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.
In front of a standing room-only audience, MFA Design Department Co-chairs Steven Heller and Lita Talarico led a lively discussion about their new book Typography Sketchbooks (Princeton Architectural Press) at The New York Public Library’s Berger Forum on Wednesday, January 11. They were joined by several contributors to the book (which features 118 designers in all), including alumni Travis Cain (MFA 2004 Design) and Matt Luckhurst (MFA 2010 Design), MFA Illustration as Visual Essay Department faculty member Viktor Koen, and Purgatory Pie Press duo Esther K. Smith and Dikko Faust.
Heller started the evening with a slideshow and enthusiastically praised the work featured in the book—“It transcends what’s on the screen.” He applauded both the refined and the very rough starts of the field of typography and demonstrated that “(typefaces) can represent things in the street that have nothing to do with typefaces.” Koen talked about his early distaste for sketches during his student years (one of his teachers required seven additional sketches in addition to final assignments), but said he soon began to appreciate sketching as an important part of the design process. Cain, currently the Art Director for Kiehl’s, said that because he focuses on easily readable type for Kiehl’s health and beauty products, in his spare time, he gravitates to “typography that doesn’t concern itself (with) whether the viewer can read it.”
Wearing a t-shirt displaying his students’ proofs, BFA Fine Arts Department faculty member and “Letterpress” instructor Faust presented with his professional and personal partner Smith. While showing the audience some of the process behind the duo’s Purgatory Pie Press, Smith emphatically stated that Faust hated Helvetica. The evening’s last presentation was from Luckhurst, who got into design via graffiti work. “Sketches don’t need to have an intent, other than to be sketches. Not to say they can’t, but it is novel to have a place to let the mind and hand wander,” he says in Typography Sketchbooks.
The Golden Ass of Lucius Apuleius (David R. Godine, Inc. 2011), story by M.D. Usher and illustrations by BFA Illustration and Cartooning faculty member Tom Motley: Adapted for children by Usher, this classic tale centers on the misadventures of a young man obsessed with magic who mistakenly turns himself into a donkey. According to the publisher, “Motley’s lively, thoroughly contemporary drawings capture the boisterous, see-sawing plot, while wittily quoting any number of graphic predecessors.”
Orcs: Forged for War (First Second 2011), story by Stan Nicholls and illustrations by Joe Flood (BFA 2002 Illustration and Cartooning): Through highly detailed drawings, Flood brings to life the brutal warrior orcs that inhabit the fantasy landscape of Nicholls’ graphic novel, which has drawn comparisons to Frank Miller’s 300.
Life Dressing: The Idiosyncratic Fashionistas (self published, 2011) by current MFA Illustration as Visual Essay student Joana Avillez: As part of a semester-long project at SVA, Avillez focused her attention and cartooning skills on style icons The Idiosyncratic Fashionistas, whose motto is “Growing Old with Verve.” The result is Life Dressing, an illustrated book that chronicles the adventures of the art-loving duo.
SVA alumnus Katie Yamasaki (MFA 2003 Illustration as Visual Essay) has just passed the halfway mark toward her goal of raising $16,000 to fund an empowering new project called “If Walls Could Talk.” Hosted on KickStarter (where pledges of as little as $1 can be made until January 11, 2012), Yamasaki’s creative initiative aims to connect incarcerated mothers at Rikers Island with their children by having them exchange messages expressing their feelings about being apart, which will then be translated into artwork.
“My hope is that by sending these images back and forth, an unusual dialogue will happen,” said Yamasaki. “A dialogue not only between mothers and children, but also with the greater communities that exist both inside of the jail where one mural will be painted and in the neighborhood where the other mural will be painted.”
For more information and to help Yamasaki launch her project, visit “If Walls Could Talk.” To learn about a similar project, watch the video below.
With numerous satellite fairs going strong in Miami during Art Basel Miami Beach this year, SVA alumni were much in evidence throughout the city. At NADA, held at the landmark Deauville Hotel on the beach, a small canvas by alumnus and BFA Illustration and Cartooning Department faculty member Keith Mayersonat Derek Eller’s booth stood out from geometric abstraction and gesturalism on view nearby. The Invisible Exports booth had heads turning with Lisa Kirk’s (BFA 1991 Fine Arts) twin floor “speakers” and Paul Gabrielli’s (BFA 2005 Fine Arts) hair-dryer-meets-hand-dryer.
The Wynwood design district was bustling again with enough pop-up galleries and special events to make New Yorkers and Los Angelenos envious. At Scope, Artists Wanted exhibited Yuhi Hasegawa (MFA 2009 Fine Arts) as the winner of Art Takes London 2011 Prize. Yuhi was first introduced to Miami art audiences in SVA’s booth at Aqua Art Miami in 2009. New York’s Like A Spice Gallery showed Matt Stone (MFA 2010 Fine Arts) and Jason Bard Yarmosky (BFA 2010 Illustration), both of whom had their Miami debut last year at SVA’s booth at Aqua Art Miami, along with alumni Jenny Morgan (MFA 2008 Fine Arts) and Reuben Negron (MFA 2004 Illustration as Visual Essay).
This year also saw the return of Seven, a standout satellite fair in Wynwood that is produced through a collaboration by 7 New York galleries. SVA was represented by George Boorujy(MFA 2002 Illustration as Visual Essay), BFA Visual and Critical Studies Department faculty member and alumnus Amy Wilson (BFA 1995 Fine Arts) and Michelle Matson(BFA 2005 Fine Arts)–fresh off her appearance on Bravo TV’s Work of Art.
