SVA Visual Arts Journal Fall 2013

School of Visual Arts Magazine

VISUAL ARTS JOURNAL Fall 2013

Mark Wilson, e20808, 2011, archival ink-jet print on canvas.

See “The Digital Avant-Garde,” page 9.

FALL 2013

Contents

3 From the President 4 SVA Close Up News and events from around the College.

11 Subject Matter: The Song Remains the Same Billy Altman shares some thoughts from his Music in Culture class.

12 What’s in Store Products created by SVA entrepreneurs.

20 Hire Ed: Tax Tips for Self-Employed Workers Strategies for making the most of your tax status.

22 Portfolio: Cordy Ryman The history and character of Ryman’s materials influence how they are used—and reused—in his work.

32 Color Commentary: From the Archives “Primary Sources” documents SVA and the New York art world from 1966 to 1985.

42 Total Immersion Four documentary filmmakers focus on subcultures and little-known groups.

52 Q+A: Alice Aycock The artist and faculty member changes the climate along Park Avenue.

60 Animation Creation From pitch to program, alumni develop animated television series.

66 Alumni Affairs The SVA Kickstarter Page • Alumni Benefits • Exhibitions and Notes • Spring 2013 Scholarship Recipients • In Memoriam • Donors List 80 End Page A panoramic presentation by T. J. Wilcox.

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VISUAL ARTS JOURNAL School of Visual Arts Magazine Fall 2013 Volume 21, Number 2

From the President

EDITORIAL STAFF S. A. Modenstein, senior editor Greg Herbowy, editor James S. Harrison, copy editor Dan Halm, visuals coordinator VISUAL ARTS PRESS, LTD. Anthony P. Rhodes, creative director Michael J. Walsh, director of design and digital media Brian Smith, art director Sheilah Ledwidge, associate editor

ADVERTISING SALES 212.592.2207 CONTRIBUTORS Billy Altman Lisa Batchelder Christopher Bussman Christopher Darling Adriana Fracchia Alexander Gelfand Breanna Good Michael Grant James Grimaldi Dan Halm Carrie Lincourt Lee Ann Norman Jane Nuzzo Miranda Pierce Angela Riechers Ken Switzer © 2013, Visual Arts Press, Ltd. Visual Arts Journal is published twice a year by the Office of External Relations, School of Visual Arts, 209 East 23rd Street, New York, NY 10010-3994. Milton Glaser, acting chairman; David Rhodes, president; Anthony P. Rhodes, executive vice president.

photo by Harry Zernike

COVER FRONT: Publicity photo by Tom Starkweather for World on a String, a film by Dawn Schwartz (MFA 2011 Social Documentary Film). See “Total Immersion,” page 42.

BACK: Marco Anelli, T. J. Wilcox’s Studio, New York, 2012. © Marco Anelli. Courtesy Danziger Gallery, New York. See End Page, page 80.

Much has changed since 1937, when Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs ushered in what is widely considered the Golden Age of Animation, but today’s expanding career opportunities and abundant talent have many industry veterans talking about a new Golden Age. I’m pleased to report that some of those driving the trend are SVA alumni, five of whom you will meet in the pages of this issue of the Journal as they discuss their experiences developing animated series for television.

It is probably no coincidence that documentary film has also flourished in recent years, with cable television and streaming media services offering filmmakers new avenues of distribution outside the festival circuit. Film lovers, in turn, have unprecedented access to new perspectives and unfamiliar cultures. In the article “Total Immersion,” we meet four graduates of the MFA Social Documentary Film Department who, in the interest of bringing little-known stories to a wider audience, spent weeks and sometimes months with their subjects.

SVA’s fine arts faculty, past and present, are much in evidence in this issue. “From the Archives” offers a preview of “Primary Sources: Documenting SVA and the New York Art World, 1966 – 1985,” an upcoming survey of the 100plus exhibitions presented at SVA during two of the most remarkable decades in the history of New York City’s art world; many of the artists who participated in these exhibitions were on

the College’s faculty. Along with original works, the show will include promotional posters, correspondence and ephemera drawn from the SVA Archives.

Among the artists who began working in that period and remain active is BFA Fine Arts faculty member Alice Aycock, subject of this issue’s Q+A. She spoke with the Journal about her work and career as she prepared for a largescale installation that will be on view next spring on Manhattan’s Park Avenue. Aycock says she encourages students to “take risks and be brave,” a pedagogical philosophy shared by artist Mark Tribe, our new MFA Fine Arts Department chair.

Tribe is introduced in this issue’s SVA Close Up section, along with curator and critic Steven Henry Madoff, chair of the new MA Curatorial Practice Department.

Finally, the fall 2013 Portfolio feature examines the work of artist Cordy Ryman (BFA 1997 Fine Arts), who uses the by-products of his own fabrication process to make work that bridges the fields of painting, sculpture and installation. While some would have us believe that recycling dates only to the 20th century, Ryman’s work reminds us that artists have been doing it for ages.

David Rhodes President

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R. O. Blechman, Cocktail Party, 2003, pen and ink, watercolor.

A Fine Line Nervous line work, oversize noses and gentle humor are the hallmarks of R. O. Blechman, the SVA Masters Series honoree for 2013. Blechman’s first book, The Juggler of Our Lady, published in 1953, is considered one of the earliest modern graphic novels, and his animated “protesting stomach” Alka-Seltzer ad, created in the 1960s, was a game-changer for TV advertising.

While many people know Blechman’s award-winning work, his name may not ring many bells outside the illustration community. But that seems to be changing. The Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, recently mounted a showcase of his drawings; his Emmy-winning film, The Soldier’s Tale, was screened to orchestral accompaniment at the Bard Music Festival at Bard College in August; and his work is VISUAL ARTS JOURNAL

featured (alongside that of Paul Flora and William Steig) in an exhibition of 20thcentury illustrators opening in November at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Strasbourg, France.

Remarkably, “The Masters Series: R. O. Blechman” is the first major retrospective in a decades-long career. It traverses the extraordinary breadth of a multifaceted artist who works in illustration, animation and graphic stories; who launched an art studio, penned op-ed cartoons, produced television specials, directed commercials and ran a groundbreaking animation studio of his own; who has published more than a dozen beloved books and created 14 covers for The New Yorker; and who has been honored by induction into three prestigious halls of fame (Art Directors Club, National Cartoonists Society and Society of Illustrators).

Kurt Andersen, the writer, radio host and cultural observer, recalls seeing the still-amusing dyspeptic-stomach Alka-Seltzer commercial when it first appeared. At 12 years of age, he was smitten. “Sixty seconds of urbane wit and humanity expressed in this singular, seemingly effortless, totally fetching (and faintly European) economy of form, right there on TV,” he says. “His illustrations are a perfect distillation of civilized charm.”

“The Masters Series: R. O. Blechman” opened on October 2 and is on view through November 2 at the SVA Chelsea Gallery, 601 West 26th Street, 15th floor. [Lisa Batchelder]

R. O. Blechman, The Writer, 1998, collage, pen and ink, airbrush.

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SVA Close Up

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Flower Power

For the past two decades, SVA’s visual identity has been anchored by a symbol many people know simply as “the flower”: a blossom-like aureole of brushstrokes arranged like fireworks in the night sky or crystals in a kaleidoscope. The logo was created by designer George Tscherny in 1997 for the College’s 50th anniversary.

This fall, with the introduction of the latest evolution of the SVA logo, the flower gets a fresh look. The mark’s painterly quality has been accentuated by returning to Tscherny’s original art, in keeping with the hands-on experience that defines SVA. A new signature, simplified to just “SVA” and set in Brevia type, provides balance to the intricacy of the flower; the introduction of “NYC” reflects the strong link that exists between New

“There are a million iPhone covers, but there’s only ‘Caucasian’ or ‘non-Caucasian’ for a prosthetic leg.”

Aimee Mullins, actor, athlete, model and activist. From an MFA Products of Design studio visit.

VISUAL ARTS JOURNAL

York City and the College, the faculty of which is drawn from the ranks of the city’s leading creative professionals.

The new logo also has a number of practical advantages. According to Michael Walsh, who led the redesign as SVA’s director of design and digital media, the type, for example, “was selected for its boldness, simplicity, readability and a subtle quirkiness. It needs to look good and be useful for both the tiniest of spaces as well as many feet high on the side of a building. It couldn’t be too fussy or detailed.”

The redesigned logo was formally introduced at the College’s annual staff meeting in August and will begin to appear in all SVA publications and communications over the coming months.

[Michael Grant]

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President Rhodes said in his announcement. “As an artist, writer and frequent lecturer on art, politics and technology, he has also distinguished himself as an essential guide to our culture. I’m confident he will bring the same passion and critical acumen to his new role at SVA.” Tribe’s art explores the aesthetics of politically motivated events, such as protest speeches, demonstrations and militia training exercises. His photographs, installations, videos and performances are exhibited widely, including recent solo projects at Momenta Art, New York; G-MK, Zagreb; LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions); the San Diego Museum of Art; and the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio.

Tribe is the author of two books—The

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On June 24, SVA President David Rhodes announced the appointment of Mark Tribe as chair of the MFA Fine Arts Department, effective July 1. Tribe is an artist and educator and the founder of Rhizome, an organization that supports the creation, presentation, preservation and critique of emerging artistic practices that incorporate the latest in technology and digital media. He has been an MFA Art Practice faculty member since 2011 and served as a thesis adviser in the MFA Photography, Video and Related Media Department in 2001 and 2003. Tribe has also taught at Brown University, Columbia University School of the Arts and Williams College.

“Mark has proven himself an innovator in the truest sense of the term,”

photo by Collier Schorr

Making an Appointment Port Huron Project: Reenactments of New Left Protest Speeches (Charta, 2010) and New Media Art (Taschen, 2006)—and numerous articles. His work has been discussed in Artforum, Art in America, Art Papers, Artscope, Bomblog, Brooklyn Rail, The Daily Beast, Flash Art Italia, Framework, Freize, Hyperallergic, Killscreen, Newsweek, New York, October, The New York Times, Village Voice, Wired, X-tra and Zing, among others.

He has taught courses on radical media, curating, open-source culture, digital art and techniques of surveillance.

“My main goals as chair of this department will be to foster rigorous critical engagement with contemporary culture and to encourage students to take risks,” Tribe says. [MG]

“When I was in school, Richard Wilde gave us two grades: one for concept and one for execution. . . . I really love this idea of having a concept and an execution as a perfect balance. Because a concept that is badly executed won’t survive in the world, and an execution that doesn’t have a strong concept is completely shallow and is going to die.”

Julia Hoffmann (BFA 2002 Graphic Design), creative director, international, Etsy.

From her Distinguished Alumnus Lecture.

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photos by James Bridle/booktwo.org

SVA Close Up

Lab Experiments

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publisher and technologist James Bridle kicked off the series. Invited to participate by the MFA Interaction Design and MFA Products of Design departments, Bridle created a “drone recognition kit” (seen in the photos above)—a set of models of various military drones, made with a 3D printer. Beat-boxer, hacker and multimedia artist Adam Matta used his time at the lab to create Makeshift, a custom software program that generates video and photographic imagery to accompany live performances. Sculptor and woodworker Conor Klein engraved and laser-etched text onto everyday objects (a dustpan, for instance) as a way to change or challenge their significance or value. This past summer’s artist in

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The Visible Futures Lab at SVA, which boasts a state-of-the-art woodworking and machine shop, 3D printing, electronics facilities and a gallery all in one huge space, opened in the fall of 2012.

Available to all SVA graduate students, the space quickly became a haven for artists and designers, thanks in part to its ongoing Artist in Residence program.

“It’s all about encouraging the crosspollination of ideas between the students and the artists,” says lab director Leif Krinkle. “Students might be focused on their own curriculum and areas within their departments, but when they come here they can be more open-ended and inspired by something they might not have expected to experience at SVA.” Since its inception, the VFL’s Artist in Residence program has hosted four distinctive creators. Each of their seven-week stints began with an introductory talk, in which the artists laid out their plans for the residency, and culminated in a final presentation and exhibition of the work they created in the lab. London-based artist, writer,

residence, Genevieve Hoffmann, created sculptures and virtual environments inspired by the stock market and other financial data sets.

Throughout the residencies, students worked alongside the artists and were encouraged to observe, ask questions and at times assist them, all of which is in line with the Visible Futures Lab’s mission. “We want to be collaborators and a resource for the students to use, to bounce ideas off of,” says Krinkle. “We don’t want to be seen as admin­istrators or authoritarians. We’re really here to encourage experimentation and learning.”

To find out more or to apply to the Artist in Residence program, visit vfl.sva.edu. [Ken Switzer]

“Who you take money from is one of the most important decisions you’ll make. . . . Money has an agenda.”

Jeffrey Hollender, entrepreneur and co-founder of Seventh Generation, a line of all-natural household products. From a talk hosted by the MFA Design for Social Innovation Department.

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photo by Elvia Gobbo

Design Movements

The Digital Avant-Garde international level, with work submitted from far and wide. By the late 1990s, Digital Salons were mounted in China, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Spain and elsewhere, attracting tens of thousands of visitors.

“Digital art is truly an international art form,” Wands says. “The democratizing effect of computers and the Internet have brought artists and cultures from around the world together in using digital tools and techniques to create art.”

The New York Digital Salon’s 20th anniversary exhibition ran from August 30 through October 20 at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pennsylvania.

It is on view at SVA’s Flatiron Gallery, 133/141 West 21st Street, from October 26 through November 27. “The American Algorists—Linear Sublime” is supported by the MFA Computer Art Department at SVA and by Lebanon Valley College. Visit nydigitalsalon.org for more information about the exhibition and about digital art.

[LB]

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The 20th annual New York Digital Salon exhibition, “The American Algorists—Linear Sublime,” showcases the work of five pioneers of electronic art: Jean-Pierre Hébert, Manfred Mohr, A. Michael Noll, Roman Verostko and Mark Wilson. The show is a homecoming of sorts for Verostko and Wilson, whose work was included in the original Digital Salon, New York’s first regular venue for computer art, in 1993.

Artists had long regarded the computer as a source of creative possibility, but for years they were routinely dismissed by galleries and museums as outsiders.

SVA’s MFA Computer Art Department and NYC ACM SIGGRAPH, an organization of tech-oriented professionals in various fields, created the New York Digital Salon to bring digital art into the public spotlight.

The first juried show in 1993 was curated

by Bruce Wands, an early proponent of digital and interactive art who is now the director of the salon and chair of the College’s MFA Computer Art Department. That exhibition drew more than 600 entries and featured work by nearly 50 artists.

The inaugural exhibition was a resounding success and became an annual event, broadening in scope as artists kept pace with emerging technologies such as computer animation, digital video, interactive installations, CD-ROMs and other media. It also expanded on the

The spring 2013 semester was an exciting one for some first-year MFA Design students: faculty member Maira Kalman’s inventive New York Stories class once again stepped outside the usual definition of “design” by putting on a dance performance, called Obstacle. In collaboration with choreographer John Heginbotham, the 20 students in the class planned the work over a nine-week period, enthusiastically working together to design a cohesive, visually fueled piece of movement that was, in Heginbotham’s words, “contemporary and eclectic.”

“The dancers choreographed their own movement sequences,” he says, “drawing from their own imaginations with focused direction.” Props such as bouncing balls, umbrellas and oranges were used to enliven the performance and provoke questions about its meaning. Each student chose a word to express how he or she felt about Obstacle and during the presentation wore a shirt with the word printed on it in bold type.

The inclusion of type in the performance highlighted an obvious relationship between the dance and the students’ chosen field, design. But aside from the shirts, Kalman believes there is a more subtle connection. “Throughout every minute of every day we are making decisions about where we are in space and what that space is,” she says. “We design events, interactions and excursions. Finding a way to communicate is the essence of design. In this case, we chose movement, music and text as our method of communication.”

To see a video of the MFA Design students performing Obstacle, visit design.sva.edu/obstacle.

[Adriana Fracchia]

“We had an unseemly interest in toupees.”

