rockelmann &, Berlin, 3/25-5/21/16.

Santiago Carrasquilla (BFA 2012 Graphic Design), Joey Cofone (BFA 2013 Design), Timothy Goodman (BFA 2007 Graphic Design), Joseph Hollier (BFA 2012 Graphic Design), Anna Laytham (BFA 2013 Design) and Zipeng Zhu (BFA 2013 Design) were featured in “56 Inspiring Designers,” Print, 3/31/16.

Faith Holland (MFA 2013 Photography, Video and Related Media) and Elektra KB (BFA 2012 Visual & Critical Studies) had work included in the online exhibition “Geographically Indeterminate Fantasies: The Animated GIF as Place,” presented by Providence College Galleries, Providence, RI, 4/1/16-4/11/17.

Graig Kreindler (BFA 2002 Illustration) was featured in “The Timeless Baseball Art of Graig Kreindler,” written by Todd Radom (BFA 1986 Media Arts), Sporting News, 4/13/16.

At the Tribeca Film Festival, NYC, 4/13-4/24/16, Johan Grimonprez (MFA 1992 Fine Arts) screened his film Shadow World (2016), and Chris Prynoski (BFA 1994 Animation) and Shannon Prynoski’s (BFA 1994 Film and Video) animation studio Titmouse screened its first feature, Nerdland (2016).

Mickey Duzyj’s (BFA 2004 Illustration) film The Shining Star of Losers Everywhere (2016) screened at the 2016 HotDocs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival and received the Best Short Documentary Award, Toronto, 5/6/15. Sasha Friedlander’s (MFA 2011 Social Documentary) film Mudflow (2016) was selected to pitch for funding at the HotDocs Forum, Toronto, 5/3-5/4/16.

Eric Weeks (BFA 1987 Photography) was named executive director of the 2016 Jeongju International Photography Festival, Jeongju, South Korea, 5/14-5/22/16. He curated “FACT/FICTION” at the festival, which included work by Victoria Hely-Hutchinson (BFA 2009 Photography) and Orit Raff (BFA 1996 Photography).

Denise Treizman, Stacked Deck, 2016, tire, parachute cord, wooden pallet, vinyl fabric, swimming pool noodle, duster and spray paint.

Lili Almog (BFA 1992 Photography), Jose Casado (MFA 2001 Computer Art), Andrew Kim (BFA 2001 Film and Video) and Carole Feuerman (1967 Fine Arts) had work included in “The Need for My Care,” Waterfall Mansion, NYC, 2/3-4/20/16.

Terry Berkowitz (1971 Fine Arts), Alina Bliumis (BFA 1999 Computer Art), Cristos Gianakos (1955 Fine Arts), Rebecca Goyette (MFA 2009 Fine Arts) and Brian Whiteley (MFA 2013 Fine Arts) had work included in “#makeamericagreatagain,” White Box, NYC, 2/1-2/21/16.

Alisa Baremboym (BFA 2004 Fine Arts) and Gregory Edwards (BFA 2003 Fine Arts) were featured in “How Five New York Artist Couples Share Space,” The New York Times, 2/11/16.

M. Benjamin Herndon (BFA 2012 Fine Arts) and Thomas Koken (BFA 1977 Media Arts) had work included in “Vanishing Point,” Art House, Jersey City, NJ, 2/18-4/15/16.

Ina Jang (MPS 2012 Fashion Photography) and Ryan Koopmans (MFA 2012 Photography, Video and Related Media) were featured in “PDN’s 30: Our Choice of New and Emerging Photographers to Watch 2016,” Photo District News, 2/23/16. #SAVEARTSPACE, a public art project launched and curated by Justin Aversano (BFA 2014 Photography) and Travis Rix (BFA 2014 Photography), was on view during Miami Art Week and featured work by Harvey Zipkin (1966 Photography) and John Zoller (BFA 1985 Fine Arts), Miami, 12/1-12/6/15. The project was also on view during Armory Week, NYC, 3/1-3/6/16.

BILL MASSE Y

Several alumni curated exhibitions for Spring/Break Art Show, Skylight at Moynihan Station, NYC, 3/1-3/7/16: Chris Bors (MFA 1998 Illustration as Visual Essay) curated “Eat Sleep Copy Repeat”; Margaret Lanzetta (MFA 1989 Fine Arts) curated “Portable Mind,” which included work by Steve DeFrank (MFA 1990 Fine Arts); Andrea McGinty (MFA 2014 Fine Arts) curated “Material Pressure”; Natalia Yovane (MFA 2010 Fine Arts) curated “David Mramor: FAQ,” which featured work by David Mramor (MFA 2008 Fine Arts).

Roderick Angle’s (BFA 1994 Photography) J. Morgan Puett: A Practice of Be(e)ing (2015), Jonathan Carrera’s (BFA 2006 Film and Video) The Bench Project: Heavy Metal (2015),

72

V I SUA L A R T S JOUR N A L

Nir Arieli, Nederlands Dans Theater 2, 2014, archival pigment print.

1955

Cris Gianakos (Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Rampworks,” Minus Space, NYC, 1/92/20/16.

1967

Anna Walter (Fine Arts). Group exhibition, “Small Works Show,” Carter Burden Gallery, NYC, 12/9-12/23/15.

