Visual Arts Briefs

Student Health and Counseling Services at SVA, in partnership with The Samaritans of New York, sponsored the 5th Annual HOPE Art Competition. Students from all departments were invited to submit artwork that embodied this year’s theme of suicide prevention. The competition reception was held on March 4 at the Monkey Bar Lounge where two winners were announced: Erin M. Hesser, a first-year animation student won the film/motion category for her piece Meant to be Shared and Rachel Pontious, a third-year illustration student, was the winner in the print category for her piece We Can Share the Load.

The Samaritans is a non-profit organization that operates New York City’s 24-hour suicide prevention hotline (212.673.3000), public education and awareness programs and support groups for those who have lost a loved one to suicide. The winning artists of the HOPE competition may have their work reproduced by Samaritans for use in both print and media advertisement throughout the New York City-Metropolitan area and beyond to raise awareness about the availability of suicide prevention services.

Student Health and Counseling Services awarded each winner a $300 gift card, made possible by The Alumni Society of School of Visual Arts and the Tim Sharkey Memorial Fund. Speakers at the reception included Rachel Dress, LMSW psychotherapist, Student Health and Counseling Services, Shannon Erwin, development manager, Development and Alumni Affairs; and Alan Ross, executive director, The Samaritans.

Image: (top) photo of Erin M. Hesser with her work Meant to be Shared; (bottom) photo of Rachel Pontious with her work We Can Share the Load

Last weekend New York City hosted more than a dozen art fairs, and SVA was well represented at several venues. At The Armory Show, faculty member Nancy Chunn’s Chicken Little and the Culture of Fear, a work that includes nearly 300 paintings, took over the Ronald Feldman Gallery booth. Off site, through a new partnership with SVA, Armory Show VIPs were able to enjoy private studio tours of alumni Alexis Rockman (BFA 1985 Fine Arts) and Billy Sullivan (1968 Fine Arts) who opened up their studios to guests for several hours on Saturday and Sunday. “It’s a chance for people who have long admired the work of these artists to meet them in an intimate setting and for the most part, to see work that hasn’t been shown anywhere else yet,” explains SVA staff member and alumnus Dan Halm (MFA 2001 Illustration as Visual Essay; BFA 1994 Illustration), who organized the program. Visitors were able to see some of the new pieces that Rockman is preparing in advance of his mid-career retrospective at the Smithsonian American Art Museum later this year. Also present at the Armory Show was Dear Dave, magazine.

Several SVA alumni participated in the PULSE fair, including: George Boorujy (MFA 2002 Illustration as Visual Essay) at the P.P.O.W. Gallery booth; Lili Almog (BFA 1992 Photography) at the Andrea Meislin Gallery booth; Robert Lazzarini (BFA 1990 Fine Arts) at the Winkleman booth; and Thordis Adalsteinsdottir (MFA 2003 Fine Arts) at the Stux Gallery booth.

Over at VOLTA, alumnus Soyeon Cho (MFA 2004 Fine Arts) showed at the SKL Gallery Palma de Mallorca booth and alumni Gregg Louis (MFA 2009 Fine Arts) and Noa Charuvi (MFA 2009 Fine Arts) participated in the group performance The Holistic Healing Center and Emerging Artist Massage Parlor, which was part of the VOLTA NY Happenings program. PooL Art Fair showed the work of Cat Del Buono (MFA 2008 Photography, Video and Related Media) and the Verge Art Fair, new to New York this year, hosted a conversation with alumnus Katarina Jerinic (MFA 2002 Photography and Related Media), who discussed her multidisciplinary project The Work Office.

Image: Nancy Chunn, Chicken Little and the Culture of Fear Scene VI: The Road (detail), 2006-07, acrylic on canvas, 64 panels, 142 x 336 inches overall, courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York

Alumnus Michael Giacchino (BFA 1990 Film and Video) has won an Oscar in the category of Music (Original Score) for his score for the animated film Up. Giacchino, who had previously been nominated in 2007 for his score for the animated film Ratatouille, thanked his parents in his acceptance speech for always being supportive of his creative pursuits, beginning at age nine when he borrowed his dad’s movie camera to start making films. Giacchino continued, “I know there are kids out there that don’t have that support system, so if you’re out there and you’re listening, listen to me: If you want to be creative, get out there and do it. It’s not a waste of time.”

In an interview with The Los Angeles Times last month, Giacchino talked about the music and composers that have influenced his work, from The Dick Van Dyke Show to Star Wars. Click here to view his acceptance speech on the Academy Web site.