Kurt Andersen, writer, editor and radio host, talking about Spy, the satirical magazine he co-founded and edited. From a talk hosted by the MFA Design Criticism Department.

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photo by Nir Arieli

Curatorial Mastery the need for curatorial knowledge and strategy,” Madoff says. “The master’s in curatorial practice at SVA will fully exploit the countless opportunities for study, mentorship and professional development that can be found right on our doorstep.”

Formerly the executive editor of ARTnews and currently a contributing editor at that publication as well as Modern Painters, Madoff has taught at the Yale University School of Art and curated the Venice Biennale. He has written extensively on contemporary art. His books include Art School (Propositions for the 21st Century) (MIT Press, 2009), Pop Art: A Critical History (University of California Press, 1997) and Christopher Wilmarth: Light and Gravity (Princeton University Press, 2004).

Among those slated to teach in the program are Richard Flood, director of special projects and curator at large,

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This fall, SVA began accepting applications for the MA in Curatorial Practice, a new two-year degree focused on professional training grounded in history, theory and interactive work with experts in the curatorial field. The department’s chair is curator, critic and author Steven Henry Madoff, who has taught in the College’s MFA Art Practice Department since 2011.

Designed with an emphasis on internships and collaborations with art institutions, the goal of the new department is for it to be a hub for curators-in-training and professionals from around the world, and a resource for organizing New York City-area exhibitions.

“The exponential growth of the global art enterprise—museums, galleries, alternative spaces, biennials, art fairs, expositions, online art sites and the sheer number of publicly and privately supported art venues—has greatly increased

VISUAL ARTS JOURNAL

New Museum, New York; David Frankel, editorial director, The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Claire Gilman, curator, the Drawing Center, New York; Hou Hanru, artistic director, Maxxi, National Museum of 21st Century Arts, Rome; Matthew Higgs, director and chief curator, White Columns, New York; Daniel Kunitz, editor in chief, Modern Painters; Charles Renfro, partner, Diller Scofidio + Renfro; David Ross, former director of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Manon Slome, former curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and president and chief curator, No Longer Empty, New York; and Jovana Stokic, former curator of performance, Location One, New York, and deputy chair of the MA Curatorial Practice Department.

The MA Curatorial Practice Department will open its doors in the fall of 2014. [MG]

“I think our very early lives shape us—or shape at least some of us—as writers, determining what our interests will be and what art is going to mean for us, and what art will end up being the most meaningful to us.”

Holland Cotter, New York Times art critic. From a talk hosted by the MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department.

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Subject Matter

The Song Remains the Same Billy Altman on Popular Music In addition to Music in Culture I and II, Billy Altman teaches History of Jazz, Songs of Conscience: Music and Social Change and Everybody’s a Critic: Writing About Pop Culture, part of the Humanities and Sciences Department’s new writing program.

Altman is an award-winning critic and journalist whose work has appeared in such publications as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone and Esquire. He has worked as a curator for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Grammy Museum and is the author of Laughter’s Gentle Soul: The Life of Robert Benchley (W.W. Norton, 1997).

There’s so much music out there today that it can be hard for young people to get a real sense of where things come from, historically and contextually. What I try to do in my Music in Culture class is help students understand that, throughout the 20th century, popular music was often mostly about geography and the regional culture from which it emerged. For example, with early blues music, there was country blues—mostly from the Mississippi Delta—with the stereotype of the itinerant loner musician, like Robert Johnson or Charley Patton, who wandered from town to town with just a guitar and a few belongings. And then there was urban blues, which was more theatrical, and was popularized primarily by female singers: Bessie Smith, the “Empress of the Blues,” or Ma Rainey, the “Mother of the Blues.” Meanwhile, with early country music, there was Appalachian music, which was very folk-oriented and originated with British traditions brought over by settlers, and there was also Southwestern Texan and Oklahoman music, which had more of a “giddy-up” to it.

I also like to get into the pervasiveness of influences as music crosses over from specific geographical locations and cultures to different places and their cultures. One of the songs I play my students is called “Nobody’s Fault But Mine.” It was originally recorded by a gospel-based Texas street singer

named Blind Willie Johnson in 1927, and a half-century later, in 1977, Led Zeppelin recorded it. The guitar riff and lyrics are virtually identical, it’s just that Led Zeppelin’s version is so much louder and more aggressive. Arthur Alexander—a great, obscure R&B songwriter from Alabama—is another example.

The records he released barely made a ripple in the U.S., but somehow his singles got to England and numerous British Invasion groups covered his music. We listen to his song “Anna,” which the Beatles recorded early in their career. Interestingly, the rhythm used on Arthur Alexander’s original performance shows up on the Beatles’ Rubber Soul album, with the John Lennon classic “In My Life.” It’s exactly the same drum pattern.

And take surf music, which we always associate with Southern California. The path for that, I think, can be traced in some respects through rockabilly, which featured a very kind of angular guitar sound. As rockabilly moved from Memphis and out through the Southwest, it was picked up by artists like Texan Buddy Holly and the pivotal figure Duane Eddy, who played guitar instrumentals. His sound—he was known as “the King of Twang”—emerged from Arizona, and that gets you farther west. Some elements of surf music also come out of the Pacific Northwest, through the instrumental group the Ventures, and that connects with a band like the Shadows, from England, who were also a popular late 1950s, early ’60s instrumental combo. But Dick Dale’s “Misirlou”? One of the most famous and influential pieces of surf music, which everybody now knows from Pulp Fiction? It’s based on a Middle Eastern melody that Dale knew from childhood, having grown up in a Lebanese-American family.

What’s fascinating is you don’t know how much of this cross-pollination is even conscious on the part of the artists.

But helping students make these connections, and better understand where the inspirations and influences of the music they listen to come from, contributes to a lot of the enjoyment I get teaching a class like this. • FALL 2013

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What’s in Store

Creeps Annual creepsannual.com Softcover, 33 pages, $20 In 2010, a group of recent SVA graduates banded together to create a publication known as the Creeps Annual, which blends together poetry, short stories and photography with prints, drawings and paintings. What started out as a collaborative effort of 20 artists has grown, in its third and latest issue, to include nearly 40 contributors.

According to co-founder Nina Carelli (BFA 2010 Illustration), Creeps began as a ’zine but has grown into something more serious, production-wise. With screen-printed pages and details such as die-cut sleeves, the publication feels like an object worth hanging on to. Creeps is available for purchase in galleries and shops such as Desert Island, Printed Matter and Ed. Varie in New York City; Aquvii in Tokyo; Drawn & Quarterly and Monastiraki in Montreal; and the Good Press Gallery in Glasgow.

Co-founder Giancarlo Corbacho (BFA 2010 Illustration) encourages all interested artists and writers to send submissions for the fifth edition.

(Creeps Annual IV is currently in production.) “We are hoping to feature a good amount of fresh, emerging talent, while remaining true to all of the original dynamics,” he says.

Creeps’ tone is more humorous than its name might suggest. It weaves sophisticated, early-adult angst with offbeat drollery. For instance, the title page of an early issue shows the contributing artists’ names above photographs of human nipples. This playful sensibility makes the annual stand out on a rack, table or bookshelf.

Creeps is also the embodiment of publishing independence. All sales income funds future issues, with the remaining production costs paid for by the participating artists. “Creeps is this monster we’re collectively parenting and are watching grow,” Corbacho says. ”As parents do for their children, we try and guide it and hope the best for it.” [Christopher Darling] VISUAL ARTS JOURNAL

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The Gentle of Men John Arsenault and Roman Udalov thegentleofmen.com T-shirts and tank tops, $39 The Gentle of Men was born out of the desire of both John Arsenault (BFA 1999 Photography) and Roman Udalov to make artwork more available to the masses. The company began in 2011, at an exhibition of Arsenault’s photographs; the duo decided to create T-shirt designs based on images from the show, allowing gallery-goers to interact with the images in a different way.

“We believe in art you can touch,” Arsenault says. “Art you can wrestle in and rub your beard on and that can be washed with your socks and underwear.” Based on the success of those first shirts, they have continued to produce T-shirts that are both tongue-in-cheek and fashion forward. Instead of continuing to use Arsenault’s photographs as inspiration, they decided for their next series to turn to an image one sees frequently in fashion and pop culture: the skull. This new line includes shirts emblazoned with skulls featuring telltale attributes of such well-known icons as Farrah Fawcett, Andy Warhol, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Karl Lagerfeld.

Each shirt is hand-screened—on white, black or gray fabric—by one of the partners, a good way for them to stay connected to the creative process and the production of their work. The limited-edition T-shirts and tank tops are currently sold almost exclusively through their website. “It allows us to be as nimble as possible,” Arsenault says.

“We are starting to sell to a couple of boutiques that have an aesthetic similar to ours and are known for supporting the arts, but we’re purposely doing that very slowly.”

They hope to continue to work on new designs with a collective approach, even possibly inviting other artists to contribute designs in the future. [Dan Halm] FALL 2013

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What’s in Store The Oma & Bella Cookbook Alexa Karolinski (author), Joana Avillez (illustrator) omabella.com Hardcover, 116 pages, €25 ($30 – 35) Das Kochbuch — The cooKbooK

Books get turned into movies all the time. But one movie, Oma & Bella, inspired a cookbook. The 2012 documentary, by Alexa Karolinski (MFA 2011 Social Documentary), captures the bond between two best friends and Holocaust survivors who share a home in Berlin. For octogenarians Oma (Alexa’s grandmother, Regina Karolinski) and Bella Katz, healing begins in the kitchen. Cooking together allows them to recount their stories and express their heritage. It helps them remember—and forget. The Oma & Bella Cookbook is a collection of their classic Eastern European recipes as told to Alexa, who had to convert “handfuls” and “pinches” to cups and teaspoons. It is illustrated by Joana Avillez (MFA 2012 Illustration as Visual Essay) and also includes color photographs by Bella Lieberberg. [Lisa Batchelder]

by AlexA KArolinsKi

by Alexa Karolinski illustrations by Joana Avillez

Fairy Tale Comics Edited by Chris Duffy; including stories by Raina Telgemeier (BFA 2002 Cartooning), David Mazzucchelli (faculty, BFA Cartooning) First Second Books Hardcover, 128 pages, $19.99

The Happy Film Pitch Book Stefan Sagmeister (faculty, MFA Design) Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania Softcover, 244 pages, $20

VISUAL ARTS JOURNAL

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Writing and Research for Graphic Designers: A Designer’s Manual to Strategic Communication and Presentation Steven Heller Rockport Publishers Hardcover, 176 pages, $40 Steven Heller, co-chair of the MFA Design Department, recently published this manual for designers, which includes case studies and Q&As with design and communication industry specialists, many of whom are affiliated with SVA—Gail Anderson (BFA 1984 Media Arts and faculty, BFA and MFA Design), Allan Chochinov (chair, MFA Products of Design), Stefan Sagmeister (faculty, MFA Design) and Alice Twemlow (chair, MFA Design Criticism), among others. With a user-friendly structure and decades of combined expert insight, this is an essential addition to any designer’s collection. [Adriana Fracchia]

Elizabeth Peyton: Here She Comes Now Edited by Johan Holten, Elizabeth Peyton (BFA 1987 Fine Arts). Text by Johan Holten and Dodie Kazanjian.

Walther König, Köln Hardcover, 112 pages, $49.95

Product Design for the Web: Principles of Designing & Releasing Web Products Randy J. Hunt (MFA 2007 Design) New Riders Softcover, 304 pages, $39.99

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What’s in Store Yonkeros Jaime Permuth La Fábrica Hardcover, 144 pages, $40 Neighborhood change is a fact of life, but few areas have undergone as much transformation as quickly as Willets Point in Queens, New York, known locally as the Iron Triangle. Since 2007, New York City has pushed to redevelop the approximately eight-block area, hoping to revitalize it as a livable, mixed-income community. Jaime Permuth’s (MPS 2009 Digital Photography) first monograph, Yonkeros—a vernacular term for the people who work in “el yonke,” or the junkyard—captures a different view of Willets Point, concentrating on the people who work in its auto body shops and scrap yards, and their families and friends. Although Willets Point is often characterized by its municipal neglect—for example, its lack of sewers and sidewalks—Permuth offers a view of the Iron Triangle that focuses on its humanity. “Willets Point is a contested land, and has been for over 40 years,” he writes. “The city is already touting the area as its next great neighborhood. . . . What is less clear is what will happen to the over 300 businesses that will be displaced, or the working class families that depend on them for the essential service they provide.”

Permuth’s digital photos, in both black-and-white and color, highlight the neighborhood’s beauty through images of workers and their tools, cars precariously balanced on rooftops, towers of tires, women with babies resting on their hips, young children eating on the street and auto workers lounging in the afternoon sun. By drawing attention to the people—a majority of whom are Latino immigrant men—and their daily routines, Yonkeros serves as a record of an important moment in the community’s history.

While a quick glance at the Iron Triangle will yield little more than gentrification, eminent domain and blight, Permuth asks us to gaze a little longer, and really see its people. His images remind us that the men and women behind the scrap heaps, flooded streets and industry lead real, meaningful lives.

[Lee Ann Norman]

Grand Central Catwalk Marcos Chin (faculty, BFA Illustration) transitmuseumstore.com Poster, $24.95

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Drawn to New York Peter Kuper PM Press Hardcover, 208 pages, $29.95 Drawn to New York is a compilation of more than three decades’ worth of artwork by BFA Cartooning faculty member Peter Kuper, capturing the joy, stress, love and struggles inherent in New York City life. Each sketch, watercolor, sequential story and mixed-media collage in the book is a love letter to the city the artist calls home. Kuper, who co-founded the comics anthology World War 3 Illustrated and sits on its editorial board, finds just the right mixture of humor, trauma and political commentary when illustrating his personal responses to such things as the 2008 economic crisis and 9/11.

This is not an easy task, and getting it right points up Kuper’s strengths as an illustrator and storyteller. For Kuper, the city is a grid of infinite images and stories to be told. [Christopher Bussmann]

Déjà Vu by You Jennings Hanna and Alex Todaro dejavubyyou.com Customized postcards, $5 each What better way to remember the past than by sending a postcard to your future self? Déjà Vu by You, an online service created by MFA Interaction Design students Jennings Hanna and Alex Todaro, enables you to create 3 x 5" missives, decorated with a favorite photo or image, that will be mailed to you in three, six or 12 months’ time. Hanna calls it “an experiment in user-generated nostalgia.” The postcards can be used to commemorate “the good old days,” evoke a smile or a laugh, even offer words of encouragement and support from none other than a younger you. [Breanna Good]

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What’s in Store

Lunar New Year Forever® Stamp Series Kam Mak and Ethel Kessler U.S. Postal Service (store.usps.com) Stamps and various commemorative items, $5 – 50 Illustrator Kam Mak (BFA 1984 Media Arts) moved with his family from Hong Kong to Manhattan’s Chinatown when he was 10. At the time, he says, “there were a lot of gangs. It was tough.” But Mak has mostly good memories of the neighborhood—in particular, all the ways the Chinese American community kept their heritage alive. These memories have inspired both a children’s book, My Chinatown: One Year in Poems (HarperCollins, 2001), and what Mak considers his most meaningful, highest-profile work to date: an ongoing series of U.S. Postal Service stamps commemorating the Lunar New Year, which is celebrated by many Asian cultures. Begun in 2008, a new stamp is issued each year in time for the holiday, and the series will run for the full 12-year course of the current Chinese zodiac cycle.

Mak’s is the second edition of the Lunar New Year series; the first focused on the zodiac cycle’s animals. For his series, Mak and his art director, Ethel Kessler, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Kessler Design Group, decided instead to showcase the holiday’s cherished traditions, providing a larger picture of Chinese culture. The 2013 stamp, marking the Year of the Snake, featured a string of exploding firecrackers, a familiar

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element of Lunar New Year celebrations. “As a 10-, 11-year-old kid, I loved [firecrackers],” Mak said in an interview on NPR’s The Takeaway earlier this year. “But there’s a deeper meaning. We lit them to scare off evil spirits, so that we can start fresh.” Previous Mak stamps have depicted kumquats, a customary holiday gift; red lanterns, intended to bring luck; and dragon dances, often seen in New Year parades. “There are thousands of years of history and symbolism behind these images,” he says.

