Visual Arts Briefs

Using the Shepard Fairey/Barack Obama photo controversy as a premise, MFA Design Department Co-chair Steven Heller poses a question to the design community and the public this week on the Glass House Conversations Web site. Heller asks, “What are the legal and ethical lines in the sand with regard to intellectual property and images? In your experience, what is appropriate appropriation?” Visit glasshouseconversations.org to comment or to read the responses.

The Web site for the Glass House Conversations was put together by six students from the MFA Interaction Design Department earlier this summer, together with the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Philip Johnson Glass House. The Web site that extends a series of  invitationals held at the Glass House during 2008 and 2009 with cultural, business and educational leaders.

This week marks the opening of “Where Is My Vote? Posters for the Green Movement in Iran,” an exhibition featuring nearly 150 political posters created by graphic artists from around the world in support of the protests that took place in Iran following the 2009 presidential election. The show—on view in the Visual Arts Gallery, August 30 – September 25—is the first public viewing of these posters in printed form and was organized by designers Anita Kunz and Woody Pirtle along with Francis Di Tommaso, director of the Visual Arts Gallery, and Steven Heller, author and co-chair of the MFA Design Department.

“Where Is My Vote?” highlights the role that socially responsible designers can play in rallying support for free speech. The exhibition features posters by some of the most celebrated graphic artists working today, including R.O. Blechman, Cathie Bleck, Seymour Chwast, Ivan Chermayeff, Milton Glaser, Robert Grossman, Anita Kunz, Yossi Lemel, Jennifer Morla, István Orosz, Woody Pirtle, Andrea Rauch, Ralph Steadman, Gary Taxali, James Victore and Massimo Vignelli, among others.

Following the elections in Iran in the spring of 2009, an Iranian photographer who goes by the name of Green Bird contacted graphic artists from all over the world and asked them to create posters in support the green movement in Iran. One of the people he approached, Italian designer Andrea Rauch, volunteered to host all of the posters on SocialDesignZine, the blog of the Association of Italian Graphic Designers, where he serves as editor. More than 200 posters have been collected on the site. In the fall of 2009, Green Bird asked Kunz if she knew of a venue that would be interested in exhibiting the posters. Kunz then brought the works to the attention of SVA, and soon the planning for “Where Is My Vote?” began. The resulting exhibition presents the posters mounted on double-sided placards (echoing hand-held protest signs) clustered throughout the gallery space. The College is hosting a special reception on Thursday, September 16, 6 – 8pm, at the gallery.

Images: (top) Seymour Chwast; (bottom) Anita Kunz.

Animator and alumnus Tom Sito (BFA 1977 Animation) tells The Hollywood Reporter, “[Faculty member] Howard Beckerman not only taught me about animation, but also how to behave like a professional. His method of teaching though anecdote and example are techniques I use today in my own teaching.” Beckerman, who has been teaching at the College since the 1970s, was one of nine animation professors highlighted in the Friday, August 20 issue of The Hollywood Reporter.

The Annual 2010 has just been published, and it features an in-depth look at the past, present and future of drawing at the College. The publication is available online at sva.edu/annual, featuring work by undergraduate and graduate students, plus interviews with students, faculty and SVA President David Rhodes, who says, “Within the diversity of departmental curricula across the College, nearly everyone here—department chairs, students, faculty members and alumni—senses that [drawing] is fundamental.”

Visitors to the SVA Facebook page can click the Photos tab to view an album of additional drawing work submitted for the publication; in addition, we are inviting readers to share their drawings with the SVA community by uploading images to the College’s Facebook page.

A recent Huffington Post profile calls BFA Fine Arts Department faculty member Farrell Brickhouse’s paintings “small, jewel-like emotion-objects, brimming with authentic, unmediated feeling.” In the article, Brickhouse shares his creative influences, which include the dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History and Carl Jung’s book Man and His Symbols.

Image: Farrell Brickhouse, How It Goes II, 2010.

The New York Press profiled recent graduate Matt Barteluce (MFA 2010 Illustration as Visual Essay) for his poster designs for the Manhattan political group Tea Party 365. In addition to making signs for rallies, Barteluce also illustrates cartoons inspired by Tea Party issues under the pseudonym Slim Dodger.

This fall, the MPS Art Therapy Department is presenting “Valetudo: Art and Healing in Provence,” an exhibition of works made by psychiatric patients at the Maison de Santé Saint-Paul in the southern French town of Saint-Rémy, at the Westside Gallery,141 West 21st Street, August 31 – September 18; there is a reception on Monday, September 13, 6 – 8pm.

Saint-Rémy has near-mythical status among artists and art historians as the place where Vincent Van Gogh spent a highly productive year from 1889 – 90, following his voluntary internment at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole mental hospital. It is here that the artist made renowned paintings like Irises and The Starry Night, just two of more than 150 paintings produced during his stay. “Valetudo”—curated by Dr. Jean-Marc Boulon, chief psychiatrist and director of the institution, along with Laurence Minard-Amalou, a private licensed tour guide in Provence—features recent paintings made in a studio setting by psychiatric patients at the women’s clinic of the Maison de Santé Saint-Paul (as the hospital in Saint-Rémy is now known), along with their written testimonials and photographic documentation of their community.

For the art therapy and mental health community, the exhibition also offers a reminder of the role of culture in practitioners’ training and methodologies. “Art therapists must recognize that there are significant differences across cultures and be fully cognizant of how these impact the therapeutic encounter,” says Deborah Farber, chair of the MPS Art Therapy Department. “The ways in which theory and practice are understood is a reflection of the norms of a particular society, but does not fit those of all societies.”

Images: (top) Painting by Nicole Jobertie; (bottom) photo of the Valetudo Studio at the Maison de Santé Saint-Paul.

For the cover story “What Is It About 20-Somethings?”, The New York Times Magazine asked 13 young photographers to take photos exploring the identity of their generation. Alumni Bon Duke (BFA 2009 Photography) and  Ina Jang (BFA 2010 Photography) were among the photographers whose images were featured on the cover page. Additionally, 12 of Jang’s images, mostly of young adults with their faces masked, appear on the the table of contents.

Click here to see the images on the Times Web site.

The Division of Continuing Education at SVA offers many courses to the general public that fall within the College’s best-known areas of study, from advertising and drawing to digital photography and filmmaking. In addition to these core courses, CE students can also try out more esoteric and surprising approaches to creativity, including classes in the ancient metal-bending art of blacksmithing.

CE faculty member Marsha Trattner teaches two blocks of Creative Blacksmithing courses, as well as classes in metal furniture fabrication, a weekend welding workshop and more. Trattner’s focus on metal media and the wide range of techniques used for sculpting with steel earned her Red Hook-based classes a feature in the New York Daily News and an online video.

Alongside her dogs Scruffy and Duff, MPS Branding Department Chair Debbie Millman was profiled in Core77 for their ongoing series, “Dogs on Design.” Explaining the parallel between dogs and brand loyalty, Millman tells the Web site, “On their best day, brands could aspire to be like dogs, evoking that sense of connectivity.”

MFA Interaction Design Department Chair Liz Danzico was also featured in the series in June.