1969

James Nares (Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Portraits,” Paul Kasmin Gallery, NYC, 3/3-4/23/16.

1976

Theresa DeSalvio (BFA Fine Arts). Group exhibition, “17th Annual Williamsburg Art and Historical Center Salon Art Club Show,” Williamsburg Art & Historical Center, NYC, 1/30-2/21/16.

Nina Yankowitz’s (Fine Arts) interactive installation “Criss-Crossing the Divine” was on view at Creative Tech Week, NYC, 5/3-5/8/16.

Jorge Rodriguez (BFA Fine Arts) presented an artist talk and tour at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies-Centro, NYC, 2/11/16.

1972

1977

Kathleen McSherry (BFA Graphic Design). Solo exhibition, “Kathleen McSherry,” JB Kline Gallery, Lambertville, NJ, 2/13-3/31/16.

Charles Fazzino (BFA Graphic Design).

Solo exhibition, “Charles Fazzino: The Master of 3D Pop Art,” Ocean Gallery, Stone Harbor, NJ, 5/27-5/30/16.

Linda Stillman (Graphic Design). Group exhibition, “Chroma Botanica: Ellis Irons & Linda Stillman,” Arsenal Gallery, NYC, 4/27-6/15/16.

Yolanda Skeete (BFA Film and Video).

Group exhibition, “Everyone in Their Own Way,” Gallery Aferro, Newark, NJ, 3/20-4/14/16.

1973

1978

Marilyn Church (Illustration) was featured in “Trial & Image,” Art News, 5/27/16.

1975

Margaret McCarthy (BFA Fine Arts).

Group exhibition, “Emerging Collectors Series,” Reis Studios Experimental Space Gallery, NYC, 5/21-5/22/16.

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Craig Barton (BFA Photography) was named provost and senior vice president of academic affairs at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 4/22/16.

Richard Deon (BFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Paradox and Conformity: Akio,” Beacon Artist Union, Beacon, NY, 2/13-3/6/16.

1979

M. Henry Jones (BFA Film and Video) was featured in “Anthony Haden-Guest on Garner Arts Center’s Stroke of Genius,” Artnet News, 2/25/16.

Amy Sillman (BFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Stuff Change,” Sikkema Jenkins & Co., NYC, 2/4-3/12/16.

1981

Ron Barbagallo (BFA Graphic Design) was featured in “Put your eyes on this art from the long lost Disney/Salvador Dali project,” Hello Giggles, 12/5/15.

Peter Hristoff (BFA Fine Arts) spoke as part of the “9 Minute Talks” series at the Met Breuer, NYC, 3/18/16.

Kenny Scharf (BFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Kenny Scharf,” Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn, NY, 3/19-7/10/16.

1982

Lorna Simpson (BFA Photography) was featured in “These Bold Beauty Collages Are an Unexpected Style Inspiration,” Huffington Post, 12/2/15.

Joey Skaggs (BFA Advertising) was featured in “New York Today: A Fools’ Parade,” The New York Times, 4/1/16.

1983

Andrea Fraser (Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Open Plan: Andrea Fraser,” Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC, 2/26-3/13/16.

Kenneth Wenzel (BFA Photography). Group exhibition, “Healing Arts Exhibition,” Hudson Hospital and Clinic, Hudson, WI, 2/12-5/12/16.

David Yanez (BFA Illustration). Group exhibition, “Mestizo,” Bullet Space, NYC, 5/14-6/26/16.

1984

Lisa Argentieri’s (BFA Photography) work was on the cover of Dan’s Papers, 3/4/16.

Drew Hodges (BFA Media Arts) published On Broadway: From Rent to Revolution (Rizzoli, 2016), 4/28/16.

1985

Alexis Rockman (BFA Fine Arts) was featured in “Alexis Rockman Bridges the Gulf between Art and Science,” The New York Times, 4/18/16.

Collier Schorr (BFA Communication Arts) photographed Charlize Theron for V, 4/20/16.

1986

Rumiko Tsuda’s (MFA Fine Arts) work was featured in “Capturing Cannon Beach,” Daily Astorian, 5/20/16.

1987

Aleathia Brown (BFA Media Arts). Group exhibition, “Her Story: Voice, Vision, and Memory,” LeRoy Neiman Art Center, NYC, 3/11-4/19/16.

73

Mamie Holst (MFA Fine Arts). Two-person exhibition, “Mamie Holst & Paul Pagk,” 33 Orchard, NYC, 3/31-5/8/16.

Melanie Kozol (MFA Fine Arts). Group exhibition, “Landscapes, Seascapes, Skyscapes, Escapes,” Temporary Storage Gallery, NYC, 3/25-4/15/16.

Gary Petersen (MFA Fine Arts). Exhibition, “Anne Canfield and Gary Petersen,” Mount Airy Contemporary, Philadelphia, 4/2-5/7/16.

Elizabeth Peyton (BFA Fine Arts) was featured in “Elizabeth Peyton: Paintings about Love,” Telegraph, 1/22/16.

1988

Eva Mantell (MFA Fine Arts) curated “Start Fresh,” Arts Council of Princeton, Princeton, NJ, 5/6/-6/24/16.

Wendy Martin (BFA Graphic Design) published Animal Totem Mandala Coloring Book: Art Nouveau Creatures and Reflections for Relaxation (Magical Child, 2016).

