Visual Arts Briefs

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.

With the opening of the exhibition “Counterbalance” last Saturday, the MPS Art Therapy Department kicked off a series of thesis exhibitions and year-end events happening all across SVA. “Counterbalance” features work by student therapists and the clients with whom they work at their internship sites across New York City. The exhibition runs through Saturday, March 20 at the Westside Gallery, 133/141 West 21 Street. There is a reception on Wednesday, March 3, from 6 – 8pm, and the exhibition is curated by Liz DelliCarpini, internship coordinator, MPS Art Therapy Department.

As the spring semester progresses, there will be over 25 end-of-the-year events including “Classical Myths Transformed,” an exhibition of work by students in the BFA Illustration and Cartooning Department at the Visual Arts Gallery, 601 West 26 Street, 15th floor, from April 9 – 24, and the MFA Design Criticism Department Conference, a presentation of papers from the inaugural class in the department, at the SVA Theatre, 333 West 23 Street, on Friday, April 30.

View the complete list of thesis presentations, open studios, portfolio reviews, screenings, conferences and exhibitions featuring work by soon-to-be graduates at www.sva.edu/firstlook.

Back in 2005 SVA Acting Chairman Milton Glaser and faculty member Mirko Ilic teamed up to document the work of graphic designers involved in resisting the constraints of government and other “powers that be.” They put out a call for submissions and received more than a thousand political posters and other graphics from countries around the globe, including Iran, Mexico, Poland, Serbia and South Africa, along with the U.S. and Canada. A selection was published in The Design of Dissent: Socially and Politically Driven Graphics (Rockport Press, 2005), and New Yorkers got to see some of them up close as part of an exhibition at SVA that generated widespread media attention. “In an age dominated by moving images, these freeze-frame visuals hold their own,” wrote design critic Linda Hales in The Washington Post.

In keeping with the project’s global outlook, this week the exhibition “The Design of Dissent” opens in Doha, Qatar, where it will be on view at the Virginia Commonwealth University. The original impetus for the project seems as timely as ever. As noted on the book’s dust jacket, “Dissent is an essential part of keeping democratic societies healthy, and our ability as citizens to voice our opinions is not only our privilege, it is our responsibility.”

“The Design of Dissent” is on view at the Gallery at VCUQatar through March 7. For more information, visit the gallery’s Facebook page. Click here to watch an interview with Milton Glaser about the project.

As the Sundance Film Festival enters its final weekend, one of the films that has people talking is Holy Rollers, the directorial feature debut from SVA alumnus Kevin Asch (BFA 1998 Film and Video). The work received a standing ovation when it premiered this week as one of 16 films in the U.S. Dramatic Competition. Inspired by actual events, the film stars Jesse Eisenberg (Roger Dodger, The Squid and the Whale) as a young Hasidic Jew from Brooklyn who is recruited by an Israeli drug dealer to smuggle ecstasy from Europe into the United States. “Holy Rollers is a fresh take on the emotional side of drug use,” says Asch, who talked to IndieWIRE recently about making the film, “I wanted to explore a subculture and its characters as real and visceral.” Read more about the filmmaker’s influences here, and an extended interview here.

Several other members of the SVA community are showing work at Sundance this year. Alumnus James Blagden (BFA 2004 Illustration) directed Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No, one of 70 short films selected from a record 6092 submissions. Johan Grimonprez (MFA 1992 Fine Arts), an alumnus and faculty member in the MFA Fine Arts Department, is represented by his critically acclaimed feature, Double Take. Grimonprez spoke to the Briefs about the project last year; the interview is here. And director of photography Bob Richman, a faculty member in the MFA Social Documentary Film Department, worked on Waiting for Superman, which is being screened in the U.S. Documentary Competition.

The Festival concludes January 31. For screening schedule and other details, visit the Sundance Web site at festival.sundance.org/2010.

Image: Holy Rollers, photo Dan Levin.