Other SVA alumni to be recognized recently for outstanding filmmaking include Lynn Shelton (MFA 1995 Photography and Related Media), who won the John Cassavetes Award at the Film Independent Spirit Awards for her film Humpday, and Brenton Cottman (BFA 2003 Illustration), who won a Visual Effects Society (VES) Award for Outstanding Matte Paintings in a Feature Motion Picture for his work as leade matte painter on the film Avatar.

Image: Still from video from Oscar.com

The third in a series of one-on-one conversations with SVA’s department chairs.

Deborah Farber chairs the MPS Art Therapy Department, a two-year program that combines clinical experience with training in studio art and contemporary theories of psychological development and creativity. In addition to an annual conference and public lectures, the department hosts an annual exhibition highlighting students’ internships. Farber talked to the Briefs as the department was about to open “Counterbalance,” which is on view through March 20.

Tell me about the exhibition.
It’s called “Counterbalance” because the premise of the exhibition is how the therapist responds to the client’s needs by providing the resources and creative environment so that the client can find his or her own curative path. The relationship is very fluid, and it’s always changing based on the needs of the client. The show supports the notion of humanistic art therapy, that both the therapist and the client learn from each other and grow as a result of the relationship.

Your students are artists who have decided to pursue another avenue of creative expression. How does that come into play?
Being an artist, you understand innately that the creative process is healing, and you’ve developed a kind of vocabulary, a personal hieroglyphics. When you experience something that’s beyond words, and you can deal with it through art, there’s something cathartic about that. After you put it down on paper it doesn’t feel the same as before, because you understand it in your own personal artistic language. So students are learning about the creative process and how to harness it in other people. And they’re learning patience. They might understand where a client is at, because they have the diagnosis, but they might have to wait for clients to tell the story of what happened to them—either through art, or through words, or both. They have to know how to support and not judge it.

How has the field changed since you started the program?
There’s a lot of focus now on neuroscience and how trauma is processed, and it turns out that trauma memories are stored in the right cerebral hemisphere, in a part of the brain that is nonverbal, so nonverbal methods such as art therapy are an excellent way to access and process trauma. We’ve had lecturers like Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk, a leader in neuroscience, and we have a physician on the faculty, whose specialty is addiction and neuropsychiatry, who teaches the physiology of addiction. So students come away with an understanding of the brain that art therapists who were trained 10 years ago did not.

You not only chair the department and teach, you also practice art therapy.
I worked for the past year with women soldiers in transition. They were taken out of the field because of physical injuries, or psychological injuries, or both. I met women who, in Iraq, for example, went out with a partner to search for weapons, and then a bomb hits their vehicle, and the person they were talking to five minutes ago is dead. So they suffered multiple traumas. They weren’t sure if they were going back to war. But through art therapy they got to examine different sides of themselves, different masks they would wear in combat and in other aspects of their personal and professional lives.

Image: Katherine Hinson, untitled, 2010, mixed media; from “Counterbalance”

One of the most watched medal ceremonies last week took place not in Vancouver but in Washington, DC, as President Obama presented the National Medal of Arts at the White House. Among those receiving the country’s highest honor for artistic excellence was SVA Acting Chairman and longtime faculty member Milton Glaser. As the first graphic designer to earn a medal, Glaser was commended for a lifetime devoted to improving the way people communicate through innovation in graphic design. Click the image below to view the video of the ceremony.

In addition to teaching at SVA since 1960, Glaser has created many of the iconic subway posters published by the College, some of which were exhibited last fall in “Milton Glaser’s SVA: A Legacy of Graphic Design.” New Yorkers can also experience Glaser’s work in person at the SVA Theatre, whose interiors and façade he designed.

Since the official announcement, design aficionados have noted that another of this year’s medalists, Bob Dylan, was memorably captured by Glaser in a 1966 poster that is in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Other medalists include: Clint Eastwood, Maya Lin, Rita Moreno, Jessye Norman, Joseph P. Riley, Jr., Frank Stella, Michael Tilson Thomas and John Williams.

Image: Still from White House video.

• For its February 25th Brooklyn v. Manhattan issue, Time Out New York commissioned alumnus Rich Tu (MFA 2009 Illustration as Visual Essay) to create an illustration of what Manhattan and Brooklyn would look like if all the bridges and tunnels between the two boroughs were disabled. Tu created an illustrated map with icons depicting various Time Out quips, such as “Upper East Siders ask themselves, What bridges?”
• The BFA Film, Video and Animation Department’s 21st Annual Dusty Film and Animation Festival and Awards was also featured in Time Out New York, as well as on BroadwayWorld.com. The Festival will take place May 2 – 7 and includes screenings of short films, videos and animations and an awards ceremony and gala with notable presenters from the film industry.
• Eye blog covered MFA Computer Art Department Chair Bruce Wands‘ presentation at Decoding the Digital, a conference at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Wands made predictions about the future of computer art and design. Click here to read Eye’s rundown of the presentations.
• GOOD magazine covered faculty member Chris Fahey’s class in the MFA Interaction Design Department. Fahey asked his students to use publicly accessible data about New York City and transform it into something useful for New Yorkers via an application for a handheld device. Final products included an application to find the nearest subway stop and one to help educate parents about local schools.