ALI TAPTIK /ARTER

Catya Plate (Fine Arts). Group exhibition, “Shaky Ground,” Lesley Heller Workspace, NYC, 1/8/15-2/14/16.

1989

Albert Nickerson (BFA Cartooning). Solo exhibition, “An Act of Faith,” Monroe Free Library, Monroe, NY, 12/2-12/31/15.

Brian Rutenberg (MFA Fine Arts) was featured in “artnet Asks: Painter-Magician Brian Rutenberg,” Artnet News, 12/8/15.

Penelope Umbrico (MFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Bad Display,” Mark Moore Gallery, Culver City, CA, 4/16-6/18/16.

1990

J. Brian Pinkney (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) was featured in “Children’s Book Illustrator, Author Brian Pinkney Visits Springfield Elementary Schools,” Montgomery News, 3/23/16.

Robert Melee (BFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Semi-Quasi-Bower Recreational,” Andrew Kreps Gallery, NYC, 1/9-2/13/16.

Gina Minichino (BFA Cartooning). Group exhibition, “Dean Larson, Gina Minichino & Richard Orient,” George Billis Gallery, NYC, 4/26-5/21/16.

Sandy Smith-Garces (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay). Group exhibition, “Kindling Past and Present: Commemorating Women Affected by Genocide,” Armenian Museum of America, Watertown, MA, 4/10-5/13/16.

1991

Kip Omolade (BFA Illustration) was featured in “Kip Omolade,” Georgie, 5/10/16.

1992

Lynn Pauley (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) was featured in “Lynn Pauley: People/Place/Thing,” American Illustrator – American Photographer, 5/5/16.

Hanoch Piven (BFA Graphic Design) was featured in “Mixed Media Artist Hanoch

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Bahar Yurukoglu, Plexiberg, 2016, Plexiglas and video projections.

Piven Holds Self-Portrait Workshop at Mitchell School,” Needham Times, 4/20/16.

John Quinn (BFA Media Arts) was featured in “Disney Illustrator Gives Quarryville Elementary Students a Lesson on Art, Perseverance,” Lancaster Online, 12/1/15.

1993

Jamie Dolinko (MFA Photography and Related Media) presented at the Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre during the International Symposium on Electronic Art, Hong Kong, 5/21/16.

Shawn Martinbrough (BFA Illustration) was featured in “Beyond Batman: Meet the Artist Fighting to Change Comics Diversity,” Washington Post, 4/1/16.

1994

Brian Adam Douglas (BFA Illustration) was featured in “The Best in Art in 2015,” The New York Times, 12/9/15.

Riad Miah (BFA Fine Arts). Group exhibition, “Chromatic Convergence,” Anderson Contemporary, NYC, 12/10/15-1/8/16.

Leemour Pelli (BFA Fine Arts). Group exhibition, “Art and Chaos: A Response,” Studio 5404, Massapequa, NY, 1/232/26/16.

1995

Yangsook Choi (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) gave a reading as part of the Lunar New Year Festival: Year of the Monkey program, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, 2/16/16.

Michael De Feo (BFA Graphic Design) was featured in “Graffiti Artist Defaces Fashion Ads, Fashion Embraces Him,” The New York Times, 4/12/16.

Vera Lutter (MFA Photography and Related Media) was featured in “Stopping Time in a Shipping Container,” Photo District News, 12/23/15.

Kevin Sudeith (MFA Fine Arts) was featured in “Making Art from Life,” National Public Radio, 4/23/16.

Charlie White (BFA Fine Arts) was named head of Carnegie Mellon University School of Art, 5/13/16.

Amy Wilson (BFA Fine Arts) was featured in “Post-Miami Round-up, Vanessa Albury Picks from Untitled, 2015,” Eyes Towards the Dove, 12/16/15.

1996

Brian (KAWS) Donnelly (BFA Illustration) Solo exhibition, “KAWS,” Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton, England, 2/6-6/12/16.

Brian Belott (BFA Fine Arts) was featured in “Brian Belott Puts Puff in His Stuff,” Blouin Artinfo, 1/15/16.

Simen Johan (BFA Photography). Solo exhibition, “Simen Johan,” Yossi Milo Gallery, NYC, 5/26-8/10/16.

Justine Kurland (BFA Photography) was featured in “Highway Kind,” Aperture, 3/7/16.

Filmmaker Captures His Fight with ALS,” The New York Times, 4/1/16.

Stephen Savage’s (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) book Supertruck (Roaring Brook Press, 2015) received a Theodor Seuss Geisel Award.

Jonathan Torgovnik (BFA Photography) was featured in “Photographer Profile— Jonathan Torgovnik: ‘I’ve Never Seen Such Conditions of Poverty,’” American Illustrator – American Photographer, 2/16/16.

Marianne Vitale (BFA Film and Video) was featured in “Marianne Vitale,” Flaunt, 1/8/16.

1997

Murray Hill (MFA Photography and Related Media) was featured in “Michael Musto’s Icons: Murray Hill,” Advocate, 5/5/16.

Dionisios Kavvadias (BFA Computer Art).

Group exhibition, “34th Biennial Spring Art Festival,” Joint Industry Board of the Electrical Industry, Fresh Meadows, NY, 5/15-5/22/16.