Each stamp’s image is painted in oil on boards treated with Mak’s handmade gesso, then photographed and scaled to size. (The paper-cuts and calligraphy that decorate the left edge are by another artist and added later.)

Mak, who primarily works in a painstaking, realistic style, cites onetime SVA faculty member Michael Deas, who created stamps featuring Hollywood icons like James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, as an influence, and remembers his time at SVA as an invaluable opportunity to hone his craft and launch his career. “I knew how to draw and that was my savior,” he says. “I could have been a bad kid.” [Greg Herbowy]

TO SUBMIT A PRODUC T FOR WHAT ’ S IN S TORE , PLE A SE SEND INFORM ATION TO

news@sva.edu

City Stages Matthew Pillsbury Aperture Hardcover, 128 pages, $65 For this monograph, Matthew Pillsbury (MFA 2004 Photography, Video and Related Media) offers images from three distinct series of works—“City Stages,” “Time Frame” and “Screen Lives”—that look at different facets of city life and the passage of time. Working with black-and-white, 8 x 10" film and long exposures, he is able to capture the urban landscape in new and challenging ways. From locations in New York, Paris, London, Tokyo and Venice, among others, Pillsbury focuses his lens on both the private (apartment interiors and hotel rooms) and the public (museums, parades, cathedrals) to create mysterious and beautiful images—images in which people are transformed into pure energy and gesture.

“Time-lapse imaging is a straightforward method for depicting the passage of time with a still image,” political and cultural theorist Mark Kingwell writes in his essay for the book. “But Pillsbury’s City Stages images do far more than that, I think. At their best, they hint at the mystery that underlies our experiences of time, namely that there is an experience—you and I and the others—present to feel time’s passage in the first place.”

Turning iconic or well-trod locations into places of magic and wonder is what Pillsbury does best. He breathes new life into both crowded environments and quiet moments of contemplation and relaxation. The ghosts of those who have passed through these spaces are on display throughout the book. [DH]

Earth Girl: The Natural Disaster Fighter Isaac Kerlow (BFA 1981 Media Arts) earthgirlgame.com Video game, free download available

New School Dash Shaw (BFA 2005 Illustration) Fantagraphics Harcover, 340 pages, $39.99

Race to Incarcerate: A Graphic Retelling Marc Mauer and Sabrina Jones (MFA 2003 Illustration as Visual Essay) The New Press Softcover, 128 pages, $17.95 FALL 2013

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Hire Ed

By Alexander Gelfand

Tax Tips for Self-Employed Workers As inevitable as death and often just about as mysterious, taxes are the bane of many a self-employed artist’s existence.

But the tax code can actually be a freelancer’s friend. There can be significant tax advantages to being what the IRS calls an independent contractor, who works for someone else but is not considered an employee, or a sole proprietor, who runs a one-person business. (All self-employed workers—whether independent contractors or sole proprietors—are treated identically for tax purposes.)

There are many resources out there, from books on tax preparation for creative professionals to the IRS’ own print and online guides for the self-employed, just as there are plenty of accountants who specialize in helping freelancers navigate the tax code—and anything a self-employed person spends on tax prep is deductible. Here, CPA and attorney Michael J. Goldberg, of Ganer + Ganer PLLC—a former freelancer himself—provides some tips on how those who earn money independently can get a grip on their taxes.

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PROS AND CONS Employees often receive matching retirement plan and health insurance contributions from their employers, who also pay half of their Social Security and Medicare taxes—taxes that the self-employed must pay themselves in the form of self-employment tax, which, for 2013, stands at 15.3% for one’s first $113,700 in earnings, and 2.9% for any income earned beyond that. Since you can deduct only half of the self-employment tax from your standard income tax, this means an additional tax requirement. If you are self-employed, reporting income can also be more laborious. With rare exceptions, you must file a Schedule C tax form, detailing how much money you made or lost through your business activities over the year.

On the other hand, you can deduct all of your business expenses—phone use, transportation, work supplies, etc.—which most employees cannot do. You can also funnel more money into a wider variety of retirement savings plans, which can lower your taxes.

Someone who keeps a steady job but also earns selfemployment income—“my hero,” Goldberg says—enjoys the best of both worlds: the employer-subsidized Social Security and Medicare tax payments and health insurance and retirement benefits, along with the deductions and retirement plan options reserved for the self-employed.

TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS To make the most of a self-employed tax status, Goldberg recommends establishing a separate bank account for business income and expenses; recording the date, type and amount of every payment you receive and every expense you incur; and keeping originals or scanned copies of all business receipts. He also recommends keeping a business diary in which to record the purpose of every expense.

You’ll need those records if the IRS ever audits you, or if you run afoul of the “hobby loss rule,” which stipulates that you can only claim a loss—thereby reducing your tax burden—if you are engaged in a profit-driven trade or business, as opposed to a hobby. If you can’t show a profit in three out of five consecutive years, the government may require you to prove by other means that you are running a legitimate business (hence the need for carefully kept records and documentation) and ask you to explain why you’ve been losing money. For an artist, the “why” might involve the amount of time it takes to gain recognition and build demand for one’s work.

The IRS publishes lists of allowable business expenses, and a tax professional can help you sort through the trickier ones—like the notoriously complex home-office deduction, which applies if you use a portion of your home for business purposes. (The government has introduced a simplified version of this deduction, effective for 2013.)

PAYING UP The self-employed are generally required to pay estimated quarterly taxes—based on what they expect to earn for the year. If your income is unpredictable, Goldberg advises basing your payments on what you owed the previous year. The IRS also allows you to pay more during those quarters when you earn more and less when your earnings are lower, or your expenses higher. Whatever you do, however, he recommends setting money aside to prepare for the April 15 filing deadline, when you must pay any difference on what you owe, if your quarterly estimates for the previous year turn out to have been too low, as well as pay the first quarterly installment for the current year.

If you sell any artwork or merchandise, Goldberg says, you must get a certificate of authority from the state where you are doing business permitting you to collect sales tax (provided, of course, that the state collects sales tax). It is illegal to charge sales tax without a certificate of authority, and, with certain exceptions (shipping merchandise out of state, selling your work to a dealer who will collect the tax or selling to a tax-exempt organization), it is also illegal to sell goods without collecting sales tax.

SETTING SOMETHING ASIDE When the subject of retirement plans comes up, many of Goldberg’s clients tell him that they need to hang on to every dime just to stay afloat. But retirement plans, in addition to being a good idea for taking care of your future, can be a useful tool for reducing your tax burden: depending on your tax bracket, every dollar you contribute to a retirement plan can shave as much as 40 cents off of each dollar you pay in taxes.

There are many kinds of plans, all with their own tax implications. The self-employed are entitled to contribute up to approximately 20% of their net earnings to a Simplified Employee Pension, or SEP IRA, with a maximum contribution of $51,000 for 2013; and while you’ll have to pay income tax on future withdrawals, your contributions are tax deductible. Contributions to a Roth IRA, meanwhile, are capped at $5,500 for 2013 and are not tax deductible; but the money in a Roth grows tax-free. An accountant or financial adviser can help you figure out which plan, or combination of plans, will make your hard-earned income work hardest for you.

Above all, though, Goldberg urges due diligence. “These can be complex rules,” he says. “Everyone should consult with a tax adviser to determine how the laws apply to their particular situation.” •

The Office of Career Development will host a tax-prep workshop in spring 2014. Visit sva.edu/student-life/career-development for more information.

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Portfolio

By Dan Halm

Cordy Ryman Categorizing the work of Cordy Ryman (BFA 1997 Fine Arts) is not easy—a fact that only adds to its appeal. Ryman’s art straddles the lines between painting, sculpture and installation.

Each piece seems to dance with vitality and immediacy that doesn’t feel labored or overanalyzed; his stacked blocks and assembled painted geometric forms seem to dominate the space they are given. The repetition of these shapes—most of which have both mill-cut edges and Ryman’s own, less-perfect saw cuts, complete with slivers and splinters—meld together to form one cohesive body of work. The bright hues and complementary colors bounce off one another as well as the walls against which they are placed.

For Ryman, everything old is new again. His process of making new work often amounts to repurposing scraps from previous projects into his latest. “It’s hard for me to start something that’s sort of totally blank,” he says. “So with something that already has some marks on it or a history or some sort of character, I can start by responding to what’s there.”

This process also helps to foster looseness in the studio—a looseness that is heightened by the fact that he usually works on several pieces at once. “I’ll start with one thing, and something else will spin off of that, like a cutoff from one piece will become a second piece. Or some idea that I’m working on will prompt me to look around and find another platform for another piece in progress.” This constant back-and-forth allows him to be experimental and break his own rules—working tight and planned on one piece, while at the same time unrestrained and free to play with another.

It’s the vitality of the work and the constant reshuffling that intrigues Ryman. “Sometimes when you’re working you get pumped up and excited about things and things will seem really interesting and you’ll be done,” he says. “But then you’ll come in the next day and realize they’re not. And sometimes I’ll show things that I think are really great, and when I get them back a year later and look at them, they seem dead. So they go back into the mix.”

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All images photographed by Jason Mandella.

Courtesy of the artist and DODGE Gallery, New York.

Color also plays a big part. Ryman is fearless in the types of paint he uses: fluorescent, acrylic, pearlescent, spray paint, enamel and other industrial paints. “There are certain things that are always going to look good to me, certain combinations and iconic moves that are always going to look right.

Those are sort of seductive.” And while he might go through periods of working with a particular color for a series, he likes to keep things evolving, never getting too comfortable with one method of working.

One thing that has remained a main component of Ryman’s work for the past 10 years is wood. “I generally don’t use materials that are perfect. The main reason for this is that I’m a reactor,” he says, “so things that are not perfect already have something built into it for me to react to. They seem to have a little more character or history to them.” The organic properties and character of wood allow him, in his creative process, to alter their physical state by chopping, gluing, sanding, bolting and doing whatever else he chooses with it.

It is in making those choices that Ryman says he feels most alive. “The best thing about the process for me is I feel like it fits whatever my psyche is,” he says. “I feel like it can always be honest. Usually somewhere along in the process of making things, some other little thing will pique my interest and I’ll ride that one.” By taking those detours, Ryman keeps evolving and expanding his art, and satisfies his personal need to create.

“That’s why I work on multiple things at once. If I work on one thing and my ego is just all resting on that one thing, then it would be hard to do something that might be sort of magical.”

Ryman’s work has been exhibited in many solo and group exhibitions in the U.S. and elsewhere. His works are in the permanent collections of the Microsoft Art Collection in Redmond, Washington; the Raussmuller Collection in Basel, Switzerland; the Rubell Family Collection in Miami; and the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami. •

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Cordy Ryman, 04 Cubed Leaner Trim, 2013, acrylic, enamel and hardware on plastic and wood.

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Cordy Ryman, Pipe Star, 2013, acrylic and staples on wood.

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Cordy Ryman, Triple Cop-Out, 2013, acrylic, enamel and shellac on wood.

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Cordy Ryman, Adaptive Radiation, 2013, installation view.

Cordy Ryman, Clacker Clacker!, 2013, acrylic and enamel on wood.

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Cordy Ryman, ES Trim Hatch and Coil, 2013, acrylic and enamel on wood.

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Cordy Ryman, Etched Exit, 2012, acrylic and enamel on wood.

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Cordy Ryman, Velcro Galactic, 2011, acrylic, enamel, nails and Velcro on wood.

opposite:

Cordy Ryman, 7 at Hand (detail), 2013, acrylic, enamel and shellac on wood.

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Color Commentary

By Greg Herbowy

From the Archives “Primary Sources: Documenting SVA and the New York Art World, 1966–1985,” on view at the SVA Chelsea Gallery from November 19 through December 18, celebrates a period when new ways of making and experiencing art were proliferating— and finding institutional support at SVA. During those years, the College hosted numerous influential exhibitions, screenings and talks, and its faculty included such influential artists, writers and curators as Vito Acconci, Mel Bochner, Eva Hesse, Joseph Kosuth (G 1967 Fine Arts), Lucy Lippard and Marcia Tucker.

In addition to offering rarely seen documents, “Primary Sources” includes original works by Stephen Antonakos, Jared Bark, Mel Bochner, Rosemarie Castoro, William Conlon, Carol Haerer, Nicholas Hondrogen, Alfred Jensen, Donald Kaufman, Charles Luce, Dennis Oppenheim, Lucio Pozzi, Michael Singer, Eve Sonneman and John Torreano. It is the first exhibition based primarily on the holdings of the SVA Archives, which are cataloged and maintained in the College’s library by Beth Kleber, archivist, and Zachary Sachs (MFA 2011 Design Criticism), coordinator. A diverse and extensive collection of artifacts relating to the history of SVA, it houses everything from correspondence and subway posters to course catalogs and registration booklets.

The following pages show a selection of pieces from “Primary Sources,” provided by Kleber and Sachs. Each reveals a bit about a particular moment in time—for the College, for New York City and for art history. •

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Cover of The Utterer, 1970. A group of SVA Fine Arts faculty members pose in front of 209 East 23rd Street. The Utterer was an intermittently published student publication that ran from 1969 to 1970. Each issue was produced under a faculty member’s guidance; this issue’s adviser was Mel Bochner. A faculty roster from this period includes such names as Carl Andre, Richard Artschwager, Jo Baer, Chuck Close, Louise Lawler, Sol LeWitt (G 1953 Illustration), Robert Mangold, Brice Marden, Robert Moskowitz, Marjorie Strider and Keith Sonnier.

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Conductor Vladimir Brailowsky and Milton Glaser at the opening of “Working drawings and other visible things on paper not necessarily meant to be viewed as art,” 1966.

Milton Glaser, “Working drawings” exhibition poster, 1966. Glaser’s illustration for the “Working drawings” poster—a photocopy of a sheet of graph paper on which he’d drawn a sheet of graph paper—was also the piece he contributed to the exhibition. A copy of a copy of a copy, the poster alluded to the pieces on view in “Working drawings”—all of which were photocopies—and to the technical drawing of the Xerox machine that was used to print them. (A photocopy of this technical drawing was also included in the show.)

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Installation photo from “Working drawings,” 1966.

“Working drawings,” which has been hailed as one of the first conceptual art shows, was conceived and curated by Mel Bochner and Shirley Glaser, who served as the College’s gallery director from the mid to late 1960s. The exhibition consisted of four binders on pedestals “in an otherwise empty space,” Glaser recalls. Each binder contained the same photocopied pages of drawings, receipts, notes and other scraps of paper that Bochner and Glaser had solicited from artists like Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt and Robert Mangold. By presenting what would normally be considered ephemera in a galley setting, “Working drawings” invited viewers to consider the artist’s process, the beauty in the everyday and the role of context in determining what is, or is not, art.

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John Sposato, Straight Information series poster, 1971.

This 1971 – 1972 dialogue series featured an impressive list of names, and speaks to SVA’s role as a promoter and supporter of artists making groundbreaking work. The poster was created by faculty member John Sposato, who has designed and illustrated for television networks (HBO), newspapers (Chicago Tribune, New York Times), magazines (Esquire, Playboy) and book publishers (Simon & Schuster, Viking/Penguin).

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“Erasable Structures” exhibition poster, 1971.

Guest-directed by David Bourdon, then the art editor at Life magazine, “Erasable Structures” included works by Darby Bannard, Frank Bowling, Rosemarie Castoro, Nancy Graves, John Torreano, Richard Van Buren, Andy Warhol, and others. Bourdon wrote at the time that the show’s aim was to “demonstrate that there is a common ground—more than is usually acknowledged—between such contemporary styles as pop, anti-form and lyrical abstraction. Perhaps the only thing that unites the artists in this show is a tendency to start off with a preconceived format that allows for a considerable leeway in the actual execution, which is relatively ‘expressionist.’”

