Visual Arts Briefs

In 2011, SVA won more Type Directors Club Awards than all other institutions combined, claiming 24 out of the 36 awards given for student projects. SVA also took home more TDC Awards than all professional firms in the running. The Type Directors Club is an international organization that promotes excellence in typography and awards are given annually in recognition of outstanding typeface design.

From the MFA Design Department, the 2011 winners are alumnus Matt Luckhurst (MFA 2010 Design) and current students Elisa Bates, Michael Croxton, Sebastian Ebarb, Tim Hucklesby, Derek Munn, Cristina Vasquez, Elliott Walker and Jesse Senje Yuan. Faculty members that provided guidance on these projects are Gail Anderson, Stephen Doyle, Milton Glaser, Erik Guzman, Steven Heller, Stefan Sagmeister and Paula Scher.

From the BFA Advertising and Graphic Design Department, the winners are alumni Rocco Cambareri (BFA 2010 Graphic Design), Elizabeth Chan (BFA 2010 Graphic Design), Hiu Chui (BFA 1010 Graphic Design) , Grant Gold (BFA 2010 Graphic Design), Jihwan Kim (BFA 2011 Graphic Design), Jiwon Kim (BFA 2010 Graphic Design), Seung Hee Lee (BFA 2010 Graphic Design), Yoonbin Lee (BFA 2010 Graphic Design) and Rukiye Sahin (BFA 2010 Graphic Design). The faculty members that advised on these projects are Kevin Brainard, Andrew Castrucci, Darren Cox, Kristina DiMatteo, Carin Goldberg, Julia Hoffman, Ori Kleiner, Olga Mezhibovskaya, Paul Sahre, Paula Scher and Genevieve Williams.

Stranded from elisa bates on Vimeo.

Image: Screenshot from Elisa Bates’ Stranded video, an assignment for Gail Anderson’s Just Type class.

The MFA Interaction Design Department’s On the Verge lecture series, which pairs leading minds from across design disciplines, continues on Thursday, February 9 at 6pm. Dennis Crowley, co-founder of foursquare (a website that combines social networks, location awareness, and game mechanics to encourage people to explore the world around them via smartphone) and Mark Shepard, an architect whose work focuses on the implications of mobile communication and information technologies for architecture and urbanism, will convene to discuss how technology is increasingly shaping our physical surroundings.

On Friday, March 23 at 7pm, Geoff Manaugh, a noted futurist, former senior editor at Dwell magazine, contributing editor at Wired UK and founder of the architecture blog BLDGBLOG, will go head-to-head with New York Times’ Data Artist-in-Residence Jer Thorp. And on Friday, April 6 at 6pm, Zach Frechette, founder of Quarterly Co., co-founder of GOOD magazine and an adviser to Collaborative Fund, sits down for a conversation with Molly Steenson, a digital strategist, design researcher and GirlWonder.com editor emeritus.

“As an interaction design program, we work to encourage broad explorations of design such that fields that seem peripheral take on possibility,” explains MFA Interaction Design Department Chair Liz Danzico. “It is in this way that everything becomes material for making, everything becomes a possibility for exploration. The On the Verge series intends to broaden the edges of our understanding such that the seams where disciplines converge and diverge become more visible.”

All lectures are free and open to the public, but registration is required. For more info and to register, visit interactiondesign.sva.edu/events.

Image: Screenshot of Crowley’s foursquare mobile app.

Since the School of Visual Arts partnered with Behance last year to launch SVA Portfolios, thousands of people have been regularly visiting the site to check out the work of SVA alumni, faculty members, and degree-seeking students. Below are five projects that have attracted the most views so far this year. Click the links to see all of the images within each project, and to add your own work and connect with other artists, visit SVA Portfolios.

5) Manuel Aleman (BFA 2011 Advertising), Bo Mi Jo (BFA 2011 Advertising), Dahee Song (BFA 2011 Advertising), Raúl Cosculluela (BFA 2011 Advertising), and Nikolai Shorr (BFA 2011 Advertising), City Harvest Integrated Campaign

4) Dina Litovsky (MFA 2010 Photography, Video and Related Media), Untag This Photo

3) Twig Capra (current student, BFA Photography), Parasomnia

2) Maya Barkai (BFA 2005 Photography), Bed Landscapes

1) Eric Wagner (BFA 2006 Computer Art) and Sharon Ma, Greatest Card Trick Ever

Notable names and thought-provoking topics comprise the Spring 2012 MFA Design Criticism Lecture Series, which kicks off January 31 with Architecture Beyond Building (136 West 21 Street, 2nd floor, 6pm). In this talk by Aaron Betsky, the renowned critic, curator, architect, and director of the Cincinnati Art Museum will explore the idea that some of the best architecture is dreamed up in fiction, film and the visual arts.

