Visual Arts Briefs

The summer exhibition season at SVA features shows that are part of the College’s student jury program. Every year, a jury of students from a wide array of departments review artwork submitted by their peers; the artists selected by the jury are then used by Richard Brooks, assistant director of student galleries, to curate a series of exhibitions.

Two of those juried exhibitions are opening at the beginning of June. “Between,” at the Westside Gallery, 131/141 West 21st Street, June 1 – 19, features sculpture, print and video work of a meditative and contemplative nature. The show includes pieces by Emilie Rolin Jacquemyns, Tamar Latzman, Adehla Lee, Laurel Lueders and Vered Sivan; there will be an opening reception for the artists on Wednesday, June 2, 5 – 7pm.

Just a few days later, “Social” opens at the SVA Gallery, 209 West 23rd Street. On view June 5 – 26, the exhibition focuses on painting, photography and sculpture by students and recent graduates, examining current global conditions and cultural legacies. Peter Buotte, Katie Cercone, Natan Dvir, Anat Even-Or, Elektra KB, Yuri Leonov, Elizabeth Libert and Sara Macel all have work in the show, which will have its opening reception on Monday, June 7, 5 – 7pm.

Images: (top) Laurel Lueders, Untitled 2, 2009, from “Between”; (bottom) Elizabeth Libert, Dan (Lunch at the Club), 2010, from “Social.”

Three SVA alumni present new apps via the Apple iTunes App Store:

• Faces iMake is based on alumnus Hanoch Piven’s (BFA 1992 Graphic Design) popular artworks and workshops in which ordinary objects are used to create whimsical faces. The interactive app for all ages features finger-tapping tools that provide virtual buttons, yarn, food and other items that can be shaped into funny faces. (Version 1.2 available for $0.99)
• Anatomy for Artists: Proportions is a new educational app created by alumnus Michael Straub (BFA 2005 Animation). The app includes reference images (modeled after those in Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebooks) useful for any artist drawing the human figure, and shows proper proportions for both full-body drawings and studies of individual body parts. (Version 1.0 available for $0.99)
• Ace Omicron brings a new twist on the old arcade favorite Asteroids to the iPhone and iPad. Alumnus Casey Gatti (BFA 1999 Animation) puts the player in the middle of deep space with robots, spaceships and hurling rocks thwarting the 3D journey home. (Version 1.1 available for $1.99)

SVA took home the School of the Year award at the ADC 89th Annual Awards Ceremony, hosted by the Art Directors Club (ADC), an international organization for creatives in integrated media. The award was given to the school with the most cumulative ADC Cubes won across all categories, and SVA tied with Miami Ad School for the honor.

A number of SVA students were recognized individually for their projects. Alumnus and current MFA Illustration as Visual Essay Department student Jungyeon Roh (BFA 2009 Illustration) won a Gold Cube in the Illustration category for her book Today is Sushi Day. Bronze Cubes were awarded to Alex Sunyoung Koo (BFA 2009 Advertising) and Julissa Ortiz (BFA 2009 Advertising)  in Collateral Advertising; and to Wesley Gott, a current student in the MFA Design Department, for Television and Cinema Design. Jang Cho (BFA 2010 Advertising), Marianna D’Annunzio (BFA 2010 Advertising), Sungkwon Ha (BFA 2009 Advertising) and Eunjung Yoo (BFA 2010 Graphic Design) also received Merit awards for their advertising and design submissions.

The awards ceremony took place on Wednesday, May 19, at the SVA Theatre, 333 West 23 Street. Cubes were presented by top industry professionals including Richard Wilde, chair of the BFA Advertising and Graphic Design Department. SVA students, alumni and faculty were also featured in the Art Directors Annual 88.

Image: Jungyeon Roh, from Today is Sushi Day, 2008.

Recent graduate Matthew Luckhurst’s (MFA 2010 Design) thesis project for the MFA Design Department, Illuminated Atheist, is an attempt to rebrand Atheism and show its complexities in a more positive light. Luckhurst talked about his project on The Greg and Marlo Show, a radio program on CJOB 68; click here to listen to the podcast. Illuminated Atheist was also covered on the Fast Company and GOOD magazine Web sites.