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Stephen Antonakos, Inside Corner Incomplete Blue Circle, 1975, neon. Exhibited at The Drawing Room, East Hampton, NY. Photo courtesy of The Drawing Room. Antonakos’ arced neon tube was shown as part of “Line,” an exhibition that also included pieces by Richard Tuttle, Dan Flavin, Agnes Martin, Gordon Matta-Clark, Stephen Rosenthal and Cy Twombly, among others. Partly funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and guest-directed by Janet Kardon, then director of exhibitions at the Philadelphia College of Art, “Line” was billed as a tribute to “artists who use line as their primary means and statement.”

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“Performance Spaces” exhibition poster, 1972. Artist and SVA faculty member Vito Acconci was guest director for “Performance Spaces,” an exhibition of performance art that included work

by Acconci, Bill Beckley, Terry Fox, Howard Fried and Dennis Oppenheim. The poster for the show featured an image from Oppenheim’s Parallel Stress, a piece for which the artist first hung by his hands and feet from two concrete walls, his body bridging the distance between them, and then repeated the pose by lying in a depression in the ground.

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Cristos Gianakos (G 1955 Fine Arts and faculty, BFA Design), SVA/SITE booklet cover, 1970s.

SVA/SITE was a joint initiative by the College and Sculpture in the Environment (SITE), a New York City architecture and public art organization, to study the problem of “visual pollution” in cities and towns and offer remedies in the form of public artworks and urban planning.

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“Andy Warhol: Drawings” exhibition poster, 1976.

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Installation photo, “Andy Warhol: Drawings,” 1976.

David Whitney—the collector, gallerist and critic, who died in 2005—guest-directed this exhibition, which debuted 23 hammer-and-sickle drawings by Andy Warhol, a close friend of Whitney’s. Though inspired by the famous communist symbol, the drawings were still-lifes of an actual hammer and sickle.

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Total Immersion

REAL-LIFE NARRATIVES OFTEN WEAVE MORE INTRIGUING

tales than any fictional story possibly could. Documentary film, once limited to small audiences in art-house theaters, is now a hot category; Netflix, for instance, currently features more than 5,000 nonfiction titles. For many documentarians, exploring formerly isolated subcultures illuminates the profound wonder hidden in the everyday.

Whether the goal is addressing social injustice, raising awareness of a little-known situation or group, or just shining a light on our overall culture from an unexpected vantage point, the documentary format provides the means to do good in the world and express a personal artistic vision. The oft-heard advice, “Go narrow, go deep,” seems especially applicable to the four filmmakers profiled here, all graduates of SVA’s MFA Social Documentary Film—or Soc Doc—program. For weeks, sometimes months, they lived with their subjects, observing, listening, gaining trust and shaping narratives that communicate precisely what they found so compelling—and why audiences should care—about the lives of Indonesian sulfur miners or the travails of senior citizen speed-daters.

BY ANGEL A RIECHERS

Sasha Friedlander, Where Heaven Meets Hell, 2012, film still.

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SASHA FRIEDLANDER (2011)

Where Heaven Meets Hell OPPOSITE: Sasha Friedlander, Where Heaven Meets Hell, 2012, film stills.

SASHA FRIEDLANDER’S WHERE HEAVEN MEETS HELL FOLLOWS

the stories of four Indonesian sulfur miners laboring under nightmarish conditions on Kawah Ijen, a volcano in East Java. Sulfur is referred to in the Bible as brimstone; hell is said to smell of it. The substance is corrosive to the respiratory tract, causes severe burns and eye damage and is suspected of triggering genetic defects. Working in smoking craters at high altitudes, the miners chip off chunks of the canary yellow element, often using little more than their bare hands. Some wear respirators, others tie bandannas around their noses and mouths, but many wear no protection against the fumes. The men load the sulfur into shoulder baskets weighing up to 175 pounds and haul it back down winding paths, often after night has fallen.

Friedlander graduated from UCLA in 2007 and moved to Indonesia on a study-abroad scholarship. While there, she applied to the Soc Doc program. When she moved to New York she knew that, despite the daunting logistics of shooting a movie halfway around the world, the miners would be the subject of her thesis film.

She returned to Indonesia twice, spending a total of four months shooting Where Heaven Meets Hell. The film has won six awards and been shown at many festivals worldwide, including the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam and Toronto’s Hot Docs festival. An abbreviated version opened the 2013 season of the World Channel television network’s Global Voices documentary series.

The filmmaker was honest with the miners about the type of movie she was planning to make—one that exposed their perilous working conditions. To her surprise, within her first three days back in Indonesia she was able to sign up all the main subjects. “I felt so lucky,” she says. “They were all really receptive to what I was trying to do, and no one had any problem appearing on film.”

After the film’s premiere in Hong Kong, the crew flew back to Indonesia for a screening in the miners’ village. “We brought a big white sheet, and a projector,” Friedlander says, “and made a beautiful screen out of bamboo poles in the center of the village. Around 500 people came out to watch the film. The women had never actually seen what their husbands or fathers did for work. That was really hard for them; it was a much more emotional experience than I had anticipated.”

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DAWN SCHWARTZ (2011)

World on a String LIKE WHERE HEAVEN MEETS HELL, WORLD ON A STRING ALSO

OPPOSITE AND ABOVE: Publicity photos for Dawn Schwartz’s World on a String, by Tom Starkweather.

tracks the lives of four individuals, this time participants in the international World Yo-Yo Contest. Dawn Schwartz describes her film as a cross between the documentaries Spellbound (2002), about kids competing in the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee, and Dogtown and Z-Boys (2001), about California skateboarders. All three films illuminate the pursuit of perfection and personal accomplishment through the lens of a subculture that has carved out its own rules and traditions.

Although Schwartz tried yo-yoing as a kid, she wasn’t especially interested, or skilled, in the pursuit (“I’m pretty bad and it’s kind of embarrassing,” she says). Having read about the contest online, she attended a meet-up of yo-yo enthusiasts in Manhattan’s Union Square before deciding to focus on the subject for her film. The viewer is quickly drawn into the yo-yo universe, experiencing jubilation and disappointment as contestants rise or fall during the competition. (One hapless contender forgets his routine in the middle of his performance—the stuff of nightmares.) The film won numerous awards in 2012, including 1st Place Documentary from the Emmys Foundation, and was selected to appear in festivals ranging from the Vegas Cine Fest to the All Sports Los Angeles Film Festival.

Shooting World on a String took approximately 18 months.

Schwartz made sure she got footage before the contest and during practice, to familiarize herself with the players and their arsenals of yo-yos, some of which are made of high-end materials like titanium, issued in signed and numbered limited editions costing hundreds of dollars, and transported in custom suitcases.

Schwartz explores some of the larger cultural issues found within this microcosm, including generational (most competitors are teenagers; the judges are all older) and nationalistic divisions (in the U.S., creativity and original tricks are highly valued, but Japanese contestants tend to focus on completing as many tricks as possible, regardless of their difficulty). There is a gender divide as well. “It’s sort of like skateboarding, where almost all you see are young guys competing,” she says. “That’s definitely the same thing with yo-yoing, but lately they’re welcoming more and more girls.”

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RAÚL PAZ PASTRANA (2011)

OME: Tales from a Vanishing Homeland RAÚL PAZ PASTRANA SPENT OVER A WEEK TRAVELING FROM

New York City—by plane, car and, finally, canoe—to reach the heart of the Ecuadorian Amazon. His goal: to film the Huaorani, one of the planet’s few remaining isolated indigenous groups, who live as they have for centuries in one of the most bio-diverse places on earth.

Their way of life is under siege by oil companies doing their best to get at the estimated 800 million barrels of crude that lie beneath the Huaorani’s part of the rainforest, clear-cutting their way through pristine jungle and using extraction techniques similar to fracking, which ruin the groundwater and surrounding environment in the process. The Huaorani’s plight has been well publicized; they are surrounded by lawyers, missionaries, Ecuadorian government representatives and nonprofit organizations who often introduce their own, separate agendas into the struggle. Paz Pastrana’s resulting documentary, OME (“home,” in the Huaorani language), was chosen by the Princess Grace Foundation, which supports emerging talents in the performing arts, for its 2011 Cary Grant Award.

Once he arrived in the Amazon, Paz Pastrana soon learned to spray his boots with repellent each night, or else face morning encounters with tarantulas snuggled deep inside. While the Huaorani continue to live in thatched huts and maintain a traditional huntergatherer existence, they are no strangers to cell phones, GPS and Facebook. Thanks to previous documentaries filmed by National Geographic and the BBC, they are also familiar with the movie-making process, and helpfully volunteered to bring candles to light an afterdark filming session with a shaman.

Living with the Huaorani for long stretches (all told, the filming took four months) allowed Paz Pastrana to present these apparent contradictions gracefully. For his first two weeks in the jungle, all he did, he says, was hang around and play poker with the Huarorani until everyone felt comfortable with him. At the same time, he was aware that his very presence changed things. “I don’t believe in objectivity,” he says. “Once you bring in a camera and you get to know people, you are taking a side. I know that I’m affecting what’s going on.” His own immigration experience (Paz Pastrana is originally from Mexico) colors his viewpoint; a central and poignant theme of OME is the value of home in the face of its impending loss.

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ON THIS PAGE: Raúl Paz Pastrana, OME: Tales From a Vanishing Homeland, 2013, film stills.

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OPPOSITE, ABOVE: Steven Loring, The Age of Love, 2013, film stills.

STEVEN LORING (2012)

The Age of Love AFTER A DIVERSE PROFESSIONAL CAREER—HE STARTED OUT

as an organic chemist, then moved into acting, public relations and screenwriting—Steven Loring enrolled in SVA’s Soc Doc program.

His thesis project, The Age of Love, follows a group of senior citizens in Rochester, New York, who signed up for a speed dating event for 70- to 90-year-olds. Loring spent a month of nine-hour days filming the 30 participants, not knowing which of them he would eventually feature in the movie. While he ended up focusing on eight stories, the collective voices of all 30 men and women combine to present a touching portrait of hope and optimism, despite the rampant ageism in our society.

“My inspiration to make the film was that, after decades of happy marriage, my father died unexpectedly, and my 70-year-old mother found herself without an emotional partner for the first time in her life,” Loring says. “That same year, my uncle, in his late seventies, moved to an independent living residence. He’d been a bachelor his entire life, had never even gone out on a date. Then he met a woman who lived there, and they fell madly, adolescently in love. It was clear my mom and uncle were wrestling with universal feelings that had nothing to do with age. And I saw the need to tell a story that wasn’t like, ‘Look at these amazing old people,’ but ‘Look at all of us, all looking for love.’”

One subject, tethered at all times to an oxygen tank, gamely soldiers on through the dating process, presenting himself as someone not only worthy but deserving of love, in spite of his physical limitations. Watching the seniors open the letters telling them who was interested in getting to know them better, and seeing the joy or disappointment on their faces, conjures memories of that high school moment when someone asks you—or fails to ask you—to the prom.

The emotion captured by Loring’s camera feels exactly the same, despite the half-century’s difference between age groups. The more things change. . . . • FALL 2013

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Q+A: Alice Aycock

BY GREG HERBOWY

Chaos is simply another form of order.

–Robert Morris, from Alice Aycock’s class notes, 1971

For more than four decades, Alice Aycock, an artist and BFA

It has been a busy year for Aycock. This past spring and summer, a

Fine Arts faculty member, has amassed an acclaimed body of work,

retrospective exhibition of her drawings, Some Stories Are Worth

inspired by a meditation on the philosophical ramifications of

Repeating, ran at The Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, New

technology—from the simplest tools (the arrowhead, the plow) to the

York, and at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery; this coming

latest in computers—and incorporating images of turbines, spirals,

January, it travels to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the

spinning tops, and more. Her drawings and sculptures reference

Art, Design & Architecture Museum at the University of California,

architecture, art, engineering, history, literature and science, but

Santa Barbara. (A catalog of the show has been published by Yale

they are also meant to exist as pure phenomena, designed to induce

University Press.) Currently, she is preparing “Park Avenue Paper

powerful sensations in the viewer. Her work is in the collections of

Chase,” a series of six large sculptures—five aluminum and one

the Brooklyn Museum, The Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney

fiberglass—that will be installed next year in Manhattan, on the

Museum of American Art, among other institutions, and her large-

Park Avenue medians from 52nd to 57th streets.

scale installations can be found everywhere from universities to airports (such as Terminal One at JFK) to the Nashville riverfront.

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Rendering of Alice Aycock’s Cyclone Twist, 2013, painted aluminum. From “Park Avenue Paper Chase.” Courtesy of Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin.

Alice Aycock, Super Twister II, 2013, aluminum. Courtesy Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin.

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“PAPER CHASE” IS SCHEDULED TO BE INSTALLED NEXT SPRING. HOW LONG WILL IT BE UP?

It will be there for five or six months, then it’ll be dispersed, hopefully, to public and private collections.

ARE YOU MECHANICALLY INCLINED?

Not really. What I’m really good at is thinking these things up and then getting a crew of very skilled people to help me to do it [laughs].

HOW DO YOU FIND YOUR ASSISTANTS? DO YOU JUST

YOU’VE SAID THE SCULPTURES FOR THE PROJECT WERE INSPIRED BY WIND-RELATED EFFECTS—SCATTERING DEBRIS, BILLOWING FABRICS, DUST STORMS.

I tried to visualize the movement of wind energy as it flowed up and down the avenue, creating random whirlpools, touching down here and there and sometimes forming a dynamic, three-dimensional massing of forms. I wanted the work to have a random, haphazard quality—in some cases piling up on itself, in others spinning off into the air. The project is celebratory as well—ribbons of movement and paper confetti. This sort of dual reading is present in much of my work.

MOST PEOPLE HAVEN’T BEEN IN A WHIRLPOOL OR A TORNADO, BUT IT SEEMS LIKE MOST PEOPLE HAVE AN IDEA OF WHAT IT WOULD FEEL LIKE, JUST FROM LOOKING AT THEM.

Yeah, they do. There was an amusement park ride I went on years ago, Hell’s Mouth or something like that. You walk into a drum that begins to whirl so fast it creates a strong centrifugal force. The floor drops down below but the G forces keep you pinned against the wall, and you look down and think you’re going to fall, but you don’t. It was a great ride. So amusement park rides create those visceral thrills, too.

DO YOU VISIT AMUSEMENT PARKS OFTEN?

I used to go a lot as a kid. And then later on, when I was thinking conceptually and visually about these things, I went to Coney Island and Hershey Park and went on these rides to see what it would feel like, again.

WOULD YOU EVER CONSIDER DESIGNING A ROLLER COASTER?

No. Just like I wouldn’t want to design a real house with bathrooms and a kitchen. I use architecture as a metaphor to investigate space and amusement park rides as a metaphor to investigate industry and technology.

SUPER TWISTER II, ONE OF YOUR RECENT TORNADO-LIKE

ASK AROUND?

It happens in a serendipitous way. A number of the people that I'm working with right now were students at SVA. Amelia Midori Miller [MFA 2012 Fine Arts] has run the studio for the past six years. She was in charge of the catalog for my recent retrospective. Joshua Kirsch [BFA 2009 Fine Arts], who has a studio in Los Angeles, fabricates all of my midsize sculptures, and Jamie Rubin [BFA 2013 Fine Arts] is at Perfection Electricks, the fabricator for “Park Avenue Paper Chase.”

I’ve had a lot of struggles with getting things done or convincing the outside world or even getting people to pay attention to me, but if my idea’s good and interesting enough, I can always get someone intrigued, who will be weird like me and want to make it. I’ve just been really lucky that way. I find people who are smart and curious and interested in problem solving. And sometimes they come from SVA. AS YOU’RE WORKING ON “PAPER CHASE,” THERE’S ALSO THE TRAVELING RETROSPECTIVE OF YOUR DRAWINGS, AND YOU’VE HAD TWO PRIOR RETROSPECTIVES. HOW INVOLVED HAVE YOU BEEN WITH THESE SHOWS?

