Talk about the inspiration for your Brave Chicken series.
Brave Chicken is a character that came to me from my experience of going through the emotional aftermath of breast cancer treatment. I was diagnosed at the beginning of my second semester in the MFA Illustration as Visual Essay program at SVA in January of 2011 and went through treatment from February through November. By the time treatment ended, we were working on our thesis projects, and I knew I wanted mine to be about health and healing. But what I learned over time was that for me, figuring out how to live life after cancer treatment is very much about learning to keep moving with fear as a constant companion. To me, that is where health and healing began—finding a place to put my fear so that it wouldn’t keep me from moving.

So one day this past February, I was at the studio during a stressful period where I was waiting to have a follow-up PET scan. I realized I was completely exhausted from having to be brave, when all I felt was scared. And I realized that I was both: brave AND scared, most of the time. I was drawing while I realized that, and I wrote down in ink: Be a Brave Chicken.  It felt right to me, and as I started to draw and form her, the metaphor became more layered and rich. She shares the same initials with breast cancer.

Brave Chicken happened in three mediums. Why?
When I initially proposed my thesis and I wanted it to be about “health and healing,” I didn’t know what it was going to look like. But I had an instinct that the process of making the thesis had to evoke health and healing in me—both in using expressive materials and in following my gut about the story-telling. I knew from experience that working with Sculpey was very tactile and fun for me, so I proposed that a part of my thesis-making would be my own art-therapy where I was making characters out of Sculpey and experimenting with how they related to each other, to play out some of the drama/trauma I had been through.

I also had a desire to make posters and comics. David Sandlin, our Thesis Instructor, seemed to totally understand and embrace this three-pronged approach, and that helped me a great deal in feeling good about doing it. He also encouraged me to have a through-line through the mediums, in the form of an “avatar.” In that way, he helped midwife the birth of Brave Chicken.

I’m very happy that I did this three-pronged approach: I feel that school is a time of growing and experimentation, and I wanted to really try a lot in that last semester since the prior two I was undergoing treatment and was barely hanging in.

Where does Brave Chicken go from here? Is BC’s work done, or will BC’s story expand? Does BC fit in a particular period of your life that’s in the past, or is BC in your present?
When I discovered Brave Chicken, it wasn’t long before I figured out that there are some basic universal themes here. In this world, who doesn’t have to be a Brave Chicken? So yes, I plan to keep working with her. One of the most challenging and rewarding parts of my thesis was making a “comic” about a touching conversation I had with a cab driver: once Brave Chicken materialized, I stuck her in the back seat as a stand-in for me, and the telling of that story flowed much more easily. Moving forward, I have two more Cab Conversations that I scripted out, that I would like to realize in comics form, with Brave Chicken in the passenger seat. If this character can help other people feel connected, understood, or better in any way, I will feel like my work has done what I wanted it to do.

Brave Chicken and all images copyright Nina Frenkel 2012.

For over 35 years, the “Metropolitan Diary” has allowed people to share fleeting memories and quirky moments that could only happen in New York. The column stands as an early example of a user-generated feature at the Times, serving as an important indicator of local culture. Dedicated newspaper subscribers can read new entries in print every Monday, and the Times now offers additional stories and interactive features online. To read more entries and see more of Kerlow’s illustrations, visit The New York Times and his website.

The Bliumis’s project is produced in collaboration with No Longer Empty, an arts organization that works to widen the audience for contemporary art by presenting high-caliber, site-specific public art exhibitions in the heart of communities. The project has allowed the Bliumises to visit families in the Riverdale, Castle Hill, Woodlawn, and City Island neighborhoods, among others, resulting in 13 family portraits. “You can see a lot, even in one photograph,” Alina Bliumis said in the article. “You can see the social and cultural differences. You can see the traditions. I think you can see everything about life in photographs.”

To learn more about “Painting for a Family Dinner” and the Bliumis’s other projects, visit their website.

For more information and a full list of the films included in the Short Film Corner, visit Cannes Court Métrage.

The Art Directors Club is the premier organization for integrated media worldwide. Founded in New York in 1920, the ADC is a self-funded, not-for-profit, global membership organization which serves as a hub for creative talent and leadership in visual communication.

The ADC Awards competition is judged by an international panel of the world’s most respected creative professionals to recognize the best work from around the world in interactive media, broadcast and print advertising, graphic design, publication design, packaging, photography and illustration. The winners were presented with the ADC’s coveted Gold, Silver and Bronze Cubes at a gala ceremony in New York City on May 9, and will be featured in the award-winning Art Directors Annual, the oldest and most respected compendium of outstanding work in the industry. Winning work will also be archived online at ADC’s website later this year.

The 91st Annual Awards Exhibition runs through May 31 at the ADC Gallery, 106 West 29th Street, New York City, before embarking on a national tour. Gallery hours are Monday – Friday, 10am  – 6pm and admission is free and open to the public.

