Visual Arts Briefs

The MFA Design Department is opening “Unleashed,” the latest iteration of its annual exhibition of thesis projects, at the Visual Arts Gallery. Curated by Ada Whitney, a faculty member and co-founder and creative director of broadcast design firm Beehive, the show presents products, campaigns and services developed by 21 students graduating from the program, each one designed to be both commercially viable and culturally significant.

Among the projects on view are Marlyn Dantes’ Sentimentalyst, a Web application that evaluates bias in news coverage; Matt Luckhurst’s Illuminated Atheist, proposing a new way to approach Atheism; Dohun Park’s Poétiq, which combines poetry with everyday objects, encouraging individuals to find inspiration in the mundane; Ashley Stevens’ The Ah Project, which provides an online outlet for families and friends of loved ones with mental illness; Mariana Uchoa’s I’m a Designer and I Can’t Draw, a book for designers about visualizing ideas; and James Yang’s iPhone application Lazy Green, which teaches aspiring environmentalists effective ways of saving energy.

“Unleashed” will be on view at the Visual Arts Gallery, 601 West 26th Street, 15th Floor, from April 30 – May 15; there will be an opening reception on Tuesday, May 4, 6 – 8pm. (And check out a behind-the-scenes look at the installation of “Unleashed” on the department’s blog.)

Images: (top) Matt Luckhurst, Illuminated Atheist, 2010; (bottom) Ashley Stevens, The Ah Project, 2010.

In addition to their coursework and thesis projects, students in the MFA Illustration as Visual Essay Department have been busy this semester contributing illustrations to some of New York City’s most popular magazines. The Goings On About Town section of the April 26 issue of The New Yorker featured an illustration of the band Kings Go Forth by Andrew Roberts. Jonathan Bartlett contributed an illustration to a recent Op-Ed piece in the April 24 The New York Times. Bartlett’s black-and-white drawing of a Boy Scout ensconced in a bell jar accompanies Paul Theroux’s portrait of the Scouts and a call for change in the organization’s current procedures. And the April 22 issue of Time Out New York featured an illustration by Will Varner in its Photo Finish section, in which an illustrator adds to a reader-submitted photo. (Other students and graduates from the department have also created work for this section of the magazine, including current students Nathan Bulmer, Christopher Darling and Brendan Leach; 2009 graduates Josh Bayer, Joanna Neborsky, Rich Tu and Edwin Vazquez; and 2008 graduates Dunja Jankovic and Sophia Wiedeman.)

For those looking for an opportunity to see work by all 19 students graduating from the department this May, the exhibition “Selections from Thesis Projects in the MFA Illustration as Visual Essay Department” will have a reception on Tuesday, May 4, 6 – 8pm.  The show brings together books, figurative paintings, comic books and narrative series, and is curated by faculty member David Sandlin. “Selections” runs from April 30 – May 15 at the Visual Arts Gallery, 601 West 26th Street, 15th floor.

Image: Jonathan Bartlett, Follies, mixed media; from “Selections from Thesis Projects in the MFA Illustration as Visual Essay Department”

The SVA community had so many winners in April that one Briefs post wasn’t enough to cover them all:

• MFA Interaction Design Department student Stephanie Aaron was one of 19 women selected as a scholarship recipient at the New York Women in Communications 2010 Matrix Awards. Scholarship recipients were selected based on their academic and extracurricular achievements, and they received scholarship funds to help advance their careers in the field. Aaron was interviewed by Matt Lauer and Al Roker on NBC’s The Today Show on Monday, April 19.
• Two SVA faculty members were named 2010 Guggenheim Fellows: Ed Bowes (BFA Film, Video and Animation Department) and Luca Buvoli (BFA Fine Arts Department) are among 180 artists, scientists and scholars who were included on the prestigious list of fellowship recipients.
• The Visual Arts Press won a Pencil award in the 2010 One Show Design Awards for the SVA Undergraduate Catalog 2010–11, and a Merit award for the SVA Graduate Catalog 2010–11. In addition, 24 SVA student entries to the One Show were picked as finalists, with five Pencil winners. The One Club’s 2010 student awards ceremony will take place Wednesday, May 12.
• BFA Advertising and Graphic Design Department senior Thomas Losinski was chosen as the U.S. winner in Samsung’s World Creative Imaging Competition. Losinski is one of 10 winners chosen by Samsung, representing creative photographers from around the world.
• Justin Ho, a current student in the BFA Film, Video and Animation Department, took the top prize at the 8th Annual Garden State Film Festival in the Home Grown Student Short category for his short film Silence.