At Pulse, which was held at Miami’s historic Ice Palace, Michael Combs (MFA 1996 Illustration) was exhibited at Jonathan Ferrari, Simen Johan (BFA 1996 Photography) at Yossi Milo, Joe Fig (MFA 2002 Fine Arts) was at Christin Tierney, Donna Sharrett (BFA 1984 Fine Arts) at Pavel Zabouk, Jason Bard Yarmosky (BFA 2010 Illustration) and Martin Witfooth (MFA 2008 Illustration as Visual Essay) at Lyons Wier; and Jaime Ferreyros (BFA 1985 Media Arts) showed iPhone photography at Miami’s Independent Thinkers, a satellite fair held at Awarehouse.
SVA also exhibited a selection of work by 8 recent alumni at Aqua Art Miami; click here for details. To read other Briefs reports from Miami, click here.
For more images from Art Basel Miami Beach and beyond, or to post photos of your Miami art experience, visit SVA’s Facebook page.
Images: Works by alumni Paul Gabrielli (left) and Lisa Kirk (right) at Invisible Exports’ booth at NADA, photo Michael Grant; alumnus Yuhi Hasegawa at SCOPE, photo courtesy Artists Wanted.
Members of the SVA community were invited to participate in a recent Lands’ End launch party for the clothing brand’s Spring/Summer 2012 Canvas collection. With a soundtrack provided by Boston pop rockers The Wandas inside the walls of the Highline Stages in New York City’s Meatpacking District, MFA Illustration as Visual Essay Department faculty member Carl Titolo, alumnus Daniel Fishel (MFA 2011 Illustration as Visual Essay), and current MFA Illustration as Visual Essay students Keith Negley, John Malta and Cecilia Ruiz captivated the fashion-forward crowd with live painting on one of the walls of the giant space. For highlights from the event and more photos, visit District L or Tineey.
Although 30 years have passed since AIDS was first reported, the global epidemic continues to grow each year even as public consciousness of the crisis seems to wane. In an effort to raise awareness, AIDS Global Action has solicited submissions from students at Art and Design schools throughout the New York area for the 2011 AIDS Poster Design Competition, guided by the theme “Together a Positive Tomorrow.”
On November 30, the eve of Worlds AIDS Day, the work of 27 finalists—nine of them students from SVA—will be unveiled at the New Museum’s Sky Room (235 Bowery, New York City) at 8:30pm. A panel of judges will choose the top three posters, which will then be displayed throughout New York in the coming months on taxis, billboards, subway cars, and bus shelters.
For more information about the contest and reception (which will feature an open bar, hors d’oeuvres, and a DJ set by Lissy Trullie), visit AIDS Global Action.
Image: Exhibition catalog cover by Gant Powell (MFA 2011 Illustration as Visual Essay).
Members of the SVA community were inducted into the prestigious Art Directors Club Hall of Fame recently at a black-tie gala in New York City, emceed by MFA Design Department Co-chair Steven Heller. MFA Illustration as Visual Essay Department Chair Marshall Arisman and John C. Jay (who has taught in the BFA Advertising and Graphic Design Department) both received the honor, and now join the company of Walt Disney, Andy Warhol, and Charles and Ray Eames.
In addition, Paola Antonelli, faculty member of the MFA Design Criticism and MFA Products of Design Departments, as well as senior curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art, received the ADC Manship Medallion, which recognizes curatorial excellence. The 2011 ADC Hall of Fame Selection Committee was co-chaired by ADC board members Janet Froelich, creative director, Real Simple and an ADC Hall of Fame laureate, and SVA Executive Vice President Anthony P. Rhodes.
Simen Johan (BFA 1996 Photography) presents new sculptures and photos from his ongoing project “Until the Kingdom Comes.” Johan’s work creates tension by blurring the boundaries between opposites, such as the natural and artificial, the tranquil and lively. On view at Yossi Milo Gallery, 525 West 25 Street, through December 23.
“The Passions” by Martin Wittfooth (MFA 2008 Illustration as Visual Essay) explores the destructive nature of blind faith by focusing on the idolization of violence, self-sacrifice, and suffering that are central to faith-based notions of martyrdom and sainthood. In these new paintings, Wittfooth draws upon references and imagery in classical art to create modern day parables of his own. On view at Lyons Wier Gallery, 524 West 24Street, through November 12.
Over the past five years, the work of Yamini Nayar (MFA 2005 Photography, Video and Related Media) has been shifting the space of memory and imagination from the literal to the abstract. “Head Space” features photographs of table-top environments that were assembled from re-purposed and recycled materials. Grounded in her interest in the poetics of the built environment, Nayer’s first solo exhibition also shifts the nature of meaning. On view at Thomas Erben Gallery, 526 West 26 Street, through December 3.
After completing studies in the MFA Illustration as Visual Essay Department in 2009, Russ Spitkovsky, Kristy Caldwell, Ray Jones, Matt Barteluce, and Christopher Darling sought to create a platform where artists, writers, designers, and illustrators could have full creative control but still participate in the commercial art market. The result is Carrier Pigeon, a quarterly journal of illustrated fiction and fine art that challenges the idea that there is a hierarchy among artistic disciplines. Each issue contains six sinister tales of short fiction along with six forward-looking artist portfolios. The main aim of the project is to create a publication that is also a stand-alone work of art.
Issue 4 (now available) features an eye-catching cover design by BFA Fine Arts Department faculty member Bruce Waldman. Kristy Caldwell captures the mood of an artfully crafted monologue with her clever brush and ink drawings, while artist Rachel Allison (MFA 2009 Illustration as Visual Essay) locates the essence of “discovery” in a story about reconciliation through her intimate illustrations that read like environmental snapshots. Editor-in-chief Russ Spitkovsky adds some poetic musings about sleeping and dreaming in outer space, complimented by Matt Barteluce’s playfully whimsical images. Plus much more.
For more information about Carrier Pigeon and to preview the latest issue, visit www.carrierpigeonmag.com.