So far, I’ve been very involved.

WHAT’S THAT LIKE, LOOKING BACK ON YOUR CAREER?

When you make art over a long period of time, you have a conversation with yourself. And you begin to know yourself as an artist, which is different from knowing yourself as the person who has the same lunch every day or has the same friends or whatever.

There are themes I’ve rediscovered—certain things that come back—but each time they come back, they’re slightly different.

When I was a young artist, I didn’t know that there would be things that would preoccupy me for my whole life. At that point in time, I was starting out from a theoretical point of view, vis-à-vis the artists in the generations behind me, and trying to make art in terms of that—trying to extend and in some cases counteract or contradict what they did.

SCULPTURES, LOOKS PRECARIOUSLY BALANCED. HOW DO YOU PLOT OUT SOMETHING LIKE THAT? DO YOU BUILD

IN YOUR RECENT TALK AT SVA, YOU EMPHASIZED THE

A SCALE MODEL FIRST?

USEFULNESS OF THE COMPUTER FOR MAKING ART.

The process differs. In the past, I would build a model. Now I work primarily on the computer to design and make shop drawings.

Sometimes I will make a maquette or a drawing of a piece years later, because perhaps the work has been destroyed or is not being maintained well and I want to preserve the idea, at least.

But making a small model for something 100 feet long won’t tell you anything about how to actually build it. I work in the real world. Once a sculpture gets to a certain size, you have to bring in engineers who understand wind and snow loads and full penetration welds and what types of bolts to use and so on. I use very good engineers who make sure that something that looks like it’s teetering on the edge is actually very secure.

HOW DO YOU USE IT?

Everything is planned on the computer. I think on the computer. Prior to the computer, my drawings were all hand-drawn the way architects worked—isometric perspectives as well as plans, elevations and sections that had dimensions. And the language of the computer was developed for architects, so for me it was an almost seamless segue. Now I can draw something in plan, loft or extrude it in three dimensions, spin it around, make it larger or smaller, remove parts and add others ... and the computer will rapidly complete these processes. This gives me much more control and almost infinite possibilities.

From a fabrication point of view, it’s fantastic. For instance, with a piece like Maelstrom, from “Paper Chase,” we were able to create

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Alice Aycock, Ghost Ballet for the East Bank Machineworks, Nashville, TN, 2007, painted steel and aluminum, neon, thermoformed acrylic shapes.

Photo by Gary Layda.

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I keep telling my students how important it is to acquire computer skills. For a young person, this is the way the world will be. and print a full-scale cut pattern for 10 x 24' aluminum sheets, with all the curves flattened and with all the places where the pieces intersect clearly marked. We were able to calculate exactly how many sheets we’d need, so very little material is wasted. When the sheets are fabricated and rolled, it looks precisely as it was drawn. Twenty years ago, this would have been very hard to do, very costly and taken an infinite amount of time.

I keep telling my students how important it is to acquire computer skills. For a young person, this is the way the world will be.

And it’s just another tool, like a paintbrush or anything else.

But of course there are things that, if you’re alive and sentient, you think about. Why do people always make war? Why do they make war strategies? Wars tend to reflect, even visually mirror, the culture that creates them. During the American Revolution, the British made war in a very structured, baroque way. They would march in perfect formation in their brightly colored uniforms and they did it regardless of its efficacy. It was their vision of how to order and control things. Basically, I’m interested in systems and how they reflect the culture.

YOU’VE BEEN ON THE FACULTY AT SVA SINCE 1991.

I do have some favorites. World War I—the trench warfare. I love the Civil War diagrams because they really had to work around the topography and make war in terms of the landscape. And the Civil War diagrams are really beautiful. I also grew up near the Gettysburg battlefield.

I have a home outside the city and I wanted to lay out a garden. So I thought, I’ll use war strategies. I’ll build a hill over here that swerves and looks like the Siege of Vicksburg. And there’s a beautiful Burmese battle plan, so I made that one, too. Then there was the Battle of Agincourt—which was the English and the French, the War of the Roses—and I put my roses there. And it stays ordered in the spring and then, gradually, the flowers grow all over and I don’t weed and it becomes all disorganized and chaotic. Other things grow, and some things I plant don’t work out very well, or the roses are no longer growing in an orderly way, and it’s just like the way a war is.

It starts out very ordered and then all hell breaks loose. But people make war again and again, no matter what—just with a different strategy. And I make art and plant my garden year after year—just with a different strategy. “This time, this one will be better.” •

DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE ERA OF WAR STRATEGY?

WHY DO YOU TEACH?

It’s a way to keep energized and engaged in the latest trends in art.

The best doctors are teaching doctors, they say. You stay in touch with young minds and ideas and it’s a great two-way street. The best students are really exciting.

I don’t think teaching art is just about teaching craft.

Students have to have craft and skill, but after that it’s about opening them up and teaching them how to be curious and take risks and be brave and giving them books to read and ideas to stimulate their imagination, as opposed to sitting on them. But, there’s a difference between encouraging and nurturing and simply enabling people to stay in the same self-satisfied place.

YOU’VE TALKED ABOUT DRAWING INSPIRATION FROM WAR STRATEGIES, MIGRATION PATTERNS, THINGS LIKE THAT. HOW FAR DO YOU LET THESE INTERESTS TAKE YOU?

Well, I’m a dilettante. If something interests me, I’ll buy a book or investigate it online. Then I’ll wander onto something else. I don’t necessarily delve deep, deep, deep, the way an academic might, although when I was younger I certainly tried. At this point I count on the fact that things will cycle back into my evolving stylistic point of view. It always goes into my art and gets turned into a piece, somehow.

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ON THIS SPREAD, CLOCKWISE FROM RIGHT: Renderings of Alice Aycock’s Spin-the-Spin, 2013, painted aluminum; Waltzing Matilda, 2013, reinforced fiberglass; and Maelstrom, 2013, painted aluminum.

From “Park Avenue Paper Chase.” Courtesy of Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin.

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Animation Creation

BY JAMES GRIMALDI

YOU CAN TUNE IN TO ANY MAJOR ANIMATION NETWORK

these days and watch shows created, produced, directed and written by SVA alumni. Among them, there’s Rebecca Sugar (BFA 20­­09 Animation), recently named one of “30 Under 30 in Hollywood” by Forbes; the Emmy Award-nominated storyboarder of the Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time is now the creator of the channel’s new series, Steven Universe. There’s Gary DiRaffaele (BFA 2005 Animation), a.k.a. Gary Doodles, who co-created and sold a show, Breadwinners, to Nickelodeon earlier this year. George Krstic (BFA 1994 Film and Video) is a staff writer for Motorcity, on Disney DX, and has written for the Cartoon Network’s Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Megas XLR (which he co-created); he has been nominated for both Emmy and Saturn awards. Derek Drymon (BFA 1992 Illustration) was executive producer of Adventure Time and writer on Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob SquarePants.

And there’s Giancarlo Volpe (BFA 1997 Animation), producer-director of three hugely successful animated action shows: Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender and the Cartoon Network’s Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Green Lantern: The Animated Series.

All of these alumni agreed to share their experiences and knowledge about developing an animated series with Visual Arts Journal, taking us through the steps of coming up with an idea, pitching it to networks and, finally, creating episodes.

When it comes to conceiving a show, everyone agrees: trying to predict what a network wants is a dead-end. Trends come and go. “Besides, it’s all about timing,” Krstic says. “Do you have something they’re looking for at that specific moment? If they have a lot of shows about animals that season, they won’t want another one. It doesn’t matter if you go in with the greatest show in the world about VISUAL ARTS JOURNAL

dogs, if they already have one on the roster, it’s over.” Instead, write about “something you’re passionate about,” Krstic says, “something that you keep banging on a drum about until someone pays you money to make it.”

For some of the alumni, the idea began with a character.

Doodles started out with two ducks, Sugar with a chubby, happygo-lucky boy, based on her brother Steven, who strums catchy tunes on his ukulele. They then chose a world for their characters to inhabit—one that would be the funniest for them to exist in.

For Breadwinners, Doodles stuck his ducks in a flying bread-delivery van. For Steven Universe, Sugar had her ukulele-strumming boy join an intergalactic team called the Crystal Gems, fighting to protect the universe.

For others, the idea begins with a concept. “I had a passion for 1980s animé and hot-rod culture,” Krstic says, “so I wrote a world to showcase those concepts—Megas XLR for the Cartoon Network.”

Once Krstic had the world in place, he asked himself who would populate it, and came up with his core characters.

Audrey Diehl, a development executive at Nickelodeon, says that although networks do seek action shows, in general they always want something comical. “We look for funny characters—special, lovable, fun-to-be-around characters that have an original point of view, with interests and goals kids can relate to. We’re not really interested in characters with adult problems.” She cites SpongeBob SquarePants as an ideal animated character: “SpongeBob is such a distinct, funny, clear character that whatever he does is interesting, whether it’s trying to catch a bus or coping with a pet who prefers to hang out with someone else.”

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Nickelodeon’s Breadwinners, co-created by Gary Doodles, is centered on two ducks who pilot a flying bread-delivery van.

Breadwinners © Viacom, International, Inc. All rights reserved.

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A still from Disney DX’s Motorcity.

George Krstic is a writer on the series.

Motorcity © Titmouse, Inc.

Networks also like people with a distinctive voice. “Show creators can offer a unique point of view by having a personal connection to the material,” Diehl says. “The characters may be from their childhood, friendships among characters may reflect those in their life—or perhaps they have a weird background they bring to a show, or a specific comedic sensibility or way of drawing that brings out the humor.”

But just how do show creators pitch their ideas to networks? “In animation, it’s pretty open-door,” Drymon says. “There’s a whole department that takes pitches. You don’t need an agent, or 10 years of experience. Networks want young people—35 and under.”

Krstic, for example, got his break when he and his SVA friends “ambushed an executive at Comic-Con” with a student film, he says; months later, he was working alongside Anne Bernstein (BFA 1983 Media Arts) on Downtown, an animated MTV series created by fellow alumnus Chris Prynoski (BFA 1994 Animation). Cartoon Network development executives, impressed with Rebecca Sugar’s work on Adventure Time, asked her to pitch them a show. A similar scouting process takes place at Nickelodeon, Diehl says. “When someone starts off as a storyboarder or writer, we pay attention to them and get to know them.“ Pitching is a specialized skill. According to Nickelodeon, the preferred format is a four-page write-up, including character descriptions, a paragraph outlining the show’s world and an explanation of episode structures. However, other approaches have been successful. Pendleton Ward pitched Adventure Time with storyboards. Stephen Hillenburg pitched SpongeBob SquarePants with an entire show “bible,” including a song and character sketches.

Doodles recalls how he once gave an oral presentation, and thought he’d done well until he opened up his laptop and showed a 45-second clip of what the show would look and sound like. “Wow,” the VISUAL ARTS JOURNAL

network executives told him, “that’s nothing like what you pitched.”

From then on, Doodles decided to pitch his shows the way they’re intended to be seen—as animation. What’s most important, regardless of format, is successfully communicating the characters and tone of the proposed show. “And if you get them to laugh,” Krstic says, “you’re ahead.”

Once a network decides to proceed, there are two phases.

Phase 1 can last years. The network pays for the creator to develop the show, but it’s not much, so creators usually keep other jobs, developing their shows during off hours. They write a bible and script and storyboard a pilot episode. Once that’s done, the episode is sent to a studio to be animated. Then there’s casting, mixing and scoring. After all that, Phase 2—the creation of an entire season’s episodes—begins, and the show’s production becomes a full-time job.

No matter which phase one’s show is in, Drymon says, it is important to always work on new storylines. “Because when you go to series, it’s go-go-go full production—an enormous amount of work—and there’s never enough material to feed the machine.”

When Breadwinners was fast-tracked to series, the network requested 20 episodes. “They put the schedule up on the board,” Doodles says, “and it was endless. It looked like a tidal wave.”

Once Phase 2 begins, show creators are ready to hire writers and artists, which means giving up some creative control. “That’s why I choose people who bring something that makes my show wackier,” Doodles says. Sugar handpicks her team from artists whose personal artwork she admires, trusting that they will elevate the show. When creators are inexperienced, networks will pair them with seasoned producers. That’s how Drymon got hired on Adventure Time, to help Pendleton Ward assemble the show for the Cartoon Network.

Drymon recalls, “We were going against huge-budget shows like Family Guy and The Simpsons, but we had to do it at a fraction of the cost.

Derek Drymon was executive producer of Adventure Time; fellow alumnus Rebecca Sugar won an Emmy nomination for her work on the series.

Adventure Time © Cartoon Network.

64 The title character from the forthcoming Steven Universe, drawn by Rebecca Sugar, the show’s creator.

Steven Universe © Cartoon Network.

So, as an executive producer, I was hands-on with all the department heads—writers, artists, directors, post and animatics.”

This is a tricky stage for creators, because they go from the creative to the managerial side of the business, no longer writing and drawing as much as they previously did and spending a lot of time in meetings, managing writers and artists and delegating work. “When I started, I would not delegate,” Krstic says. “That’s a big mistake beginners sometimes make. But I learned to set my ego aside. Now I delegate as much as possible. I work with people who are amazing writers and artists. It’s very rewarding. I keep learning, and the show gets better.”

Sugar had to navigate that transition with Steven Universe. She began with a team of two—herself and her brother. She then formed a team of writers and artists. Now she spends her days between the writers’ room and meeting with the storyboard teams.

Throughout, she strives to keep the process flexible, so that everyone can be creative and build on the previous step, and details are never tied down until the last moment. She also makes sure to toggle the show between fantasy and realism, hoping the push-and-pull between those polarities will create a roller-coaster effect for the audience. “I’m approaching this TV series very differently from the way I approach my personal art projects,” she says. “I think of Steven Universe as a piece of media. It needs to have many levels, so that it VISUAL ARTS JOURNAL

can be enjoyed by both kids and adults, so it can remain accessible and flexible and not alienate anyone.”

Throughout a series’ development, writing is key. “It’s hard to find animators who are good at screenwriting,” Doodles says, “and working with a broken script is so frustrating.” So to create and sell Breadwinners, Doodles partnered with Steve Borst, an award-winning, experienced screenwriter who has written for Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and Warner Bros. productions. Drymon, Krstic and Giancarlo Volpe all agreed: in animation, writers need to know how to visualize everything in words as well as story structure.

With animated action shows, this challenge is even greater: in addition to writing individual episodes, creators need to write multi-episode story arcs, which in the industry are considered crucial to success in the genre. Volpe—who has helped formulate seasonlong stories for Clone Wars, Green Lantern and The Last Airbender— became so skilled and successful at this process that he’s worked alongside Star Wars creator George Lucas. He now has a top-secret show in development at Warner Bros.

Volpe, who got his start designing video games for Humongous Entertainment, still marvels at his ascension in the industry, a lesson in the value of persistence and hard work. “I worked on Putt-Putt and Pajama Sam, and then ended up with George Lucas.” •

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: SVA alumni have worked on shows such as Star Wars: The Clone Wars © Lucasfilm Ltd. and ™, all rights reserved; Green Lantern: The Animated Series © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (“Green Lantern” and all related characters and elements are trademarks of and © DC Comics); SpongeBob SquarePants © Nickelodeon; Avatar: The Last Airbender © Nickelodeon.

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Alumni Affairs

FOR A FULL LIS T OF ALUMNI BENEFIT S , SEE PAG E 71

Kickstart Your Creative Project Do you have a creative project you’re looking to fund?

If so, you might consider joining other SVA alumni who’ve had a project featured and successfully funded on SVA’s curated Kickstarter page. Kickstarter is an online platform used to raise funds for films, games, musical performances and recordings, as well as art, design and technology projects. To date, more than 4 million people have pledged a total of over $740 million through Kickstarter, funding more than 46,000 projects.

To get started, set a funding goal and deadline for your project. If people like the project, they can make a pledge.

If the project reaches its funding goal, the backers’ credit cards are charged, and the backers usually receive acknowledgement or gifts for their support. If the proposed project fails to meet its goal by the deadline, no one is charged, and the artists have no obligation to fulfill their promises to backers.

