CalArts
Over the past four decades, CalArts has thrived by holding fast to its founding principles while evolving and adapting to meet and to shape changing external conditions. Virtually every article in this issue of CalArts magazine underlines this point. For example, Susan Morgan points out that the many faculty and alumni featured in the exhibition The Artist’s Museum, now on view at The Museum of Contemporary Art (moca), demonstrate the Institute’s leading role in the shaping of Los Angeles art. At CalArts, Morgan writes, “an atmosphere charged with vital and challenging dialogue has continually expanded the possibilities of artmaking.” Not coincidentally that tradition of dialogue appears, in another guise, in CalArts’ new online publishing venture East of Borneo, as Thomas Lawson, its editor and dean of the School of Art, seeks a form that “can be generative and productive, not merely descriptive and fancifully speculative.” As important as CalArts’ tradition of dialogue and critical questioning is its ongoing exploration of interdisciplinarity. What was once a strategy for opening up creative possibility has become, in the words of recently appointed Theater Dean Travis Preston, a way to prepare students “for a future in which they do not know where their opportunities will emerge from.” And, as Dean Preston speaks of the need “to invest more profoundly in the creation of relationships external to the Institute—locally in Los Angeles, nationally, and internationally”— recently appointed Vice President for International Relations Carol Kim takes on the task of helping to “prepare Institute students to work in the globalized arts world and economy.” In 2010 we celebrated CalArts’ 40th anniversary. Through all these years, our trustees have played an indispensable role in helping the Institute to maintain continuity and to adjust in a timely way to emerging circumstances. No one has been more central in this process than the late Harrison “Buzz” Price, to whom this issue is dedicated. Buzz emboldened us with his own dedication to the founding dream of CalArts, steadied us with his worldly wisdom, and helped us through the rough patches with his unfailing good humor. Without him, we will all have to ask a little more of ourselves as CalArts navigates this era of jolting change and astonishing possibility. Wishing you and yours a happy, healthy new year, steven d. lavine President, CalArts
Headliners 4 The Artist’s Museum
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at moca 10 Interview with Travis Preston 15 Alumni Reunion: CalArts at 40 21 Of Texts and Textiles 27 Dispatches
CalArts is published twice each year by the CalArts Office of Advancement. California Institute of the Arts Steven D. Lavine, President Bianca Roberts, Vice President, Advancement Wendy Shattuck, Executive Director of Public Affairs Editorial: Stuart I. Frolick and Freddie Sharmini Design: Scott Taylor and Tasheka Arceneaux-Sutton (Art mfa 07) Type in this issue includes Spektro Gothic and Spektro Roman by Andrea Tinnes (Art mfa 98). Photography: Scott Groller and Steven A. Gunther Telephone: 661 255-1050 E-mail: publicaffairs@calarts.edu