Chris Martin (BFA 1992 Fine Arts) continues to push the boundaries of painting with his latest show in Chelsea. While he is perhaps most known for creating work that emphasizes the beauty to be found in randomness, Martin also surprises viewers by using unexpected materials such as foam installation or even bread as canvases and by experimenting with unusual processes like fumage, painting with candle smoke. For the current exhibition, Martin displays a new series of paintings that includes works painted on newspaper pages. On view at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, 534 West 26 Street, through March 3.

Marianne Vitale (BFA 1996 Film and Video) investigates a lesser known chapter of history in her solo exhibition “What I Need To Do Is Lighten The Fuck Up About A Lot of Shit.” The artist invokes the phenomenon of “Combustivism,” the mass hysteria that spread throughout the northeastern U.S. in the 19th century, resulting in rampant violence that led President James K. Polk to declare to Congress that he would “…use the big stick of the law and beat back” if the mayhem did not end. In this exhibition, Vitale presents her own charred and battered sculptural emblems and installations meant to represent these historic events, and commemorates a time when razing entire neighborhoods to stop the spread of mysteriously infectious dust, which was believed to be causing the strange behavior, was as common as going to church on Sunday. On view at Zach Feuer Gallery, 548 West 22 Street, through February 25.

From the MFA Design Department, the 2011 winners are alumnus Matt Luckhurst (MFA 2010 Design) and current students Elisa Bates, Michael Croxton, Sebastian Ebarb, Tim Hucklesby, Derek Munn, Cristina Vasquez, Elliott Walker and Jesse Senje Yuan. Faculty members that provided guidance on these projects are Gail Anderson, Stephen Doyle, Milton Glaser, Erik Guzman, Steven Heller, Stefan Sagmeister and Paula Scher.

From the BFA Advertising and Graphic Design Department, the winners are alumni Rocco Cambareri (BFA 2010 Graphic Design), Elizabeth Chan (BFA 2010 Graphic Design), Hiu Chui (BFA 1010 Graphic Design) , Grant Gold (BFA 2010 Graphic Design), Jihwan Kim (BFA 2011 Graphic Design), Jiwon Kim (BFA 2010 Graphic Design), Seung Hee Lee (BFA 2010 Graphic Design), Yoonbin Lee (BFA 2010 Graphic Design) and Rukiye Sahin (BFA 2010 Graphic Design). The faculty members that advised on these projects are Kevin Brainard, Andrew Castrucci, Darren Cox, Kristina DiMatteo, Carin Goldberg, Julia Hoffman, Ori Kleiner, Olga Mezhibovskaya, Paul Sahre, Paula Scher and Genevieve Williams.

Stranded from elisa bates on Vimeo.

Image: Screenshot from Elisa Bates’ Stranded video, an assignment for Gail Anderson’s Just Type class.

On Friday, March 23 at 7pm, Geoff Manaugh, a noted futurist, former senior editor at Dwell magazine, contributing editor at Wired UK and founder of the architecture blog BLDGBLOG, will go head-to-head with New York Times’ Data Artist-in-Residence Jer Thorp. And on Friday, April 6 at 6pm, Zach Frechette, founder of Quarterly Co., co-founder of GOOD magazine and an adviser to Collaborative Fund, sits down for a conversation with Molly Steenson, a digital strategist, design researcher and GirlWonder.com editor emeritus.

“As an interaction design program, we work to encourage broad explorations of design such that fields that seem peripheral take on possibility,” explains MFA Interaction Design Department Chair Liz Danzico. “It is in this way that everything becomes material for making, everything becomes a possibility for exploration. The On the Verge series intends to broaden the edges of our understanding such that the seams where disciplines converge and diverge become more visible.”

All lectures are free and open to the public, but registration is required. For more info and to register, visit interactiondesign.sva.edu/events.

Image: Screenshot of Crowley’s foursquare mobile app.