SVA was among the first cultural institutions to have a curated Kickstarter page. Selected projects are highlighted both on the SVA Kickstarter page and the College’s website. To find out more about the Kickstarter experience, Visual Arts Journal spoke with three alumni who used the site and were selected to appear on its SVA page.

To get started with Kickstarter, visit kickstarter.com/start.

To have your project added to SVA’s curated page, email extrelations@sva.edu. [Carrie Lincourt]

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Lauren Simkin Berke MFA 2003 ILLUSTRATION AS VISUAL ESSAY Project: To Be Kept, a book based on Berke’s paintings and collages of found photographs. $7,600 pledged Why did you decide to use Kickstarter and how was the experience? I had met Stephanie Pereira, the director of the art program at Kickstarter, a couple of years ago and she encouraged me to use the site. When I started planning my book, it became clear it was perfect for Kickstarter. Although using it was a lot of work, it was well worth it. One of the most compelling benefits was the development of a sincere connection between the backers and my project. I really wanted the first wave of owners of To Be Kept to be lovers and ambassadors for the book, which they are.

Do you think being on the SVA Kickstarter page helped with the funding? Yes. Expanding awareness of a Kickstarter project is one of the keys to its success.

How did your project turn out? What’s next? The book was printed in November 2012. The reaction to the book—and to the other backer rewards—was quite positive. I’m now working on distribution. The book is available at my Etsy shop, at the Society of Illustrators museum shop and at a few independent booksellers.

I am also working on art for my next solo show at the Accola Griefen Gallery, which will open in January. And I’m working on a new book project that I’m calling, for the moment, The Letters Book, which will consist of portraits of imagined people with letters to, from and between them.

photo by Fay Hauser-Price

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David Heredia

Michele Carlo

BFA 2002 ANIMATION

BFA 1983 MEDIA ARTS

Project: Don’t Quit Ya’ Day Job, an animated series about a disgruntled worker who dreams of starting his own business, which doesn’t always work out as planned. $22,045 pledged

Project: The theatrical version of Fish Out of Agua (Kensington, 2010), Carlo’s autobiographical book, at the Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival. $1,615 pledged

Why did you decide to use Kickstarter and how was the experience? I used Kickstarter as a means to fund my pilot episode.

It was a lot of work—marketing, emailing, calling and promoting the page 24/7 for 32 days nonstop. But it paid off.

Why did you decide to use Kickstarter and how was the experience? In January 2013, I was accepted by the Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival, where at the end of March I was to perform an excerpt from the stage adaptation of my memoir.

I’d never been to California and it seemed like a great opportunity to present my work to a new audience, but as the winter wore on, I learned the festival’s funding had been cut.

As I’d known and contributed to many other artist friends who used crowdfunding for their projects, I thought I’d give it a shot. It was a lot of work, but it was a success. My Kickstarter campaign—Send a Fish to LA: Fish Out of Agua and Michele Carlo—exceeded its goal.

Do you think being on the SVA Kickstarter page helped with the funding? Marketing and promoting the page relentlessly is what brought about the success of the campaign. The only day I took off and didn’t promote was the only day that I did not receive a contribution.

How did your project turn out? It’s still in development. I run an animation studio as well, and since getting funded, I have acquired several large clients. This has slowed production on the pilot, but I plan to have the episode completed this fall.

Do you think being on the SVA Kickstarter page helped with the funding? Anything that helps get the word out when you are looking to reach a goal has an impact. I’m sure that many people who didn’t know anything about Fish Out of Agua now do, whether they contributed or not.

How did your project turn out? What’s next? I went to L.A. and performed a 25-minute excerpt of Fish Out of Agua. I couldn’t have done it without the support of the 43 backers who made it possible. I’m now on to writing and work-shopping the remainder of the show, with the intention of having a full-length solo show adaptation of Fish Out of Agua stage-ready for New York City by the end of this year.

FALL 2013

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Alumni Society Scholarship Awards Spring 2013 You can help support the next generation of artists by donating to The Alumni Society at alumni.sva.edu/give.

Be assured that 100 percent of your contribution will go to a future award recipient.

OPPOSITE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: Cameron Barnes, Palestinian Israeli Conflict, 2011, photograph; Christina DeOrtentiis, Modern Monet, 2013, digital C-print; Kate Drwecka, After the Wake (detail), 2013, ink on Bristol; Julia Santoli, Ode to the Muses, 2013, film still; Berny Tan, You Are Not Alone, 2013, yarn installation; Wyeth Yates, The Other Gang (detail), 2013, ink on Bristol.

Thanks to generous contributions from alumni and friends of the College, each spring The Alumni Society distributes several awards honoring current and graduating students. The accolades include the Alumni Society Merit Award, for a BFA candidate who demonstrated community building and leadership excellence while at SVA; the DaVinci Award, for BFA Illustration and BFA Cartooning students whose final projects are illustrated books or graphic novels; the Brian Weil Memorial Award, for a graduating BFA Photography student; the Richard Wilde Award, given to third-year undergraduate advertising and design majors; and the Silas H. Rhodes Memorial Award, established in memory of the founder of the School of Visual Arts, distributed annually to third-year BFA Visual and Critical Studies students who demonstrate excellence in writing. The spring 2013 award recipients are:

Alumni Society Merit Award Christina DeOrtentiis BFA 2013 PHOTOGRAPHY Brian Weil Memorial Award Cameron Barnes BFA 2013 PHOTOGRAPHY DaVinci Award Kate Drwecka BFA 2013 CARTOONING Wyeth Yates BFA 2013 CARTOONING Richard Wilde Award Rebecca Lim 2014 DESIGN Silas H. Rhodes Memorial Award Julia Santoli 2014 VISUAL AND CRITICAL STUDIES Berny Tan 2014 VISUAL AND CRITICAL STUDIES

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Donors List The Alumni Society gratefully acknowledges these SVA alumni who gave to the society from January 1 through June 30, 2013.

Juan Alfonso E 1982 Anonymous (4) Cynthia Bittenfield MFA 2009 Photography, Video and Related Media Cindy E. Blomquist-Hereth BFA 1982 Media Arts Murray Brenman E 1978 Graphic Design Gary S. Brinson BFA 1985 Media Arts Jane Brody Koenke BFA 1984 Communication Arts Joseph Burrascano BFA 2002 Computer Art Meg E. Carmody BFA 2008 Fine Arts

Gary J. Joaquin BFA 1981 Media Arts Melvyn Kay 1979 Kyung Ja Kim BFA 1996 Fine Arts Abby Kreh G 1962 Illustration Linda Linden BFA 1978 Media Arts Missy A. Longo-Lewis BFA 1984 Media Arts Charles J. Markey BFA 1994 Photography Patrick McDonnell (alumnus) and Karen O’Connell BFA 1978 Media Arts India Northrop BFA 1984 Photography Stephanie D. Ortega BFA 2007 Graphic Design

Frederick Chandler G 1969 Film and Video

Romaine B. Orthwein MFA 2003 Photography and Related Media

Rose M. Cherubin BFA 1984 Photography

Gary J. Petrini E 1979 Media Arts

Seungmin Chung MFA 2004 Design

Marc R. Rabinowitz MFA 2008 Design

George Courides (alumnus) and Teresa Courides BFA 1981 Media Arts

Todd L. Radom BFA 1986 Media Arts

Carmen V. Cruz BFA 2002 Illustration

Lucy and Robert Reitzfeld BFA 1976 Media Arts G 1961 Advertising

Michael Daly BFA 1985 Media Arts

Lisa E. Rettig-Falcone BFA 1983 Media Arts

Vincent A. DiFabritus BFA 1985 Media Arts

Michael Ruffo BFA 1991 Fine Arts

Candace Dobro (alumnus) and Jeffrey Dobro MPS 2010 Digital Photography

Joseph M. Schwartz BFA 1988 Media Arts

Greg Faillace BFA 1996 Illustration Diane Fienemann BFA 1984 Photography Lauren Giuffre BFA 1986 Media Arts David Haas E 1974

Jerold M. Siegel BFA 1975 Fine Arts Eugene J. Thompson G 1957 Illustration Joanne S. Ungar BFA 1984 Fine Arts Satoru T. Watanabe BFA 1989 Fine Arts

Sabrina Hall BFA 2005 Graphic Design

Judith Wilde BFA 1979 Fine Arts MFA 1994 Illustration as Visual Essay

Michael Halsband BFA 1980 Photography

Mark Willis BFA 1998 Illustration

Debra N. Hart BFA 1981 Media Arts James Hopkins BFA 1982 Media Arts

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(E) denotes an evening program student.

(G) denotes a graduate of the certificate program.

We also thank these parents and friends of SVA who supported The Alumni Society.

Deborah Abramson Adobe Systems, Inc. Steven Adorno Aetna Foundation Mark Amorello Anonymous (2) AT&T Backhaul Engineering LLC Bank of America Behance Tara Benitez Bernard Hodes Group Michelle Bonime Lara Brodsky Donald M. Cannavale Georgeann and Thomas Carnevali Christine Coady Colony Pest Management Robert V. Comegys Corinna C. Cooke Brother Annie Em Corenthal Joseph A. Cozza Doreen Crimmins cSubs Mary and Gerard Curley David Cutler Carolyn P. D’Amato Joseph Del Priore Ronald Derevjanik Anthony DeRose The DiLillo Family Sandra Diaz Dan Droz Zoe Jet Ellis EvensonBest Allen B. Frame Sigrid Gabler General Plumbing Christopher Geocos Dorothy E. Geocos Elizabeth Geocos Kenneth Geocos Marie and James Geocos Myriam Geocos GHP Noreen Gillespie Michael Goldberg Dennis Hapes Elizabeth Hartsoch Maryhelen Hendricks and Robert Lewis Karen Hsu Hudson Square Delivery Paula Hyman Eileen Jackson Luke Jackson Brian J. Kane Patricia M. Kane Aristeo Kardi Christine Kealy John Kelly Anthony J. Kim King Freeze Mechanical Services Manfred Kirchheimer

Barbara and John Lane Carol Lasky Laurence G. Jones Architects PLLC LDI/Color Tool Box Patricia A. Lenihan Ruth Levy William Locher Vincent Lombardi The LoSchiavo Family Jenny Lowchyj Angela Mahoney Rebecca Manteria Veronica and Albert Martella Dante Mazzetti Lisa Mazzoni Jason McGimpsey Kelly Medeiros Margaret and Peter Meenan Gina Milito MJM Plumbing S. A. Modenstein Katherine Morasse George Morrison Michael F. Mullen Brian Mulligan Dennis Mulligan Thomas Mulligan William Mulligan Christina Nannarone Neopost Elizabeth and Coleman O’Donoghue Stephan Orefice David Ortiz Leila Ortiz Jiro Otsuka Patricia Outeiral Sharon Peters Christopher Pirrone Proskauer Rose LLP Ellin and Edward Purdom Quality Letter Service, Inc. Mary C. Quinlan Kristi Ramos William Rednour Lawrence and Linda Rodman Carole and Alex Rosenberg Leonard Santorelli Veronica and Augustine Santos SCS Agency Seaward Corporation Pyramid Sellers Jo Shane Anna Simon The TelCar Group The Thomas Group Jamie A. Thornton Laura Udrea Maarten VanVoorthuysen Lourdes Vasquez WB Engineering Natalie Wetta Sophie Cooper White Meaghan Wilbur Will & Ann Eisner Family Foundation Robert Wong Angela Zinnes

connect share create Connect with more than 30,000 fellow SVA alumni through these online resources: The SVA Online Alumni Community

alumni.sva.edu LinkedIn Go to

alumni.sva.edu/networking and click on the LinkedIn icon

Facebook

facebook.com/schoolofvisualartsalumni Twitter

twitter.com/SVAalumni

As an SVA alumnus, a variety of valuable programs and benefits are available to you, including: • Educational programs, networking mixers and special events (alumni.sva.edu/events) • Monthly alumni newsletter and special departmental invitations via email • Career Development services, including workshops and the online job board • Continuing Education discount • Weekly model drawing sessions during the fall and spring semesters • Access to the College’s library • A subscription to Visual Arts Journal • Discounts on health, auto, home, dental and renters insurance • Discounts to performing arts venues, arts organizations and retailers • Free membership to SVA Portfolios/Behance • 15% discount on Moo business cards and other products • Access to Kickstarter’s SVA-curated page For complete details on your alumni benefits go to sva.edu/after-sva/alumni-affairs.

Comments? Questions? Contact the Office of Alumni Affairs at 212.592.2300 or alumni@sva.edu.

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Alumni Notes GROUP EFFORTS The following alumni received 2013 Guggenheim Fellowships in a creative arts category: Maggie Hadleigh-West (MFA 1992 Fine Arts) for Film-Video, Sharon Harper (MFA 1997 Photography and Related Media) for Photography and Nora Krug (MFA 2004 Illustration as Visual Essay) for Fine Arts, 4/11/13.

Bon Duke (MPS 2012 Fashion Photography), Lisa Elmaleh (BFA 2007 Photography) and John Peters (BFA 2002 Graphic Design) were chosen as three of Photo District News’ “30 New and Emerging Photographers to Watch, 2013.”

Hee Jin Kim (MFA 2012 Computer Art), Sang Ho Lee (BFA 2012 Computer Art, Computer Animation and Visual Effects), Rachel Loube (MFA 2011 Social Documentary), Zachary Lydon (BFA 2012 Computer Art, Computer Animation and Visual Effects) and John Mattiuzzi (MFA 2012 Computer Art) were each nominated for a 2013 Student Academy Award, 4/30/13.

Andrew Dayton (BFA 1998 Computer Art) and Christian Haniszewski (BFA 2009 Computer Art, Computer Animation and Visual Effects) worked as visual effects artists on the Academy Award-winning movie Brave (2012).

Wesley Bedrosian (MFA 1996 Illustration as Visual Essay), Victor Kerlow (BFA 2008 Illustration), Leif Parsons (BFA 2003 Graphic Design), Ryan Peltier (MFA 2011 Illustration as Visual Essay) and Mark Pernice (BFA 2000 Computer Art) each had an illustration chosen for “Notable Opinion Art of 2012,” The New York Times, 12/21/12.

1969 Michael Esbin (E unknown) was the featured subject of “Boundless Stone,” Millennium, 2/13.

1974 Richard Aaron (BFA Film and Video) released a poster, A Life’s Work, Rock Paper Photo, 2013.

1976 Theresa DeSalvio (BFA Fine Arts) was the subject of “Glen Ridgebased artist discusses her work,” NorthJersey.com, 12/13/12.

1977 Laurence Gartel (BFA Media Arts) was the subject of “Road Art: Florida artist showcases psychedelic cars at Spring Carlisle car show,” PennLive.com, 4/25/13.

1980 Michael Lovaglio (BFA Fine Arts) screened The Night Never Sleeps at Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival, Los Angeles, 12/10/12.

1981 Ron Barbagallo (BFA Media Arts) was a guest on the Collector’s Intervention episode “Yabba Dabba Don’t” (Season 1, Episode 106), on the Syfy network.

Lowell Handler (BFA Photography) presented Twitch and Shout (1993), a film he narrated, Museum of Modern Art, NYC, 3/3/13.

1982 Joey Skaggs (BFA Media Arts) was included in “The Golden Age of the Cockroach,” Vice.com, 2/1/13.

1989 David Goldstein (BFA Media Arts) had two of his self-portraits added to the Ruth Bowman and Harry Kahn 20th-Century American SelfPortraits Collection at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. Albert Nickerson (BFA Media Arts) was interviewed on the JCTV show Hot Off the Press about his new digital comic, An Act of Faith, 3/30/13.

1990 Steven DeFrank (MFA Fine Arts) received a Lillian Orlowsky and William Freed Foundation grant, Provincetown, MA, 5/10/13.

Patricia Spergel (MFA Fine Arts) participated in Arts Westchester Open Studios, White Plains, NY, 5/18/13.