Other highlights from the series include How to Capture the Culture Zeitgeist: What Phil Collins and Zombies Have in Common on February 21 with pop culture critic and This American Life contributor Starlee Kine. On February 28, artist, illustrator, and founder of the Chicago-based architecture firm Bureau Spectacular, Jimenez Lai, will discuss alternate realities in Cartoonish Architecture. And culture critic and fashion guru Cintra Wilson will lead a talk on April 3 about her new book, Fear and Clothing: Unbuckling America’s Fashion Destiny.

Now in its eighth season, the D-Crit Spring Lecture Series is curated and hosted by first-year MFA Design Criticism students. “[The lecture series] is one of my favorite aspects of the D-Crit program,” says Alice Twemlow, chair, MFA Design Criticism Department. “The students are exposed to new ideas and ways of thinking that supplement their core curriculum and, with every lecture attended by more than 60 members of the general public, we’ve fostered a vibrant community committed to the concerns of design criticism.”

All D-Crit lectures take place at 136 West 21 Street, 2nd floor, at 6pm and are free and open to the public; please RSVP at dcrit.eventbrite.com. To view the complete D-Crit 2012 Spring Lecture Series schedule, visit dcrit.sva.edu.

Image: Cintra Wilson.

Filmmaker and alumnus Ti West (BFA 2003 Film and Video) recently talked to The New York Times about his creative process and latest writing and directing project, The Innkeepers, which opens February 3. West, a native of Wilmington, Delaware, has attracted notice since his studies at SVA for bringing a contemporary perspective to 1906s-era horror in films like The Roost and The House of the Devil.

Horror director-producer Larry Fessenden said he’s appreciated West’s unique and subtle approach since West interned for him. “Ti is absolutely focused, completely versed in the language of film,” Fessenden said. “He comes from the same school that I come from, which is where you make your film soup to nuts…It’s a real passion for the whole experience.”

The Inkeepers is about a pair of hotel clerks confronted with strange occurrences as they attempt to prove that the hotel is haunted. In the future, West said he hopes to venture into films with bigger budgets while maintaining his personal artistic vision.

To read the complete article, which accompanied by a video interview with the filmmaker and slideshow of his work, visit The New York Times.

Photographers, filmmakers, fashion insiders and enthusiasts will be gathering at the SVA Theatre (333 West 23 Street) on Thursday, February 2, for the New York Fashion Film Festival. Celebrating the rise of the moving image in fashion, the festival begins with a reception at 7pm, followed by a screening at 8pm of the most influential fashion films to emerge in the past year, as chosen by 35 of NYC’s top fashion tastemakers. The evening’s program features original short films for brands like Balmain, Bottega Veneta, Chanel and Lanvin and includes films by a roster of leading fashion photographers including Quentin Jones, Nick Knight, Craig McDean, Steven Meisel and Tim Walker, among others.

GQ’s “The Style Guy” Glenn O’Brien will lead a panel discussion on the fashion industry’s embrace of film, featuring Poppy de Villeneuve, photographer and film director; Alix Brown, deputy design editor, T: The New York Times Style Magazine; and John Jay, global executive creative director, Wieden + Kennedy. The panelists will discuss the evolving genre of fashion film and its impact on the industry.

The event, now in its second year, is hosted by MPS Fashion Photography Department Co-chairs Stephen Frailey, also chair of the BFA Photography Department and editor of Dear Dave, magazine, and Jimmy Moffat, co-founder of Art + Commerce, along with alumnus Bon Duke (BFA 2009 Photography). Festival sponsors include StyleCaster, (capsule), Le Book, Purple Fashion Magazine and Dear Dave, magazine. The festival is free and open to the public. For more information, visit nyfff.com.

Filmmaker, alumnus and MFA Fine Arts Department faculty member Johan Grimonprez’s (MFA 1992 Fine Arts) most recent project, The Shadow World, has been selected for a development grant from the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program. Based on a book of the same name by Andrew Feinstein, a former African National Congress member of parliament in South Africa, the documentary focuses on corruption in the international arms trade, those who profit financially from it, and the costs in human lives.

In addition to the grant, Grimonprez will also receive support from the Sundance Institute that includes work-in-progress screenings, access to creative labs, and special events and activities at the Sundance Creative Producing Summit and Sundance Film Festival. For updates about The Shadow World, which is scheduled for release in 2014, visit Louverture Films.

In the video below, Feinstein discusses his book.

“Every Once Sometimes Now,” the first of two thesis exhibitions by students in the MFA Fine Arts Department, is on view until January 28 at the Visual Arts Gallery, 601 West 26 Street, 15th floor, New York City. Curated by Ron Segev, gallerist at Thierry Goldberg Gallery in New York, and assistant curator Richard Goldstein, the exhibition includes work in various media by Eleni Beristianou, Chie, Eun Jung Kim, Sharon Kirby, Jonas Lara, Amelia Midori Miller, Augustus Nazzaro, Jenny Santos, Heewon Seo, Kim Smith, Paul Hunter Speagle, Miryana Todorova, Aken Wahl and James Brendan Williams. The second exhibition, “Just The Tip,” will be on view February 24 – March 10 at the Visual Arts Gallery.