Raul Manzano (BFA Illustration).

Curatorial projects, “Black History: Art and Culture,” SUNY Empire State College Livingston Gallery, NYC, 2/8-4/15/16.

Sarah Sze (MFA Fine Arts) was featured in “Meet the Most Brilliant Couple in Town,” Vogue, 5/11/16.

Patrick O’Brien (BFA Film and Video) was featured in “Using Just His Eyes,

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Katherine Bernhardt (MFA Fine Arts) was featured in “8 Must-See Booths at Frieze New York 2016,” Blouin Artinfo, 5/5/16.

Kevin Cooley (MFA Photography and Related Media). Solo exhibition, “A Thousand Miles an Hour,” Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles, 1/16-3/12/16.

Bahar Yurukoglu (BFA Photography).

Solo exhibition, “Flow Through,” Arter, Istanbul, 3/30-5/15/16.

Lauren Redniss (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) won the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award for Thunder & Lightning: Weather Past, Present, Future (Random House, 2015), 4/12/16.

Tina DeRamus (MFA Fine Arts) was featured in “Art Valet: Neighbor and Artist Returns Home for Black and White Show,” The Leader News, 2/18/16.

2001

Luke Di Tommaso (BFA Computer Art) was featured in “The Molecule: VFX for ‘The Affair’ and So Much More,” Post Perspective, 1/22/16.

Carlos Motta (BFA Photography). Solo exhibition, “Deviations,” PPOW Gallery, NYC, 4/21-5/21/16.

2002

Michael Alan (BFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Nine Lives,” Tanja Grunert, NYC, 4/7-4/30/16.

1998

Chris Bors (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay). Solo exhibition, “Kill Your Idols,” Guttenberg Arts, Guttenberg, NJ, 3/44/2/16.

Mimi Young (MFA Computer Art) was featured in “Mimi Young of Behavior Design On Content Consumption, Designing for Users and How Agencies are Changing Forever,” Creative Boom, 3/17/16.

Alina Tenser (BFA Fine Arts). Group exhibition, “Gary Stephan /Alina Tenser,” Susan Inglett Gallery, NYC, 3/17-4/23/16.

Todd Kelly (MFA Fine Arts). Group exhibition, “Luck of the Draw,” Diane Endres Ballweg Gallery, Central Madison Public Library, Madison, WI, 1/8-2/26/16.

Eric Rhein (MFA Fine Arts) participated in a talk at Hal Bromm Gallery, NYC, 3/21/16.

Aïda Ruilova, Yellow Flowers. Grave Procession, 2015, paper and velvet.

Laura McKenzie (BFA Photography) was awarded the 2015 Charles E. Green Star Photojournalist of the Year Award from the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors, 4/11/16.

George Boorujy (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) was featured in “This Bottle Crossed the Atlantic to Send an SOS for Wildlife,” Wired, 2/25/16.

Joe Fig (MFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Joe Fig | Drawings,” EBK Gallery, Hartford, CT, 5/2-5/30/16.

2004

Kira Greene (MFA Fine Arts). Group exhibition, “Food Nostalgia,” Radiator Arts, NYC, 2/5-3/13/16.

Timothy Miller (MAT Art Education) illustrated Snappsy the Alligator (Did Not Ask to Be in This Book!) (Viking Books for Young Readers, 2015) written by Julie Falatko.

Reuben Negron (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) was featured in “Dirty Dirty Love and This House of Glass,” Juxtapoz, 3/29/16.

Matthew Pillsbury (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media) was featured in “Capturing the Frenetic Intensity of a Presidential Debate’s Spin Room,” Time, 4/15/16.

Kat Rohrer (BFA Film and Video) was featured in “Female Filmmakers Share Horror Stories, Advice with Students at ‘Women Strong’ Event: ‘Don’t Quit,’” Variety, 1/20/16.

2005

Andrea Burgay (BFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Destroy Edit Transform,” A.I.R. Gallery, NYC, 2/11-3/4/16.

Heather Brady (BFA Fine Arts) was named the director of education and engagement at Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ, 12/30/15.

1999

John Arsenault (BFA Photography). Solo exhibition, “Barmaid,” ClampArt, NYC, 1/7-2/13/16.

Mariam Ghani (MFA Photography and Related Media). Group exhibition, “But a Storm Is Blowing from Paradise: Contemporary Art of the Middle East and North Africa,” Guggenheim Museum, NYC, 4/29-11/5/16.

Janice Caswell (BFA Fine Arts). Group exhibition, “Altered States: Reuse Refuse,” Hewitt Gallery of Art, Marymount Manhattan College, NYC, 3/22-4/7/16.

Artem Mirolevich (BFA Illustration). Solo exhibition, “Heavenly Creatures: A Study of Architecture and Advancement,” Salomon Arts Gallery, NYC, 2/26-3/14/16.

Ziggy Livnat’s (MFA Photography and Related Media) video footage was featured in “Nature: Octopi in the U.S. Virgin Islands,” CBS Sunday Morning, 12/6/15.

Zackary Drucker (BFA Photography) was featured in “The 30 Most Exciting Artists in North America Today: Part Two,” Artnet News, 12/24/15.

Alejandro Dron (MFA Computer Art) was featured in “Je Suis Alejandro Dron,” Joli Gazette, 3/12/16.