• The New York Times praised “Design USA: Contemporary Innovation,” an exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, which includes work by SVA Acting Chairman Milton Glaser. Featuring works by designers honored during the first 10 years of the museum’s National Design Awards, the exhibition also has an accompanying multimedia iPod Touch guide with additional features including slideshows and interviews. The exhibition is on view through Sunday, April 4, at 2 East 91st Street.
• Alumnus Kevin Asch’s (BFA 1998 Film and Video) film Holy Rollers, which is a contender in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, was featured in indiWIRE. The movie follows the story of an American Hasidic Jew who smuggles Ecstasy from Europe to the U.S. in the late 1990s. Click here to view a video clip of Asch talking about the film on the Sundance Web site.
• Alumnus Craig Gillespie (BFA 1989 Advertising) just picked up his fourth career nomination for a Directors Guild of America (DGA) Award in the commercials category. Gillespie was nominated for three campaigns for Car.com, Guinness and Orbit. Click here to read an article in Shoot about Gillespie’s entries for the awards.

Over the course of the 2009–10 academic year, a series of five promotional posters designed by faculty member Gail Anderson is appearing in the NYC subway system. Each one features a quote from President Barack Obama’s inaugural address—“In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned.”—with visuals that Anderson created with illustrator Terry Allen. As the third and fourth posters are beginning to show up on subway platforms across the city, Anderson spoke with the Briefs about the series.

How did you select the passage from President Obama’s speech that appears on the posters?
SVA’s Executive Vice President Anthony Rhodes gave me the quote. He said he looks at it every morning, which I thought was really interesting. I decided I’d do the same, so I wrote it on a Post-It and stuck it to the bathroom mirror, in hopes of finding a bit of inspiration.

What was your process for designing a visual to accompany the text?
I worked really closely with Terry Allen, whom I’ve known for over 25 years now. I wanted to create an uplifting, WPA-style poster to help brighten the mood of the city at the dawn of the new administration. We did a bunch of them and we were having such a good time working together. In the end, I showed Tony all five since they sort of made a nice little set. You can imagine my surprise when he decided to run them all.

What sort of reaction are you hoping these posters will elicit?
Connecting the message of aspiring to greatness to both the nation and the College is pretty powerful, but Terry and I wanted to make it playful at the same time. I hope it’s the sort of quote and poster that will make you feel a little better about your morning commute—and will stay with you over time. You’ll see it on five different posters over the course of the school year if you ride the subway, so that quote’s going to become a small part of your life and maybe a source of inspiration.

Image: Gail Anderson, SVA subway posters, 2009. ©Visual Arts Press, Ltd.

From December 2 – 6, members of the SVA community headed to Miami, Florida, for Art Basel Miami Beach (ABMB) and the numerous satellite art fairs that surround the annual art-world confab. In addition to the SVA-sponsored booth at the Aqua Wynwood fair and mobile billboard that roamed the streets of Miami, SVA alumni, faculty and staff members made their presence felt in nearly every corner of the vast fairgrounds.

Amy Elkins (BFA 2007 Photography), whose work had been featured in SVA’s 2007 Aqua booth, was now showing at the Pulse Contemporary Art Fair, alongside Vickie Pierre (BFA 1997 Fine Arts), Lordy Rodriguez (BFA 1999 Fine Arts) and BFA Illustration and Cartooning Department Chair Thomas Woodruff. Greg Miller (MFA 1990 Photography and Related Media) was around the corner from SVA’s booth at Aqua, and Martin Wittfooth’s (MFA 2008 Illustration at Visual Essay) work had prime placement at both the Aqua and Scope fairs. Vera Lutter (MFA 1995 Photography and Related Media) and Amy Sillman (BFA 1979 Fine Arts) each had solo exhibitions as part of ABMB’s Art Kabinett; Nikki Katsikas (BFA 2008 Fine Arts) was at NADA; Michelle Weinberg (BFA 1983 Fine Arts) curated an exhibition at the Miami International Airport; and many more SVA artists were showing work around the city.