Image: ADC Gold Cube.

Casey Espinoza (BFA 2011 Graphic Design), Eleni Georgeou (BFA 2011 Advertising), Bona Jeong (BFA 2011 Advertising), Bo Mi Jo (BFA 2011 Advertising), Jamie Kakleas (BFA 2011 Advertising), Jungho Katie Lee (BFA 2012 Advertising) and Dahee Song (BFA 2011 Advertising) took home honors for projects ranging from an Olympics logo customized for McDonald’s sponsorship to a wall clock designed for City Harvest, the New York City nonprofit serving New Yorkers in need of a free meal.

The Graphis New Talent Annual also honors the instructors and schools that shaped the winning students’ work. The distinguished faculty members behind SVA’s Platinum Award are Frank Anselmo, Sal DeVito and Jack Mariucci.

Anselmo is also the subject of an interview in the publication. Explaining his students’ multi-year winning streak Anselmo tells Graphis, “Most creatives copy existing ideas, but that’s the kiss of death. New ideas are what it’s all about. That’s the approach for my classes and clients.”

View the complete list of SVA winners at Graphis.com. A gallery of work created by SVA students is online here.

Image: Halls ad by Bo Mi Jo and Dahee Song.

Strauss began writing art criticism more than 30 years ago after studying in the famed San Francisco–based Poetics Program, which was modeled after Black Mountain College. The rigorous and generative education he received there in the early 1980s under poet Robert Duncan’s tutelage has influenced Strauss’s writing and thinking ever since. “I used to think that the plight of criticism was to be always the lover, never the beloved,” he reflected in the essay. “Criticism needs the art object, but the art object doesn’t need criticism. Now I agree with Baudelaire: ‘It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.’ Artists who disparage criticism are attacking their own progeny, and future.”

To read the entire essay, visit The Brooklyn Rail.

The Student Academy Awards currently offer prizes in four categories: Alternative, Animation, Documentary and Narrative. Gold, silver, and bronze awards are given in each category, with accompanying cash grants of $5,000, $3,000, and $2,000, respectively. A separate award is given annually to a student filmmaker from outside the United States. To extend the impact and honor beyond the competition, a compilation presentation of the gold medal award-winning films is circulated each year free of charge to educational and non-profit organizations nationwide.

The College’s Art for Kids (K-9) program has long been a well-kept secret. On Saturdays and Sundays, classrooms at SVA are full of young artists gaining fundamental art knowledge and working with a wide variety of materials to create works over 10-week sessions. One of the program’s biggest assets is its teachers, all SVA students or alumni and experienced in teaching art in private and public schools and various other professional educational settings. Each teacher has an academic and practical understanding of art education, loves teaching art to kids, and guides Art for Kids participants as they create autobiographical and imagination-based works that are displayed at the end of the semester in a gallery-like setting.

SVA provides these classes as part of its mission to meet the diverse needs of the larger community within which the College resides. Classes are $220 for 10 90-minute or two-hour classes, depending on the student’s age. For more information on Art for Kids (K-9), including the upcoming Summer program, visit www.sva.edu/special-programs/art-for-kids-k-9.

Photos (by Gayle Snible) of work created in classes taught by Ryan Armstrong (MAT 2011 Art Education), Lindsey Kammerer (MAT 2009 Art Education), Sara Lauth (MAT 2010 Art Education) and Miranda Small (BFA 1998 Illustration).

What are you currently working on?
I just came back from Australia where I was the Stereographer on Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby. The stereographer is the person responsible for the 3D on set. He/she deals with advising the director, the cinematographer and the rest of the crew on how to use 3D in the best possible way in addition to keeping continuity with the images in terms of depth and volume from shot to shot.

How did your experience at SVA prepare you for what you’re doing today?
At SVA I learned the basics in terms of camera and storytelling, and I learned all I know today about editing and sound equipment. But most importantly, it got me a job. Mark Pederson, who was my teacher at SVA, is the co-owner of Offhollywood, the company I now work for here in New York.

Any memories of the Dustys you’d like to share?
I had a great yet intense time trying to watch every single one of the shorts projected back when I graduated in 2008. It was the first year that we used the SVA Theatre for the Dustys. I remember being shocked by the quality of the projection.

Any advice to aspiring filmmakers/soon-to-be grads?
Yes. Don’t be afraid of just getting a job. If you haven’t figured out your skill set yet (other than Director/DP/Editor) figure that out now and get started. Learn to be an assistant editor or assistant cameraman or a company grip. There is a lot to be learned from just being on set. It takes years, so be patient and think positively and it will eventually pay off—you will eventually transition to your dream job.

Image: Alonso Homs on the set of The Great Gatsby.