Image: Stephanie Aaron, New York Women in Communications 2010 Matrix Award winner.

• BFA Fine Arts Department faculty member David Ross appeared on the TV show CBS Sunday Morning. Ross was interviewed in a feature on how the economic downturn has affected the art world. Katie Hopkins, a current student in the BFA Fine Arts Department, was also shown in the segment using digital equipment to construct a metal sculpture.
• A new Division of Continuing Education course at SVA was recently featured on dnainfo.com. Entitled Get on Reality TV, the class teaches students the ins and outs of creating a reality show “character,” from casting to conflicts.
• Humanities and Sciences faculty member Regina Weinreich was mentioned in a Herald Tribune article after she spoke at the Sarasota Film Festival at a screening of a documentary about author William S. Burroughs. Weinreich hosted a program of screenings, lectures and poetry readings about the author at SVA back in October.
• Alumnus and comics artist Phil Jimenez (1991 Cartooning) was included in a New York Times article about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender comics, creators and readers. In a discussion of creating minority characters, Jimenez told the Times, “This is always the unfair truth of any new character created to represent a minority: it’s nearly impossible for them to thrive as characters because they have to ‘represent’ a population whose members do not all behave the same way, see themselves in the same way, dress in the same way, share the same political beliefs.”

Image: Photo of David Ross, courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Cartoonist and alumnus James Sturm (MFA 1991 Illustration as Visual Essay) is, like a typical member of 21st-century society, a regular user of the Internet. He communicates via e-mail, looks up information through search engines and downloads music to an iPod. But recently, he started to wonder if he’d become too reliant on the Web.

So Sturm decided to go offline, a process he is documenting with cartoons and text in “Life Without the Web,” his new series on Slate.com. “Over the last several years, the Internet has evolved from being a distraction to something that feels more sinister,” he observes in the first installment. For four months, he is going cold turkey, which means no e-mail, no texting via cell phone, no managing the Netflix queue, no paperless bill paying. Of course, there is one Web-centric thing still on Sturm’s plate: “The irony of blogging about not being online doesn’t escape me.”

Check out the first installments of “Life Without the Web” here, and check back every two weeks for updates from the offline world.

Images: James Sturm, from “Offline: Life Without the Web,” Slate.com, 2010.

Every year, the MAT Art Education Department focuses on training art educators and preparing them for careers in schools and educational programs around the city and across the country. Barbara Salander, the program’s thesis director, has also been studying the people who are studying at SVA: she recently completed a five-year investigation of the artistic development of people who completed the College’s MAT program.

Using multiple sets of questionnaires that were distributed at strategic moments in the three-term program (the first day of the first semester, first day of the second semester, the last day of the third semester and a post-graduation follow-up), Salander tracked how the students developed as artists and as educators, along with how the art education program impacted their growth as artists. “I was looking for the aspects of our program that had an impact,” she says, “things like peer interaction, new approaches to material use, process and methods.”

Having recently completed the study, Salander was invited to present her findings at this year’s National Art Educators Association conference, which took place on Wednesday, April 14, in Baltimore. Over the course of the presentation, titled “Artistic Development of Students in the MAT Program at SVA,” Salander showed the different approaches students took to creating their own artwork during the program, the impact of certain courses on their artistic development, and how their perceptions of themselves as artists shifted over the course of their classes and internships. “[In the first questionnaire] I answered that I am not yet an artist, but I am studying to be one,” said one of the study’s participants. “But through this program, I have come to realize that how I think makes me an artist…I now consider myself an artist. This program has helped me realize this.”