The exhibition documents the merging, mixing and cross-referencing of mediums and materials that drives some of today’s most ambitious artists. In addition to exploring pluralism, the works in “Every Once Sometimes Now” embrace and react “against a world that is saturated with visual clutter, where images are tagged, tweeted about and uploaded to Tumblr in an instant,” says Segev.

For more about the exhibition and a slideshow of images, visit SVA.edu.

Image: Heewon Seo, Untitled, 2011, oil on linen.

Illustrator, author and SVA alumnus Joanna Neborsky (MFA 2009 Illustration as Visual Essay) was interviewed by Yuri Chong for The New York Times Style Magazine recently. In her introduction, Chong described Neborsky as an artist “who likes to pair her lush, vividly colored imagery with plenty of dry wit. Her kooky aesthetic—part yellowing newspaper cutouts, part inky freehand brushstrokes—and clever way with words feels reminiscent of that special strain of illustrators like Leanne Shapton, Maira Kalman and Lauren Redniss, artists who write as well as they draw.”

The reference to MFA Design Department faculty member Maira Kalman was fitting, as Neborsky refers to her as “my mentor.” In fact, Kalman was her adviser at SVA and helped her get her senior thesis, Illustrated Three-Line Novels, published in 2010.

Neborsky also discussed the children’s book she illustrated last year, Tumbling Old Women, by the 20th-century Russian author Daniil Kharms, as well as her upcoming project with Joe Berkowitz, who writes for The Awl. As for her influences: “I love Antonio Frasconi, a great Italian dude. Jean Cocteau. The best children’s book I have ever read is The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine by Donald Barthelme. It’s the most ridiculous story. I love Sister Corita Kent. I can’t make anything even close to what she made because she was a genius,” Neborsky said.

For the full interview and a slideshow of Neborsky’s work, visit The New York Times Style Magazine.

As if regularly contributing illustration work to The New York Times and designing books for Malcolm Gladwell weren’t enough, BFA Advertising and Graphic Design Department faculty member Paul Sahre can now add the following to his wide-ranging resumé: Monster Truck Hearse Creator/Constructor. Legendary quirk-rock band They Might Be Giants recently asked Sahre to design and build the hilariously disarming vehicle—out of cardboard, no less—for a music video for the single “When Will You Die” from the band’s new album Join Us. The Briefs tracked down Sahre at his O.O.P.S. (Office of Paul Sahre) headquarters to discuss the project via email.

How did this project come about?
I got an e-mail from band. They had seen some of my illustration work for The New York Times and asked if I would be interested in working with them on developing a cover image for their new release Join Us. The project mushroomed to all of the conventional collateral including the design of a CD, digital art for iTunes, digital booklets, posters, t-shirts, ads and over a dozen illustrations, as well as a downloadable PDF with instructions for building a tabletop paper version of the pink monster truck hearse featured on the cover.

The project culminated with the construction and documentation of a life-sized version of the monster truck hearse (made entirely of paper and cardboard) for the music video for “When Will You Die.”

What part of the project was the most challenging? The most fun?
The building of the life-size model and the video documentation. I’m not sure I would call it fun, though. The video is a bit deceiving as it takes four months of work and condenses into 2 1/2 minutes. The design of the table top model and the PDF instructions alone took forever. The bulk of those hours were logged by my intern at the time, Santiago Carrasquilla (current student, BFA Advertising and Graphic Design). I’m sure he still has nightmares about it.

Were there any other SVA people involved?
It wouldn’t be a stretch to call this an SVA project. Faculty member Adam Wahler not only printed it and contributed advice, but we also built it in his A to A Studio driveway in Stamford CT. Joe Hollier (current student, BFA Advertising and Graphic Design) co-directed and shot it (and helped build). Former O.O.P.S. intern and SVA legend Alex Stikeleather (current student, BFA Advertising and Graphic Design) along with Santiago, did everything from designing to building for the project and were there from start to finish. And last but not least David Cooke (current student, BFA Photography) was there at the end to film and shoot large format pictures.

What was it like to see your work destroyed at the end?
Are you kidding? It was great! That thing had to die. It was built, we test drove it and then it was in pieces, sitting in a storage space (it completely filled a 30′ x 10′ x 10′ unit that was running us $560 per month). There was always a plan to recycle it, but the idea to film the flattening of it didn’t come until the end. A designer one floor above my office on Sixth Avenue, Frank DeRose, hooked me up with a friend of his that operates a scrap yard. Next thing I know, we’re having a moment of silence for a pile of cardboard.

Watch the video for “When Will You Die” below.