1994 Roderick Angle (BFA Photography) was interviewed by Beautiful Savage magazine, 2/14/13.

1983 Michele Carlo (BFA Media Arts) performed at the 20th Annual Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival, Los Angeles, 3/22/13.

1995 Yangsook Choi (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) presented her work at St. John’s International School, Brussels, 4/19/13.

Joyce Raimondo (BFA Media Arts) worked with students at the Lawrence Middle School, Lawrence, NY, to create an anti-bullying mural, 2/13.

Jane Marsching (MFA Photography and Related Media) hosted a collaborative crocheting session called Stitching the Shore, an event aimed at helping save Boston’s coastline, 808 Gallery, Boston University, Boston, 3/6/13.

1984 Gail Anderson (BFA Media Arts) was interviewed for “Four Corners–an interview with Gail Anderson,” Design Week, 5/13/13.

Lynn Shelton (MFA Photography and Related Media) was interviewed for the Sundance Institute’s Meet the Artists series about her film Touchy Feely (2013), 1/9/13.

1996 Brian Donnelly a.k.a. KAWS (BFA Illustration) produced a limitededition custom bike helmet with the New Museum Store and Safe Streets Fund, New Museum Store online, 4/27/13.

Marianne Vitale (BFA Film and Video) was interviewed for “Meet the Artist: Marianne Vitale,” ArtSpace, 5/10/13.

Graig Weich (BFA Illustration) appeared on E!’s Ice Loves Coco (Season 3, Episode 6).

1997 Dan Fine (MFA Fine Arts) was interviewed for “Q & A with Dan Fine, Founder of Video Art & Experimental Film Festival,” Cinespect, 2/6/13.

Ilana Rein (MFA Photography and Related Media) presented the world premiere of her sci-fi film Ellipse at the British Film Institute, London, 5/3/13.

Sarah Sze (MFA Fine Arts) was featured in the video “Sarah Sze: The Stones of Venice,” ArtsBeat blog, The New York Times, 5/29/13.

1998 Daniel Cooney’s (BFA Cartooning) comic book was featured in “Nadia Tass to Direct ‘Valentine: Brains, Beauty and Bullets,’” Variety, 5/1/13.

Jerry Craft (BFA Media Arts) coorganized the Black Comic Book Festival, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NYC, 1/12/13.

1987 Aleathia Brown (BFA Media Arts) received a grant from West Harlem Local Development Corporation to produce a TV talk show, Unveiled Unlocked: Bare Elements, NYC, 3/15/13.

Gary Petersen (MFA Fine Arts) was included in New American Paintings, Issue 104, February/March 2013.

1988 Gary Simmons (BFA Fine Arts) was joined by Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, for the launch of Paradise, a monograph of his work, 192 Books, NYC, 1/30/13.

Sarah Palmer, Echo/When I Think of the Place, 2010, digital C-print.

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Brian Finke (BFA Photography) was the subject of “Uncommon Women: The Photo Essay by Brian Finke,” Grit, Issue 3.

2003 Andres Basurto (BFA Fine Arts) is represented by the gallery Antena Estudio, Mexico City.

1999 Richard Ackoon (BFA Fine Arts) was a showcased artist on Fab.com, 2/18-2/25/13.

Pratima Bjorkdahl’s (BFA Photography) art was shown at the Uprise Art booth at Art Asia Miami, Miami, 12/4-12/9/12.

Stephanie McKeon (BFA Graphic Design) appeared on AMC’s Comic Book Men (Season 2, Episode 3).

Adam Lister’s (BFA Fine Arts) gallery in Fairfax, VA, was listed as one of the “top 10 cool suburban art spaces” in “Art in the ’burbs,” Washington Post, 1/25/13.

Aida Ruilova (MFA Photography and Related Media) was interviewed for “‘Kind of Disgusting, But Kind of Sexy’: Aida Ruilova on Reworking ’70s Erotica,” Blouin Art Info, 3/21/13.

Manuela Paz (BFA Photography) was named membership director of New Art Dealers Alliance, NYC, 4/22/13.

Gerard Way (BFA Cartooning) was the subject of “Rocker weighs balance of comics, music and fatherhood,” USA Today, 5/2/13.

Katherine Yamasaki (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) gave a talk at TEDxBrooklyn, Brooklyn Bowl, 12/7/12.

2000 Sara Cavic (MFA Fine Arts) was interviewed for “Dahlia Meets Sara Cavic,” an article on Dahlia.com, 5/23/13.

2004 Ei Arakawa (BFA Fine Arts) was the subject of the feature article in the February 2013 Artforum.

Gonzalo Fuenmayor (BFA Fine Arts) participated in the Art Miami art fair, represented by Dot Fiftyone Gallery, Miami, 12/5-12/9/13.

Atsushi Funahashi (BFA Film and Video) was the subject of “Funahashi: ‘Good stories don’t need happy endings,’” Japan Times, 4/12/13.

James Barry’s (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) illustrations were featured in “Check out these striking illustrations of all the queens from Season Five of RuPaul’s Drag Race,” Next, 5/13/13.

Nora Krug (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) was a recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant for fiscal year 2012, 12/12/12.

Nirit Zer (BFA Advertising) won the 2013 Arte Laguna Prize in Virtual Art, Italian Cultural Association MoCA, Venice, 3/16/13.

Minos Papas’ (BFA Film and Video) A Short Film About Guns won Best Online Short at the Tribeca Film Festival, NYC, 4/25/13.

2001 David Carroll (BFA Film and Video) screened his film Bending Steel at the Tribeca Film Festival, NYC, 4/20, 21, 24 and 27/13.

Anne Peabody (MFA Fine Arts) had a permanent work of art installed at 21c Museum Hotel, Cincinnati.

2002 Michael Alan (BFA Fine Arts) performed as part of the New Museum Untapped festival, New Museum, NYC, 5/4/13.

Nathan Fox (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) illustrated a cover for the National Journal, 2/2013.

Julia Hoffmann (BFA Graphic Design) delivered the Distinguished Alumnus Lecture, SVA Theatre, 3/13/13.

Douglas Purver (BFA Computer Art) was interviewed for “Visual Storytelling, Unlimited,” Communication Arts Insights, 4/16/13.

Sara Varon (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) was awarded a 2013 Sendak Fellowship, 2/19/13.

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Stacy Stewart Smith (BFA Fine Arts) published CAD for Fashion Design and Merchandising, Fairchild Books, 2/20/13.

2005 Danielle Bliss’s (BFA Graphic Design) company, Wishbone Press, had a booth at the National Stationery Show, NYC, 5/19-5/22/13.

Max Greis (BFA Fine Arts) exhibited with Arcilesi/Homberg Fine Art at the Scope Art Fair, NYC, 3/6-3/9/13.

Paul Hoppe (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) debuted his latest minicomic, Journey Into Misery 5, at the MoCCA Fest, NYC, 4/6-4/7/13.

Jeffrey Mednikow (BFA Animation) is storyboarding and writing for the series Teen Titans Go!, Cartoon Network, 4/23/13.

Maria Kristina Pantoja (BFA Cartooning) is featured in “Who is AC?,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, 4/13/13.

In Memoriam Luisa Felix (BFA 1976 Media Arts) died on January 31, 2013, at age 60. Felix, who lived in Hoboken, New Jersey, was a web cartoonist and mini-comic book creator. She was best known for Candy Blondell, a comic she created in 1986. She also created Tales from the Morgue (1989–’93), Kards: The Funny Animal Tarot (1992–’94) and Micro-Comics (2005–’12). In the last decade of her life she was a regular participant in the MoCCA Art Festival and the Big Apple Comic Con. Her friends have created a book in tribute to her work, An Invitation to the World of Luisa Felix (Drowned Town, 2013).

She is survived by her cousin Eleanor Brush, her first cousin once removed Ivy Alvarez, and many friends and fans.

Hal (Chickie) Spear Saperstein (BFA 1985 Film and Video) died on March 11, 2013, at age 50. He lived in Las Vegas. A comedy writer and stand-up comedian, he wrote for fellow stand-ups Tim Allen, Rodney Dangerfield, Jay Leno, Howie Mandel and Rosie O’Donnell, and for such television shows as The Arsenio Hall Show, The Drew Carey Show and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. He is survived by his mother, Sandra Saperstein, and his sister, Beth Ann Saperstein.

Blake Scott Smith (BFA 1980 Photography) died on March 2, 2013, at age 59. He lived in Matamoras, Pennsylvania. Smith began his career at SVA in 1982 as a BFA Photography Department academic adviser, and was appointed assistant to the coordinator of academic advisement in 1994.

A photographer and music enthusiast, he touched the lives of many SVA students. He is survived by his son, Joshua Smith; his companion, Jessica Spears; and his parents, siblings and many friends.

Alexis Yraola (BFA 1999 Graphic Design) died on May 31, 2013, at age 36.

After graduating from SVA she worked for Elektra Records and RCA Music Group, where she designed album covers for such artists as The Cure, Alicia Keys, Barry Manilow, Carrie Underwood and Luther Vandross. She had recently started working as an independent art director and designer and had launched a line of custom-made shadow boxes. Yraola is survived by her family and friends.

Sam Weber (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) interviewed MFA Illustration as Visual Essay Chair Marshall Arisman for Episode 5 of the podcast “Your Dreams My Nightmares,” 5/18/13.

Hyewon Yum (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) received the 2013 Ezra Jack Keats New Illustrator Award for her book Mom, It’s My First Day of Kindergarten! (Frances Foster/ Farrar, Strauss, 2012).

2006 Alison Brady (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media) had her photography featured in “Familiar Rooms, Hidden Faces,” Lens blog, The New York Times, 1/25/13.

2007 Dina Kantor (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media) was awarded an A.I.R. Fellowship for 2013-2014; this fellowship program is sponsored by the A.I.R. Gallery, NYC.

John Dessereau (BFA Illustration) was interviewed for “Mixed Medium: John P. Dessereau,” OakNYC. com, 4/13.

Christine Sun Kim (MFA Fine Arts) is the subject of “Playing with sound in silence: Fellows Friday with Christine Sun Kim,” TED blog, 3/29/13.

Tatsuro Nishimura (BFA Photography) had his photographs featured in the Beauty section of Zink, pages 56-61, 2/13.

Mu Wen Pan’s (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) work was featured in “The Works of Mu Pan” in Juxtapoz, 3/20/13.

Sophia Peer (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media) was featured in “What’s It Like to Direct Music Videos?” on mtvU.com, 1/18/13.

Vincent Peone (BFA Film and Video) was featured on Tumblr’s Storyboard site in “The Creators of NYC: CollegeHumor’s Vincent Peone,” 1/11/13.

Karen Miranda Rivadeneira (BFA Fine Arts) was featured in “Across Borders of Memory and Photography,” Lens blog, The New York Times, 1/9/13.

Ryan Pfluger (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media) contributed to “Unfiltered: Photographers React to Instagram’s New Terms,” Lightbox blog, Time, 12/18/12.

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David Bellona (MFA Interaction Design) was interviewed for “Greening the Cloud: Q&A with David Bellona,” Sparksheet, 4/2/13.

Andrew Brischler (MFA Fine Arts) “Andrew Brischler & David Haxton,” Gavlak Gallery, New York Arts Dealers Alliance Art Fair, NYC, 5/105/12/13.

Steven Cartoccio (BFA Fine Arts) won Best Animated Film for Concrete Jungle at the Soho International Film Festival, NYC, 4/17/13.

Hye-Ryoung Min, Untitled from the series “Yeonsoo,” 2012, digital pigment print.

Margaret Weber’s (MFA Fine Arts) solo show at Ramiken Crucible, NYC, was reviewed by Roberta Smith in The New York Times, 5/30/13.

Jaime Permuth (MPS Digital Photography) had a book signing for his monograph Yonkeros at the International Center of Photography, NYC, 4/12/13.

2008 Brendan Austin’s (MPS Digital Photography) photography was featured in “Brendan Austin takes landscape photography to jawdroppingly new levels” on It’s Nice That, 5/27/13.

2010 Susan Begy’s (MFA Fine Arts) work was featured in the story “You’ve Got Veil,” Santa Fe Reporter, 4/2/13.

Cat Del Buono (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media) orchestrated an event, “Flash Mob with Cat Del Buono,” for the PooL Art Fair, NYC, 5/11/13.

Natalie Krick’s (BFA Photography) photography is discussed in “Photographer Natalie Krick Shoots Her Mom in Sexy Poses,” The Cut blog, New York, 5/9/13.

Sarah Palmer (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media) was interviewed for “Saying it Without Words: We speak to Brooklynbased photographer whose poetic images have us all in a tizz...” for the We Heart blog, 4/5/13.

Jordan Winter (BFA Film and Video) worked as the assistant to the director for the movie My Man Is a Loser (2013).

2009 Brian Gonzalez (BFA Film and Video) is featured in “Pod Hopping in Miami,” Art in America, 12/11/12.

Dustin Grella (MFA Computer Art) had his video “Ode to Bike Sharing” featured in “Op-Docs,” The New York Times, 5/22/13.

Hye Ryoung Min (MPS Digital Photography) received honorable mention for work in the exhibition “FAMILY” at the Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography, 1/11/13.

Siyu Chen (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) illustrations were featured in “Illustrations by Siyu Chen,” Juxtapoz, 4/30/13.

Natan Dvir’s (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media) streetscapes were featured in “Avenue of Dreams, and Hot Dogs,” The New York Times, 3/29/13.

John Messinger (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media) was featured in “Large-Scale Works Fly Off the Walls on the 2nd Day of PULSE New York 2013,” absolutearts.com, 5/10/13.

2011 Cynthia Hinant (MFA Fine Arts) had a solo show reviewed in “Cindy Hinant by Joe Sheftel,” ArtForum, 2/13.

Alexandra Karolinski (MFA Social Documentary) was interviewed for “Everything They Cook Takes Five Hours: An Interview with Director Alexa Karolinski,” The Paris Review Daily, 3/28/13.

Mark Kendall (MFA Social Documentary) received a Critics’ Pick distinction for his film La Camioneta in “Retired in America, Reborn in Guatemala,” The New York Times, 5/30/13.

James Kuczynski’s (BFA Advertising) campaign for Save the Children, Every Beat Matters was featured in the article “Aid Group Harnesses Heartbeats and a Song to Fight Child Mortality,” The New York Times, 1/1/13.

William Maschmeyer (MFA Interaction Design) was interviewed about his work as lead designer on Facebook’s new graph search in “The Design Process Behind Facebook Graph Search” for Fast Company’s website Co.Design, 1/16/13.

Bao Nguyen (MFA Social Documentary) won a BRITDOC Puma Creative Catalyst Award to develop a documentary project about the LGBT community in Vietnam, 3/12/13.

Justin Ervin (MFA Social Documentary) screened his documentary Elephant in the Room at the Vail Film Festival, Vail, CO, 3/30 and 3/31/13.

Roger Generazzo (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media) won first prize in the Viridian Artists Gallery 3rd International Juried Photography Competition, NYC, 2/5/13.

Eli Halpern (MFA Fine Arts) was included in New American Paintings, Issue 104, February/ March, 2013.

Maryana Hordeychuk (MPS Digital Photography) wrote “How Katrin Eismann taught me to break the boundaries” on Adobe.com’s Adobe & Stories, 12/17/12.

David Osit (MFA Social Documentary) was interviewed in “Building Babel: An Interview with Documentary Filmmaker David Osit,” The Huffington Post, 1/25/13.

Ina Jang’s (MPS Fashion Photography) photograph was used as The New York Times Magazine’s cover photo for the story “The Price of a Stolen Childhood,” 1/24/13.

Michael Ruocco (BFA Animation) wrote the article “What’s That Crazy Drawing, or How I Came To Know and Love Animation Smears,” Cartoon Brew, 3/9/13.

John Mattiuzzi (MFA Computer Art) screened his short film The Compositor at Slamdance, Park City, UT, 1/20 and 1/22/13.

Fitgi Saint-Louis (BFA Graphic Design) was a winner in the 2nd Skin contest hosted by Arjowiggins, Paris, 3/8/13.