“We were all over Miami,” said Sam Modenstein, the College’s executive director of external relations, who was part of the SVA delegation in the Sunshine State, “and I think the wide range of work from our alumni and faculty highlighted just how many corners of the art world SVA is a part of.” In addition to the booths and gallery exhibitions during the week of fairs, Laurence Gartel (BFA 1977 Graphic Design) took part in a book signing for his book Auto Motion at The National Hotel, and Michael DeFeo (BFA 1995 Graphic Design) made his mark on Miami through participation in the street art project Primary Flight and its companion exhibition, “Blue Print for Space.”

Images: (top) SVA’s mobile billboard in Miami; (middle) SVA’s booth at Aqua Art Miami, photo by Dan Halm; (bottom) Michael De Feo, Miami flower mural from Primary Flight, 2009, photo by Matt White.

The Visual Arts Press, the in-house design studio for SVA, recently won several awards for various promotional materials created for the College. The kudos came via Graphis: The International Journal of Visual Communication, which publishes annual collections of outstanding design work from studios around the world.

With five Gold Awards in the Graphis Design Annual 2010, the Press earned a spot alongside Apple and the international design studio Pentagram in the Graphis Top 2010, a list of 10 studios whose work won the most awards. The five winning projects were: issue #3 of Dear Dave, magazine, a tri-annual publication by the BFA Photography Department; a subway poster designed by faculty member Mirko Ilic; the portfolio from the BFA Photography Department’s class of 2007; the 2009 – 2010 undergraduate catalog; and Thunderstruck, the cartooning portfolio from the BFA Illustration and Cartooning Department.

In separate Graphis competitions, the Press also won a Gold Award for a poster it created for Where the Truth Lies: A Symposium on Propaganda Today, and a Silver Award for SVA’s 2008 annual report.

Image: Thunderstruck, © Visual Arts Press.

• SVA’s Undergraduate Catalog 2010-2011 has been selected as a winner by the 2010 Learning Resources Network (LERN) International Awards in the category of Brochure Design. Michael Walsh, the art director at the Visual Arts Press, will be accepting the award and representing the College at the LERN annual conference in Savannah, Georgia, on Friday, November 20.
• The New York Times Book Review has chosen Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 by Brian Floca (MFA 2001 Illustration as Visual Essay) and Only a Witch Can Fly, illustrated by Taeeun Yoo (MFA 2005 Illustration as Visual Essay) as two of the Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 2009. Faculty member Jillian Tamaki (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay Department) served as one of the judges for the Times.
• Jake Armstrong (BFA Animation 2009) won the Best Undergraduate Animation award at Ottawa International Animation Festival for his short film The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9. This is the latest in a string of festival wins for Armstrong, who has also taken home prizes at Bornshorts in Denmark, the Coney Island Film Festival, Romania’s Muvi Fest and the Woodstock International Film Festival.

Image: The Undergraduate Catalog 2010-2011; ©Visual Arts Press, Ltd.

• Limited Edition KAWS Creme de Corps: The “Kiehl’s Since 1851″ lotion label received a temporary redesign from KAWS, aka alumnus Brian Donnelly (BFA 1996 Illustration). The profits from its sale will benefit RxArt, a nonprofit organization that brings contemporary art to hospital patients.
• Movado Artist Series: Alumnus Kenny Scharf (BFA 1981 Fine Arts) was commissioned by Movado to design six limited-edition watches. Each of Scharf’s colorful watches comes in a box designed by the artist.
• Look Both Ways, by Debbie Millman (chair, MPS Branding Department): A collection of illustrated essays on design that was recently featured in New York magazine’s Approval Matrix (HOW books, 2009).
• Graphic Design Referenced: A Visual Guide to the Language, Applications, and History of Graphic Design: A survey on the graphic design field that features a two-page spread about the College, including the MFA Design Department and the SVA subway poster campaign (Rockport, 2009).
• The Teen Vogue Handbook: An Insider’s Guide to Careers in Fashion: This guide for teens interested in the fashion business lists the BFA Photography Department as a key program for fashion photography (Razorbill, 2009).

Image: Limited Edition KAWS Creme de Corps, courtesy of Kiehl’s Since 1851.