Image: Rich Tu, illustration for February 25 issue of Time Out New York

Tonight, from 6 – 8pm, the Visual Arts Gallery will host a reception for “Thanks…but it’s actually on purpose,” the second of two thesis exhibitions by students in the MFA Fine Arts Department. The show is curated by Augusto Arbizo, director of Eleven Rivington gallery, and includes drawing, painting, video, sculpture and installation. Located at 601 West 26 Street, 15th floor, the exhibition will run through Saturday, March 13.

One of the students in the show, Matt Craven, will also be exhibiting his work this week in the Fountain New York art fair with Baltimore’s Nudashank Gallery. Concurrent with Armory Arts Week–a collection of art fairs and events happening around The Armory Show–Fountain will take place March 4 – 7, Pier 66 at 26th Street, Hudson River Park, just down the street from the Visual Arts Gallery.

“Thanks…but it’s actually on purpose” also includes work by Jay Anderson, Susan Begy, Kari Britta Lorenson, Yun-Woo Choi, Kate Davis Caldwell, Chris Deriso, Lorena Duran, Maria Jose Duran Steinman, Teresa Henriques,  Leonora Loeb, Laurel Lueders, Nathan Manuel, Bryn K. McConnell, Joey Miri and Vered Sivan. The rest of the graduating students in the MFA Fine Arts Department exhibited their thesis work in the exhibition “Multiplex” in January.

Image: Installation photo of “Thanks…but it’s actually on purpose.” by Matthew White

SVA, along with Drawn & Quarterly, Fantagraphics and TOON Books, is partnering with New York’s iconic bookstore, The Strand, on a limited-time opportunity for artists: The Strand Tote Bag Design Contest.

The grand prize winner will have his or her work featured on a tote that is sold online and in store, and will join an illustrious group of artists who’ve paid homage to The Strand, including Masterpiece Comics creator R. Sikoryak, graphic novelist Adrian Tomine and Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman, who will all serve as judges in this year’s contest along with SVA’s Steven Heller, co-chair of the MFA Design Department, and New Yorker art editor Francoise Mouly.

Submission details and a full list of prizes can be found here. The deadline for submissions is March 31.

Image: Lettering by Andrew Schaff, first-year student in the MFA Design Department.

Now that the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games are a wrap, the world has a new set of sports icons: the medalists of this year’s competition. But another set of icons will also go down in history: the pictograms and other graphics used at the various venues and in the media. This “frenzy of visual signage” hasn’t been lost on Steven Heller, co-chair of the MFA Design Department, who traces the evolution of the Olympic pictograms in each sport since their appearance in 1932. Click here to view his multimedia report for The New York Times.

Another member of the SVA community, BFA Fine Arts Department faculty member David Ross, recently talked about the Olympic posters with Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report. Read the original post here.

Image: Vancouver 2010 pictogram for alpine skiing, © VANOC/COVAN.

With more winning students than any other college, SVA is making an impressive showing at the 2010 Society of Illustrators Student Scholarship Competition. For over 25 years, the Society has recognized the best work from student illustrators. While over 6200 works were submitted, only 240–including 30 from SVA–were accepted to be part of an exhibition at the Society of Illustrators, 128 East 63rd Street, which will run May 5 – 29. For the final phase of the competition, monetary scholarships will be awarded to 30 of the students in the exhibition on March 8. View images from the SVA students on the competition Web site.

The winning students are sophomores, juniors, seniors and recent graduates from the BFA Illustration and Cartooning Department: Robert Blake, Hiten Damodar, Maelle Doliveux, Stephanie Georgopoulos, Alexander Gonska, Julia Grifin, Kievan Havens, Young Nam Heller, Sean Hudson, Ruth Kim, Christopher Krebs, Sam Krichmar, Na Kyung Lee, Cameron Lewis, Joyce Li, Kihyun Lim, Daniel Luckert, Ryan Mauskopf, Kurt McRobert, Hanh Nguyen, YoonJu Oh, Ricardo Lopez Ortiz, Rachel Pontious, Jung Yeon Roh, Jonny Ruzzo, Kim Sielbeck, Robert Stites, Seana Lee Whittaker, Eunjeong Yoo and Soo Jin Yun.

Image: Rachel Pontious, Antigone, acrylic and ink