Aida Ruilova (MFA Photography and Related Media). Solo exhibition, “The Pink Palace,” Marlborough Chelsea, NYC, 2/11-3/12/16.

Crystal Moselle’s (BFA Film and Video) film Water Front (2015) premiered in New York City, 3/22/16.

Max Greis (BFA Fine Arts). Group exhibition, “History Reconstructed,” Arcilesi/ Homberg Fine Arts, NYC, 3/5-3/27/16.

Reka Nyari (BFA Fine Arts) was represented by Momentum Fine Art and had work included in the Photo Independent Art Fair, Raleigh Studios, Hollywood, CA, 4/28-5/1/16.

Thomas Holton (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media) was featured in “A 13-Year Project That Started in Chinatown,” The New York Times, 3/17/16.

Brian Finke (BFA Photography) was featured in “Failure to Lunch,” The New York Times, 2/25/16.

Daniel Traub (MFA Photography and Related Media) published Little Road North (Kehrer Verlag, 2016).

Judit Villiger (MFA Fine Arts). Group exhibition, “Sichtbares und Imaginäres,” Rehmann Museum, Laufenburg, Switzerland, 3/13-5/22/16.

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Cooper Sanchez (BFA Fine Arts) was featured in “Artist Cooper Sanchez Illuminates Oakland Cemetery,” Creative Loafing Atlanta, 4/7/16.

Gerard Way (BFA Cartooning) was featured in “Gerard Way Talks New DC Comics Imprint: ‘I’m Here for the Long Haul,’” Rolling Stone, 4/7/16.

2000

Kathryn Bentley (BFA Fine Arts) was featured in “For One Los Angeles Designer, Jewelry Mingles with Fine Art,” The New York Times, 3/23/16.

2003

Jade (MUMBOT) Kuei’s (BFA Animation) work was included in Chibi Manga: Irresistible (Harper Design/Monsa Publications, 2016).

Fernanda Cohen (BFA Illustration) was featured in “Illustrator Profile–Fernanda Cohen: ‘Focus on What You Know and Love Best,’” American Illustrator – American Photographer, 4/28/16.

Lauren Castillo (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) illustrated Twenty Yawns (Two Lions, 2016) written by Jane Smiley.

Keren Moscovitch (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media) was featured in “10 Raw Photos That Show What an Open Relationship Is Really Like,” Cosmopolitan, 2/19/16.

UuDam Nguyen (MFA Fine Arts).

Group exhibition, “Sights and Sounds: Highlights,” Jewish Museum, NYC, 2/56/30/16.

V I SUA L A R T S JOUR N A L

2006

Bradley Castellanos (MFA Fine Arts).

Group exhibition, “Hey! Ho! Let’s Go: Ramones and the Birth of Punk,” Queens Museum, NYC, 4/10-7/31/16.

Sabine Heller (MFA Computer Art) presented “The Peanuts Movie: Character Development from Comic Strip to 3D,” FMX 2016 conference, Ludwigsburg, Germany, 4/27/16.

Teddy Hose (BFA Animation) was featured in “Reparations: How the Issue Presented Itself to Me as an Outsider in Harlem,” Huffington Post, 2/22/16.

Christine Sun Kim (MFA Fine Arts) was featured in “The Aural Artist,” Interview, 12/15/15.

2007

Amy Elkins (BFA Photography) was featured in “The Matter of Black Lives,” The New Yorker, 3/14/16.

Lisa Elmaleh (BFA Photography) was featured in “Modern-Day Musicians, Old-Time Feel,” CNN, 1/26/16.

Timothy Goodman (BFA Graphic Design) was featured in “A Pitch for Kindness Outside Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan,” The New York Times, 3/15/16.

Beautiful,” Poughkeepsie Journal, Poughkeepsie, NY, 5/11/16.

Justin McConney (BFA Film and Video) was featured in “Meet the Five Surprising Arts Figures Behind the Republican Presidential Candidates,” The Art Newspaper, 2/26/16.

Jenny Morgan (MFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Turning the Tide,” Beers, London, 2/25-4/23/16.

Stan Narten (MFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “World Eater,” Kravets Wehby Gallery, NYC, 5/19-6/25/16.

2009

Samuel T. Adams (MFA Fine Arts) was featured in “Art Basel Artist of the Day: Samuel T. Adams,” Paper, 12/1/15.

Jonathan Bartlett (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) was featured in “Ad of the Day: Persol Sunglasses Is Drawing a Graphic Novel in Real Time on Instagram,” Ad Week, 4/20/16.

Amber Boardman (MFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Sitcom Studies,” Ivy Brown Gallery, NYC, 1/22-1/31/16.

Andrew Castrucci (MFA Fine Arts).

Group exhibition, “Mestizo,” Bullet Space, NYC, 5/14-6/26/16.

John MacConnell (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) was featured in “ART: The Live Nude Male,” Advocate, 3/18/16.

Jaime Permuth (MPS Digital Photography) was featured in “Photographer Profile—Jaime Permuth,” American Illustration – American Photography, 1/26/16.

Lissa Rivera (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media) was featured in “How Photography Helped Him Discover His Feminine Side—and Fall in Love,” Slate, 3/15/16.