Image: A slide from Barbara Salander’s presentation, “Artistic Development of Students in the MAT Program at SVA.”

Alumnus Jayne Freeman (BFA 1985 Photography) is a photographer who is more likely to be the camera’s subject than its operator these days. The Jersey City, NJ, resident took her passion for motherhood and made it visual: Freeman is the host of Mamarama, a popular series of public-access TV episodes and online videos. In a recent profile for The Jersey City Independent, writer Susan M. Lee describes the show as, “informative, personal and advocacy-driven,” with Freeman taking on standard topics like, “treating poison ivy and lice, bonding with a newborn and lying to kids about the tooth fairy’s and Santa Claus’ existence,” to more esoteric fare like proper etiquette for talking to pregnant women and the business interests lurking behind hospital births.

After seven years on the air, Freeman has more than 50 streaming videos posted to her mamaramatv channel on YouTube, including recent episodes that show Freeman discussing ways to avoid a c-section birth and demonstrating how to use a hula hoop for a quick and fun home workout. “I am by no means an authority,” Freeman says in her mamaramatv profile, “but I see myself more as a conduit for channeling all the tips and info I have been collecting throughout the eight years I have been a parent.”

The spring 2010 issue of the Visual Arts Journal is hot off the presses and is now available online. Visit sva.edu/journal to read about new tattooing courses at the College, alumni who write and direct for TV, SVA’s Arts Abroad program, a class project that had students creating plush toys, and more.

The new issue also features the debut of “Under the Influence,” looking at the impact of SVA faculty members on their students. The first installment profiles faculty member John Ruggeri and his former student John Paul Leon (BFA 1994 Illustration). Click through the Journal site to see the full slate of stories from the print edition, with additional images and links exclusively for online readers.

Beginning with this week’s edition, SVA News comes to readers in a new format. Rather than covering a single distinction or innovation in depth, each weekly installment now provides timely updates from across the SVA community, with reports on visionary faculty and students, alumni accomplishments, and noteworthy programs and initiatives, all in one interactive digest.

The latest in a series of one-on-one conversations with SVA department chairs.

For more than 20 years, the MFA Computer Art Department has been providing graduate students with access to the latest tools, technologies and expertise in the many realms of digital artwork, including 3D animation, motion graphics and video, digital fine art, Web design, programming and interactive media. Bruce Wands is a digital artist, musician, writer and educator who joined the program’s faculty in 1988 and has chaired the department since 1998. He recently spoke to the Briefs about the department and the challenges of staying on the leading edge of technology-based creation:

What are some of the biggest changes you’ve seen in your department over time?
The most dramatic change was the growth of the Internet in the mid-1990s. When we first connected to the Internet, they had to dig up 21st Street in order to install the cable. Now we are using wireless networking more and are seeing a dramatic increase in mobile computing. The capabilities of today’s software and hardware far exceed what we had even five years ago.

The technology of computer-driven artwork must be difficult to keep up with, moment to moment.
We have a dynamic curriculum model, where new courses are added and the old ones updated every year. We also enhance the curriculum through an active guest lecture program, visiting artists and workshops on a variety of topics. I spend a lot of time researching the field for new developments and future trends. For example, we started a Stereoscopic 3D class several years ago, and now Hollywood is producing a lot of 3D films, which provides opportunities for our graduates.

What’s in store for the next academic year?
We’re starting a course in creating apps for the iPhone and iPad. Our 3D stereoscopic HDTV and motion-capture capabilities will be enhanced, along with our multi-channel sound facilities. This will give our students even more ways to express their ideas and creativity.

What most impresses you about your students and their work?
We have seen a dramatic increase in the digital literacy of our incoming students over the past few years. They have grown up with computers, and this gives us the ability to focus more on creativity, critique and theory, rather than teaching them software. They are also not afraid to combine digital techniques with traditional media. For me, creativity is the most valuable commodity, and the students clearly understand that.

Image: Photo by Harry Zernike.