5) Manuel Aleman (BFA 2011 Advertising), Bo Mi Jo (BFA 2011 Advertising), Dahee Song (BFA 2011 Advertising), Raúl Cosculluela (BFA 2011 Advertising), and Nikolai Shorr (BFA 2011 Advertising), City Harvest Integrated Campaign

4) Dina Litovsky (MFA 2010 Photography, Video and Related Media), Untag This Photo

3) Twig Capra (current student, BFA Photography), Parasomnia

2) Maya Barkai (BFA 2005 Photography), Bed Landscapes

1) Eric Wagner (BFA 2006 Computer Art) and Sharon Ma, Greatest Card Trick Ever

Other highlights from the series include How to Capture the Culture Zeitgeist: What Phil Collins and Zombies Have in Common on February 21 with pop culture critic and This American Life contributor Starlee Kine. On February 28, artist, illustrator, and founder of the Chicago-based architecture firm Bureau Spectacular, Jimenez Lai, will discuss alternate realities in Cartoonish Architecture. And culture critic and fashion guru Cintra Wilson will lead a talk on April 3 about her new book, Fear and Clothing: Unbuckling America’s Fashion Destiny.

Now in its eighth season, the D-Crit Spring Lecture Series is curated and hosted by first-year MFA Design Criticism students. “[The lecture series] is one of my favorite aspects of the D-Crit program,” says Alice Twemlow, chair, MFA Design Criticism Department. “The students are exposed to new ideas and ways of thinking that supplement their core curriculum and, with every lecture attended by more than 60 members of the general public, we’ve fostered a vibrant community committed to the concerns of design criticism.”

All D-Crit lectures take place at 136 West 21 Street, 2nd floor, at 6pm and are free and open to the public; please RSVP at dcrit.eventbrite.com. To view the complete D-Crit 2012 Spring Lecture Series schedule, visit dcrit.sva.edu.

Image: Cintra Wilson.

Horror director-producer Larry Fessenden said he’s appreciated West’s unique and subtle approach since West interned for him. “Ti is absolutely focused, completely versed in the language of film,” Fessenden said. “He comes from the same school that I come from, which is where you make your film soup to nuts…It’s a real passion for the whole experience.”

The Inkeepers is about a pair of hotel clerks confronted with strange occurrences as they attempt to prove that the hotel is haunted. In the future, West said he hopes to venture into films with bigger budgets while maintaining his personal artistic vision.

To read the complete article, which accompanied by a video interview with the filmmaker and slideshow of his work, visit The New York Times.

Photographers, filmmakers, fashion insiders and enthusiasts will be gathering at the SVA Theatre (333 West 23 Street) on Thursday, February 2, for the New York Fashion Film Festival. Celebrating the rise of the moving image in fashion, the festival begins with a reception at 7pm, followed by a screening at 8pm of the most influential fashion films to emerge in the past year, as chosen by 35 of NYC’s top fashion tastemakers. The evening’s program features original short films for brands like Balmain, Bottega Veneta, Chanel and Lanvin and includes films by a roster of leading fashion photographers including Quentin Jones, Nick Knight, Craig McDean, Steven Meisel and Tim Walker, among others.

GQ’s “The Style Guy” Glenn O’Brien will lead a panel discussion on the fashion industry’s embrace of film, featuring Poppy de Villeneuve, photographer and film director; Alix Brown, deputy design editor, T: The New York Times Style Magazine; and John Jay, global executive creative director, Wieden + Kennedy. The panelists will discuss the evolving genre of fashion film and its impact on the industry.

The event, now in its second year, is hosted by MPS Fashion Photography Department Co-chairs Stephen Frailey, also chair of the BFA Photography Department and editor of Dear Dave, magazine, and Jimmy Moffat, co-founder of Art + Commerce, along with alumnus Bon Duke (BFA 2009 Photography). Festival sponsors include StyleCaster, (capsule), Le Book, Purple Fashion Magazine and Dear Dave, magazine. The festival is free and open to the public. For more information, visit nyfff.com.

In addition to the grant, Grimonprez will also receive support from the Sundance Institute that includes work-in-progress screenings, access to creative labs, and special events and activities at the Sundance Creative Producing Summit and Sundance Film Festival. For updates about The Shadow World, which is scheduled for release in 2014, visit Louverture Films.

In the video below, Feinstein discusses his book.

The exhibition documents the merging, mixing and cross-referencing of mediums and materials that drives some of today’s most ambitious artists. In addition to exploring pluralism, the works in “Every Once Sometimes Now” embrace and react “against a world that is saturated with visual clutter, where images are tagged, tweeted about and uploaded to Tumblr in an instant,” says Segev.

For more about the exhibition and a slideshow of images, visit SVA.edu.

Image: Heewon Seo, Untitled, 2011, oil on linen.

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.

For the full interview and a slideshow of Neborsky’s work, visit The New York Times Style Magazine.