Cherise Ward (BFA Illustration) was featured in “Wednesday Woman: Storytelling through Art,” Nation News, 1/13/16.

2010

General Public Collective, Indianapolis, 4/1-4/23/16.

Alexandra Karolinski (MFA Social Documentary) was featured in “This Director Translates Brands for Video, And Humans,” The Fader, 12/1/15.

Gene Lu (MFA Interaction Design) was featured in “A Portlander Is Running Star Wars-Themed Routes,” City Lab, 12/22/15.

Carly Mark (BFA Fine Arts) was featured in “Carly Mark, Illuminated,” Interview, 3/4/16.

Jong Hyun Oh (MFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, Marc Straus Gallery, NYC, 1/10-2/14/16.

Stanislava Georgieva (BFA Photography). Group exhibition, “Home,” Pro Arts, Oakland, CA, 5/6-6/27/16.

David Osit (MFA Social Documentary) was featured in “Games You Can’t Win,” The New York Times, 3/17/16.

Yulia Gorbachenko (MPS Digital Photography) was featured in “Portrait of a Portrait Photographer: Yulia Gorbachenko Tells Us Her Story,” Resource, 1/20/16.

Jungyeon Roh (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) was featured in “Illustrator Profile—Jungyeon Roh,” American Illustrator – American Photographer, 4/14/16.

William Myers (MFA Design Criticism).

Group exhibition, “Inoculum — Connecting the Other,” CLB Berlin, Berlin, 2/4-2/5/16.

Julie Schenkelberg (MFA Fine Arts) was interviewed on “The Sound of Applause,” WCPN Radio, Cleveland, 2/18/16.

Jason Yarmosky (BFA Illustration). Group exhibition, “Prememories,” Aeroplastics Contemporary, Brussels, 2/19-4/24/16.

Rocio Segura Melgosa (MPS Digital Photography). Solo exhibition, “Unknown,” Bogart House, NYC, 5/7/16.

2011

Benjamin Voldman’s (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) work was featured on the cover of Seattle Met, 1/1/16.

Cesar Lechowick (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media) was featured in “A Photographer Documents His Mother’s Life as a Paranoid Schizophrenic,” American Photo Magazine, 2/24/16.

Robert Herman (MPS Digital Photography) was featured in “Book Review: Robert Herman’s The Phone Book,” F Stop, 2/1/16.

Jason Losh (MFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Near Positive,” Zieher Smith & Horton, NYC, 3/24-4/23/16.

Ana Maria Hermida (BFA Film and Video) was featured in “LatinoBuzz: Exclusive Interview with ‘La Luciérnaga’ Filmmaker Ana Maria Hermida,” Indiewire, 3/24/16.

Ishaan Nair’s (BFA Film and Video) feature film Kaash (2015) screened at the South Asian Film Festival, Village East Cinema, NYC, 12/12/15.

John Arsenault, Love Letter Number Five (detail), 2012, archival pigment print.

Daniel Fishel (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) was featured in “Designer of the Week: Daniel Fishel,” Print, 2/22/16.

Cindy Hinant (MFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Baby Hairs on Fleek,”

Serifcan Ozcan (MFA Design) was featured in “Curious Feast: 100 Postcards by 10 Artists,” Graphics, 4/8/16.

Stephen Zlotescu (MFA Computer Art) was featured in “The Dystopian Director,” Bangkok Post, 3/25/16.

2008

Daniel Cassaro (BFA Graphic Design) illustrated the cover of The New York Times Magazine, 2/7/16.

Cannaday Chapman (BFA Illustration) was featured in “Fairport Grad’s Art Featured on Greeting Cards,” Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, NY, 5/7/16.

Kristy Chatelain (MPS Digital Photography) was featured on “How Gentrification Affects Every City’s Neighborhoods,” The Today Show, 4/24/16.

Cat Del Buono (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media). Solo exhibition, “Voices,” Elizabeth Dunlap Patrick Gallery at Winthrop University, Rock Hill, SC, 1/20-3/11/16.

Lynn Herring (BFA Fine Arts) was featured in “Even Out of Pain, Art Turns

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Mathias Kessler (MFA Art Practice). Solo exhibition, “Between Image and Matter: (The Camera as Producer),” Galerie Heike Strelow, Frankfurt, 1/29-3/11/16.

Wyatt Mills (BFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Normal,” Project Gallery, Los Angeles, 1/9-3/6/16.

Star Montana (BFA Photography). Solo exhibition, “Tear Drops and Three Dots,” Vincent Price Art Museum, Los Angeles, 2/27-5/21/16.

Hu Renyi (MFA Art Practice). Group exhibition, “Community of Celibates,” Shanghai Gallery of Art, Shanghai, 1/233/16/16.

Patrick Shoemaker (MFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Fire on Fire,” Anna Zorina Gallery, NYC, 2/25-4/2/16.

Ilona Szwarc (BFA Photography) was featured in “Ilona Szwarc’s Wonderful Series of All-American Rodeo Girls,” It’s Nice That, 4/7/16.

Denise Treizman (MFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “DelanceyLudlowRivingtonNorfolk,” Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space, NYC, 5/6-6/5/16.

Andrea Tsurumi (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) was featured in “Andrea Tsurumi: You’ll Never Have ‘Enough Time,’” 99U, 1/15/16.