Image: Matthew Luckhurst, Illuminated Atheist, 2010

We asked SVA students and faculty to send in work they were creating over the summer. Below is one in an occasional series of Summer Session posts.

This image is a new work from Dave Geeting, a current student in the BFA Photography Department:

Image: Dave Geeting, Metal in Grass, 2010.

BFA Illustration and Cartooning Department faculty member Keith Mayerson and alumnus Dash Shaw (BFA 2005 Illustration) will be participating in an Artist Talk event on Tuesday, May 25, 7pm, at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA). The event is the culmination of two exhibitions currently on view at MoCCA: “NeoIntegrity: Comics Edition” is co-presented by SVA and brings together images by more than 200 cartoonists, illustrators, animators and fine artists who, according to Mayerson, the show’s curator, “work with the spirit and power of iconographic languages.” Running simultaneously is “Making the Abyss,” a solo exhibition of work by Shaw, collecting comics art from his long-form pieces BodyWorld, Bottomless Belly Button, The Uncanny Reproduction and The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century.

Both exhibitions are running through Sunday, May 30, at MoCCA, 594 Broadway, Suite 401. For more information about the Artist Talk (admission is $5; free for MoCCA members), visit moccany.org/content/events.

Image: Dash Shaw, BodyWorld (Pantheon, 2010).

A short documentary by recent graduate Carlos Alvarez Montero (MFA 2010 Photography, Video and Related Media) was featured on the Fader magazine Web site. Entitled Our Lady of the Bronx, Alvarez Montero’s video follows the Bronx-based lowrider bike club The Firme Rydaz on its annual pilgrimage devoted to La Virgen de Guadalupe, during which members walk their bikes and a large effigy of the Virgin Mary from the Bronx down to 14th street in Manhattan. Click here to read the write-up and view the video below.

The new feature film Holy Rollers, which opens in New York City and Los Angeles on Friday, May 21, is the latest directorial effort from alumnus Kevin Asch (BFA 1998 Film and Video). The movie stars Jesse Eisenberg as Sam Gold, a young Hasidic man who becomes involved in international drug smuggling. Holy Rollers premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize.

The first page of the May 13 issue of Time Out New York opens with a photo of Marissa Havers, a current student in the BFA Visual and Critical Studies Department. The magazine interviewed Havers for the “I, New York” section while she was staging a performance art piece in Washington Square Park, for which she asked passersby to brush her hair.

Several SVA students and alumni have received industry recognition for their short films:

• Dustin Grella (MFA 2009 Computer Art) is one of the 37 student finalists in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ 37th Annual Student Academy Awards competition. Grella’s film Prayers for Peace is a narrative stop-motion animation about the artist’s younger brother, who was killed in Iraq.
• Ross Bollinger, a current student in the BFA Film, Video and Animation Department, was named the first-place winner in the Animation category of the 31st Annual College Television Awards for his work Hook, Line, and Stinker, a series of comedic vignettes about fisherman that appear to created by a moving pencil.
• Mark Kendall, a current student in the MFA Social Documentary Film Department, is earning praise for his short documentary film The Time Machine. It was selected as the Best Documentary Short of the 2010 Arizona International Film Festival, received the Grand Jury Award for Best Student Film in the Washington DC Independent Film Festival and won Best Student Film in the West Chester Film Festival. The Time Machine is a portrait of Wil Alvarez, a man who came to the U.S. from Honduras 11 years ago and now works as a watchmaker in New York City’s Grand Central Station.
• Jake Armstrong (BFA 2009 Animation) animation The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9! will be part of Best of Ottawa 2009, a series of screenings  from the Ottawa International Animation Festival that will travel through Canada and the United States through July 2010. Armstrong’s animation is also an Official Selection in the Graduation Films category of the Annecy International Animated Film Festival 2010, which will take place June 9 – 11.

Image: Dustin Grella, still from Prayers for Peace, 2009.