Brian Whiteley (MFA Fine Arts) launched SATELLITE Art Show, which exhibited during Miami Art Week, 12/1-12/4/16.

2014

Julia Buntaine (MFA Fine Arts). Group exhibition, “Spectrum,” Peters Projects, Santa Fe, NM, 3/18-4/30/16.

Graciela Cassel (MFA Fine Arts) was featured in “In Chelsea, Staring Through People’s Windows to Look at Art,” Art Slant, 4/19/16.

Jennifer Kostman, Bath Bees, 2015, watercolor and ink.

Chie Araki’s (MFA Fine Arts) work was featured in “Artist of the Week,” Kaltblut, 5/21/16.

Peter Lee’s (MPS Fashion Photography) photographs were featured in “Who’s Who: Meet the Beautiful People of Seoul Fashion Week,” W, 3/29/16.

Nir Arieli (BFA Photography). Solo exhibition, “Flocks,” Daniel Cooney Fine Art, NYC, 4/21-6/4/16.

May Shek (MPS Branding) was featured in “In a Multifaceted World, Brands Should Welcome Hybridity,” PSFK, 3/1/16.

Andrew Brischler (MFA Fine Arts) was featured in “5 Key Trends We’re Seeing at Art Basel in Miami Beach This Year,” Artnet News, 12/3/15.

Pacifico Silano (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media) was featured in “Torn Porn Rips Out Pages From Our Past,” Next, 12/8/15.

Bon Duke’s (MPS Fashion Photography) photographs were featured in “Flyboy Style: How to Wear a Bomber Jacket,” The New York Times, 4/6/16.

Dasha Tolstikova (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) was featured in “A Studio Visit with Dasha Tolstikova,” Pen and Oink, 2/15/16.

John Kuhn (BFA Graphic Design) was featured in “Somerville Artist Designs from Walls to Wardrobe,” My Central Jersey, Somerville, NJ, 3/5/16.

Rebecca Ward (MFA Fine Arts) was featured in “Artist Rebecca Ward,” We and the Color, 4/7/16.

Elektra KB (BFA Visual and Critical Studies). Solo exhibition, “The Accidental Pursuit of the Stateless II,” Gaia Gallery, Istanbul, 1/21-3/5/16.

Yannick Bindert (MPS Digital Photography) was featured in “Yannick Bindert: Photographing Wildlife Through the Lens

2012

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2013

of a Professional Safari Guide,” Foto Foam Co., 2/11/16.

Matthew Burrows (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) was featured in “9 New York-Based Street Artists to Watch,” Paper, 12/18/15.

Matthew Eck (MFA Fine Arts) launched X-Contemporary Art Fair during Miami Art Week, 12/1-12/6/15.

Sam Grinberg (BFA Cartooning) was featured in “‘Heart-Ache’ / Interview with Sam Grinberg, UCLA,” KQED, 3/3/16.

Faith Holland (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media). Group online exhibition, “My Nights Are More Beautiful than Your Days,” AC Institute, NYC, 4/15/16.

Federico Infante (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) was featured in “The Space Between Things,” Commarts, 3/30/16.

Ryan Charmatz (BFA Animation) was featured in “When Fish Fly: How To Get Your Pet from Los Angeles to Denver,” KQED, 1/7/16.

Julia Garcia (BFA Visual and Critical Studies). Group exhibition, “The Edge,” Ballroom Gallery, Baltimore, 4/8-4/22/16.

Corey Olsen (BFA Photography) was featured in “5 Photographers Who Are Hitting Big in 2016,” Vice, 2/22/16.

Nadia Haji Omar (MFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Nadia Haji Omar,” Kristen Lorello, NYC, 5/3-6/12/16.

Anna Smith’s (MFA Design Criticism) work was featured in “The New American Home,” Dwell, 2/1/16.

Alcee Walker’s (MFA Social Documentary) film Inferno (2015) won the East Region Jury Award at the Directors Guild of America’s 21st Annual Student Film Awards, NYC, 12/10/15.

Holly Jarrett (BFA Design) curated “Elysian Redux,” Asya Geisberg Gallery, NYC, 5/19-6/25/16.

V I SUA L A R T S JOUR N A L

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Along with valuable savings, you’ll enjoy access to benefits like 24-Hour Claims Assistance.

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Discounts and savings are available where state laws and regulations allow, and may vary by state. To the extent permitted by law, applicants are individually underwritten; not all applicants may qualify.

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Hsin Wang (MPS Digital Photography) was featured in “Haunting, Beautiful Images That Capture the Melancholy of Heartbreak,” The New York Times, 1/21/16.

Zane Zhou (MPS Fashion Photography) was featured in “Dreamy, Sexy Photos of Sun-Drenched Summer Afternoons,” The New York Times, 1/14/16.

2015

Sarah Dineen (MFA Fine Arts). Group exhibition, “Sideshow Nation IV: Thru the Rabbit Hole,” Sideshow Gallery, NYC, 1/9-3/20/16.

Stephany Dziegielewski (BFA Illustration) was featured in “At Pulse Miami Beach, Plants, Plants Everywhere,” Hyperallergic, 12/2/15.

Emmanuel Iduma (MFA Art Criticism and Writing) was featured in “Armory Africa Focus Preview: A Conversation with Namsa Leuba,” Aperture, 2/29/16.

Tahir Karmali (MPS Digital Photography). Solo exhibition, “Jua Kali,” United Photo Industries, NYC, 2/4-3/26/16.

Angela Kim (BFA Design) was featured in “Scratch-and-Sniff Posters Help Mask NYC Subway’s Odious Smells,” Fast Company, 2/11/16.

Jennifer Kostman (BFA Illustration). Solo exhibition, “All Things Whimsical,” SUS Gallery, Great Neck, NY, 12/9/15-1/19/15.

Wen Li’s (MFA Social Documentary) thesis film Water Ghost (2015) screened as part of the Cannes Festival Short Film Catalog, 5/11-5/22/16.

Kevin Li (BFA Computer Art, Computer Animation and Visual Effects) was featured in “Nickelodeon Launches 2016 Animated Shorts Program, Announces 2015 Finalists,” Variety, 2/3/16.

FA L L 20 16

Melissa Malzkuhn (MFA Visual Narrative) gave a talk at the Tribeca Film Institute’s Interactive conference, NYC, 4/16/16.

Ima Mfon (MPS Digital Photography).

Group exhibition, “Find Us on the Map,” Rush Arts Gallery, NYC, 3/17-4/8/16.

Kathryn Mussallem (MPS Digital Photography) won a 2016 Sony World Photography Award, 3/15/16.

Michelle Poler (MPS Branding) was featured in “A Platform Designed to Help You Face Your Fears,” PSFK, 12/14/15.

Riccardo Renna’s (MFA Computer Art) film L’Americano Returns (2015) was an official selection at SPARK Animation, Vancouver, BC, 10/23/15.

Tory Rust (MPS Fashion Photography) was featured in “On the Rise: From North Dakota to New York, Meet Fashion Photographer Tory Rust,” The Source, 3/31/16.

Ellen Silverman’s (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media) film My Roots Lie Here (2015) screened at the American Documentary Film Festival, Palm Springs, CA, 4/1/16.

Alyson Smith (MPS Digital Photography) was featured in “Building Cambodia: Q&A with PWB Photographer Alyson Smith,” Photographers Without Borders, 3/15/16.

Tiffany Smith (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media). Group exhibition, “All Your Wide Futures,” Gateway Project Spaces, Newark, NJ, 3/15/16.

Cris Gianakos, META, Douglas fir, bolts and screws.

IN MEMORIAM

Wendy Ennis (BFA 1989 Communication Arts) died on January 20, 2016 after a brave battle with cancer. Born in the Bronx, Ennis attended SVA on a full scholarship. She worked as a journalist, reporter and producer for numerous news organizations, including Reuters, before earning her master’s degree in education from the University of St. Joseph, in West

Hartford, Connecticut. She went on to teach in Connecticut schools and special-education programs, as well as in the Youth Engagement Program at Congregation Beth Israel in West Hartford. She is survived by her former spouse, Dawn Ennis (BFA 1986 Communication Arts), and children Liam, Sophie and Sean.

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FROM THE ARCHIVES

ver the past two years, the Milton Glaser Design Study Center and Archives—located in the SVA Library and dedicated to preserving and making accessible design and illustration works of significant historic and aesthetic value—has acquired a wealth of material, adding thousands of pieces to its new and existing collections. Three recent acquisitions are presented here.

The Glaser Archives, like the SVA Archives, are not only made available to the College’s alumni, students, faculty and staff; they are open, by appointment, to outside educators, scholars and design practitioners.

For more information on these resources, visit glaserarchives.org and svaarchives.org. [Beth Kleber]

ED BENGUIAT, original art for Playbill Cursive typeface, 1965.

From the Ed Benguiat Collection.

Over the course of his long career, legendary typographer and longtime SVA faculty member Ed Benguiat has created more than 600 typefaces, as well as the designs or redesigns of logotypes for Esquire, The New York Times, McCall’s, Sports Illustrated and The San Diego Tribune. In 1971 Benguiat played a critical role in the establishment of the International Typeface Corporation, the first independent licensing company for type designers.

GEORGE TSCHERNY, Benny Goodman theater program cover, 1958.

From the George Tscherny Collection.

George Tscherny began his design career in 1950 and joined SVA’s faculty in 1955. He designed the first SVA poster and logo in 1956, and in 1997 redesigned the school’s logo, creating the symbol that is still used today. His many corporate clients have included the Ford Foundation, Johnson & Johnson and Mobil. The George Tscherny Collection includes posters, brochures, annual reports, letterheads, book jackets and many other items that illustrate the methods he uses to develop corporate and institutional identity programs.

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CRIS GIANAKOS, promotional booklet for Columbia Pictures Television’s two-part movie The Story of David, 1976.

From the Cris Gianakos Collection.

Sculptor, designer and SVA alumnus Cris Gianakos (G 1955 Fine Arts) has been on the College’s faculty since 1963. During the late 1960s and early ’70s he designed posters for major exhibitions at SVA, and print pieces for such clients as Columbia Pictures Television and Volvo. By 1977, he had begun creating the “ramp” installations that have become his signature works. His art is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, among other respected institutions.

V I SUA L A R T S JOUR N A L

External Relations · School of Visual Arts 209 East 23rd Street, New York, NY 10010-3994 sva.edu

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