Augustus Nazzaro (MFA Fine Arts) was featured in “Christie’s Saara Pritchard Reveals the Best New Artists to Watch 2013,” Lifestyle Mirror, 5/30/13.

Peter Vandall (MFA Social Documentary) had his thesis project turned into a History Channel reality series, Chasing Tail; its first season aired 4/11-5/9/13.

Pacifico Silano (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media) won the Second Edition 2012 Hot Shot International Photography Competition, NYC, 1/17/13.

2012 Joana Avillez (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay) sketched the 2013 Met Gala for Vogue’s Daily blog, 5/8/13.

2013 Ilona Szwarc’s (BFA Photography) photographs were published as a photo essay, “The Cowgirl Way,” in The New York Times Magazine, 3/31/13.

TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR CONSIDERATION FOR ALUMNI NOTES AND EXHIBITIONS, EMAIL

alumni@sva.edu FALL 2013

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Alumni Exhibitions

Sean Greene, outsider, 2013, silica on canvas.

GROUP EFFORTS BFA Fine Arts alumni Yeon Mi Bae (2009), Victoria Duffee (2010), Florencia Escudero (2010), Ji Youn Hong (2010), Thang Tran (2010) and Selim Yang (BFA 2011 Computer Art, Computer Animation and Visual Effects) were in “An Open House,” Salon 151, NYC, 2/8-2/9/13.

MFA Fine Arts alumni Sharona Eliassaf (2011) and Emily Weiner (2011) cocurated “Love,” The Willows, NYC, 2/9/13 and had work in the show. Amelia Midori Miller (2012), Augustus Nazzaro (2012), Kevin Stahl (2010) and Gudmundur Thoroddsen (2011) also had work in the show.

Federico Castelluccio (BFA 1986 Media Arts) curated and had work in the show “Diverse Visions of Reality: A Selection of Contemporary Realist Masters,” Diego Salazar Art Gallery, NYC, 4/4-5/4/13. Scott Nickerson (BFA 1996 Illustration) also had work in the show.

Andrea Fraser (1983 Fine Arts), Alix Lambert (1990 Fine Arts), Suzanne McClelland (MFA 1989 Fine Arts), Elizabeth Peyton (BFA 1987 Fine Arts) and Lorna Simpson (BFA 1982 Photography) were in the show “NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star,” New Museum, NYC, 2/13-5/26/13.

“Edge Over Rupture,” Galerie Lelong, NYC, 4/4-5/4/13 included works by Sol LeWitt (G 1953 Illustration) and Kate Shepherd (MFA 1992 Fine Arts).

David Jacobs and Pantelis Klonaris (both MFA 2013 Fine Arts) were in the show “Text + Message,” Acumen Project Space, NYC, 5/16-6/27/13.

The show “Flow Follow Flow,” Rupert Ravens Nexxt, Paterson, NJ, 5/257/28/13 showcased work by MFA Fine Arts alumni Theresa Himmer (2011), Eun Jung Kim (2012), DS Lee (2013), David Ostro (2012), Gae Savannah (1995) and Meijia Wang (2013).

MFA Photography, Video and Related Media alumni were involved in the show “The Sentimental Landscape,” New Hampshire Institute of Art, Manchester, NH, 4/16-5/3/13. Andrew Lucas (MFA 2009 Photography, Video and Related Media) curated the exhibition; Jade Doskow (2008), Maureen Drennan (2009) and Sarah Palmer (2008) were in it.

Gregg Louis (MFA 2009 Fine Arts) curated and had work in the show “HardBoiled Wonderland and the End of the World,” Nohra Haime Gallery, NYC, 1/8-2/2/13. Yuhi Hasegawa (MFA 2009 Fine Arts), Irvin Morazan (BFA 2003 Photography) and Jennifer Morgan (MFA 2008 Fine Arts) also had works in the show.

VISUAL ARTS JOURNAL

Jeremy Haik (MFA 2012 Photography, Video and Related Media), Curtis Hamilton (BFA 2006 Photography), Sarah Palmer (MFA 2008 Photography, Video and Related Media) and Penelope Umbrico (MFA 1989 Fine Arts) were in the show “Useful Pictures,” Michael Matthews, NYC, 4/13-4/26/13.

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1953 Sol LeWitt (G Illustration). Solo exhibition, “Cut, Torn, Folded, Ripped,” James Cohen Gallery, NYC, 1/10-2/9/13.

1987 Patrick Fiore (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay). Solo exhibition, “Significant Souls,” ArtRage Gallery, Syracuse, NY, 1/12-3/9/13.

1967 Anna Walter (G Fine Arts). Group exhibition, “18 Artists,” Carter Burden Gallery, NYC, 2/21-3/28/13.

Elizabeth Peyton (BFA Fine Arts).

Solo exhibition, “Here She Comes Now,” Staatliche Kunsthalle BadenBaden, Germany, 3/9-6/23/13.

1968 Martin Abrahams (G Animation).

Solo exhibition, “Martin Abrahams Solo Exhibition: Break On Through,” Salomon Arts Gallery, NYC, 12/12/12-1/13/13.

1988 Jeffrey Muhs (BFA Media Arts).

Solo exhibition, “The Origin of Nymphs,” Lyons Wier Gallery, NYC, 1/5-2/9/13.

1969 Angelo Sannasardo (G unknown).

Group exhibition, “Interpretive Realms,” Agora Gallery, NYC, 4/195/9/13.

1971 Louise Baker (E Media Arts). Solo exhibition, “Homage to Jack Potter: Drawing and Thinking,” City Library Gallery, Melbourne, Australia, 2/42/27/13.

Sherry Steiner (G Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Sherry Steiner,” O.K. Harris, NYC, 1/26-3/2/13.

1974 Judith Nilson (BFA Fine Arts).

Group exhibition, “Text Out of Context,” Marymount Manhattan College, NYC, 3/18-4/11/13.

1975 Margaret McCarthy (BFA Fine Arts).

Group exhibition, “Photographers and Imagers,” The Salmagundi Club, NYC, 5/8-6/7/13.

1977 Kevin Larkin (BFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Recent Paintings,” BJ Spoke Gallery, Huntington, NY, 5/2-5/30/13.

1981 Roshan Houshmand (E Fine Arts).

Solo exhibition, “Reflections of You,” Fairview Public Library, Margaretville, NY, 4/20-5/31/13.

1981 Kenny Scharf (BFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Kolors,” Paul Kasmin Gallery, NYC, 4/4-5/4/13.

1982 James Meyer (Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Shadow,” Gering & López Gallery, NYC, 3/7-4/27/13.

1983 Andrea Fraser (Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Andrea Fraser: WolfgangHahn-Prize 2013,” Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany, 4/21-7/21/13.

1986 Robert Gilmer (BFA Photography).

Group exhibition, “The Museum of Alternative History,” RNG Gallery, Council Bluffs, IA, 5/11-6/2/13.

Lisa LMZ Zilker (BFA Fine Arts).

Solo exhibition, “Conversations: Paintings and Drawings,” Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning, NYC, 2/1-3/13/13.

1989 Katherine Criss (BFA Photography).

Solo exhibition, “Recent Photographs,” BJ Spoke Gallery, Huntington, NY, 5/2-5/30/13.

David Goldstein (BFA Media Arts).

Solo exhibition, “David Goldstein Paintings,” Soapbox Gallery, NYC, 5/10-5/23/13.

1990 Robert Lazzarini (BFA Fine Arts).

Solo exhibition, “Robert Lazzarini (damage),” Marlborough Chelsea, NYC, 1/10-2/16/13.

Gina Minichino (BFA Media Arts).

Solo exhibition, “Gina Minichino,” O.K. Harris, NYC, 3/9-4/13/13.

1991 Kip Omolade (BFA Media Arts). Solo exhibition, “Using Art to Create a Celebrity,” Rogue Space, NYC, 4/19-4/20/13.

1992 Aleksandra Mir (BFA Media Arts).

Group exhibition, “Monuments,” Lismore Castle Arts, Waterford, Ireland, 4/20-9/30/13.

Jesse Pasca (BFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Star Skin,” Galerie Protégé, NYC, 5/23-6/20/13.

Lisa Ruyter (BFA Fine Arts). Group exhibition, “Under the Greenwood: Picturing British Trees – Past,” St. Barbe Museum, Lymington, England, 7/27-10/5/13.

1994 Julie Allen (MFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Julie Allen,” McKenzie Fine Art, NYC, 1/4-2/3/13.

Laura Gurton (BFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Recent Paintings,” Van Brunt Gallery, Beacon, NY, 3/94/7/13.

Eileen Karakashian (BFA Advertising). Solo exhibition, “Inspirations from Armenian Coffee and

Trish Tillman, Carbon Crown, 2012, wood, polyurethane, dirt, fabric, beads.

Tasseography,” Piermont Flywheel Gallery, Piermont, NY, 5/16-6/2/13.

Riad Miah (BFA Fine Arts). Group exhibition, “Factor 41N-9W,” Rooster Gallery, NYC, 12/6-1/6/13.

Leemour Pelli (BFA Fine Arts).

Group exhibition, “I Am My World,” NOoSPHERE Arts, NYC, 3/13/30/13.

Andrew Cornell Robinson (MFA Fine Arts). Group exhibition, “Andrew Cornell Robinson + Doron Langberg + Kyle Coniglio,” Anna Kustera, NYC, 3/28-4/19/13.

1995 Michael De Feo (BFA Graphic Design). Group exhibition, “Wider Than a Postcard,” Breeze Block Gallery, Portland, OR, 5/2-6/1/13.

Pleasant (Fine Arts). Group exhibition, “De Slang Sticks up Some Pleasant Art,” De Slang, Amsterdam, 4/27/13.

1996 Michael Combs (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay). Solo exhibition, “Wild Card: The Art of Michael Combs, A Fifteen-Year Survey,” 21c Museum Hotel, Louisville, KY, 3/30-9/30/13.

Barnaby Furnas (BFA Fine Arts).

Solo exhibition, “The first and last day,” Victoria Miro, London, 4/255/25/13.

Sean Greene (BFA Illustration). Solo exhibition, “Suggestions,” Perimeter Gallery, Belfast, ME, 5/16-7/7/13.

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TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR CONSIDERATION FOR ALUMNI NOTES AND EXHIBITIONS, EMAIL

alumni@sva.edu

Julie Schenkelberg, Dowry Rediscovered, 2012, wood bench, dishes, acrylic gel.

Courtesy Asya Geisberg Gallery, New York.

Molly Herman (MFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Flight from Nature: The Abstract as Ideal,” Grand Gallery, The National Arts Club, NYC, 5/145/31/13.

1997 Cordy Ryman (BFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Adaptive Radiation: Cordy Ryman,” DODGE Gallery, NYC, 4/6-5/12/13.

1998 Malin Abrahamsson-Alves (BFA Fine Arts). Installation, “Solar Cycle 24,” Chashama, NYC, 2/23-3/9/13.

Todd Kelly (MFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “My Own Personal Rebus,” Asya Geisberg Gallery, NYC, 1/31-3/9/13.

CJ Nye (BFA Fine Arts). Group exhibition, “Source,” Second Avenue Firehouse Gallery, Bay Shore, NY, 5/1-6/15/13.

Janice Caswell (BFA Fine Arts).

Group exhibition, “Orderly Disorderly,” Calico Gallery, NYC, 5/105/31/13

2001 Carlos Motta (BFA Photography).

Solo exhibition, “Carlos Motta: The Shape of Freedom,” Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, Mexico City, 4/9-6/30/13.

James Donahue (BFA Illustration).

Solo exhibition, “Abstract Bliss,” Hopkins Vineyard, Warren, CT, 5/17-6/15/13.

2002 Michael Alan (BFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Michael Alan Alien,” NOoSPHERE, NYC, 1/19-2/24/13.

1999 Nils Karsten (BFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Nils Karsten: Suburbia Hamburg 1983,” Churner and Churner Gallery, NYC, 12/20/122/2/13.

Nathan Fox (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay). Group exhibition, “Contemporary Illustration: At Your Service,” New England School of Art & Design, Boston, 3/18-4/28/13.

Janelle Lynch (MFA Photography and Related Media). Solo exhibition, “Los Jardines de México,” Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona Beach, FL, 1/25-4/14/13.

Aida Ruilova (MFA Photography and Related Media). Solo exhibition, “I’m so wild about your strawberry mouth,” Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Los Angeles, 3/23-5/4/13.

2000 Kevin Cooley (MFA Photography and Related Media). Installation, “Skyward,” The Boiler at Pierogi Gallery, NYC, 1/11-3/17/13.

VISUAL ARTS JOURNAL

Keith Haring (BFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “The Political Line,” Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, 4/19-8/18/13.

Mariam Ghani (MFA Photography and Related Media). Curatorial projects, co-curated “History of Histories: Afghan Films 1960 to Present,” Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NYC, 3/15, 22, 29/13.

Young Sam Kim (BFA Photography).

Solo exhibition, “Young Sam Kim: A World in the City IV,” Emmanuel Fremin Gallery, NYC, 4/18-5/20/13.

Diana Shpungin (MFA Fine Arts).

Group exhibition, “Following the Line,” Girls’ Club, Fort Lauderdale, FL, 11/2/12-9/30/13.

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2003 Fawad Khan (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay). Group exhibition, “No Sun Without Shadow,” Lu Magnus, NYC, 2/27-3/24/13.

Nicolas Touron (MFA Fine Arts).

Solo exhibition, “Play Ground: Paintings and Sculptures,” Stux Gallery, NYC, 1/24-2/23/13.

2004 Kira Greene (MFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Blue Plate Special,” Accola Griefen Gallery, NYC, 4/115/18/13.

Roshani Thakore (BFA Fine Arts).

Group exhibition, “The Art Snack Registry,” Space on White, NYC, 12/6/12.

2006 Steven Bindernagel (MFA Fine Arts).

Solo exhibition, “In Conversation,” CRG Gallery, NYC, 1/10-2/23/13.

Bradley Castellanos (MFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Crossing the Wilds,” Ryan Lee, NYC 5/306/29/13.

Joseph Grazi (BFA Animation).

Installation, “Website,” (UN)Fair, NYC, 3/6-3/9/13.

Ricky Sears (MFA Fine Arts). Group exhibition, “ARTExchange,” College Art Association annual conference, NYC, 2/15/13.

Dongyun Lee (MFA Illustration as Visual Essay). Group exhibition, “DTRT x TOYOIL,” Crosspoint Gallery, NYC, 5/3-5/31/13.

Amy Stein (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media). Group exhibition, “Amy Stein & Stacy Arezou Mehrfar: Tall Poppy Syndrome,” ClampArt, NYC, 1/10-2/16/13.

Kara Rooney (MFA Art Criticism and Writing). Solo exhibition, “Soliloquies for Former Narcissistic Acts,” Dow Center for Visual Arts, Interlochen, MI, 2/22-4/5/13.

2007 Hannah Smith Allen (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media).

Solo exhibition, “Battlegrounds,” A.I.R. Gallery Fellowship Program, NYC, 2/7-3/3/13.

2009 Harlan Erskine (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media). Group exhibition, “Ed Ruscha: Books & Co.,” Gagosian, NYC, 3/5-4/27/13.

Amy Elkins (BFA Photography).

Group exhibition, “Photography at the Edge,” Newspace Center for Photography, Portland, OR, 2/12/24/13.

Nao Uda (BFA Photography). Group exhibition, “After Hours 2: Murals on the Bowery,” the Bowery, NYC, 4/25-9/29/13.

2008 Allison Kaufman (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media). Solo exhibition, “Friday Nights at Guitar Center,” Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Pittsburgh, PA, 4/18-8/18/13.

Gregg Louis (MFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Psychic Ménagerie,” Nohra Haime Gallery, NYC, 3/194/27/13.

Hye Ryoung Min (MPS Digital Photography). Group exhibition, “FAMILY,” Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography, Detroit, 1/12-2/2/13.

Judith Monteferrante (MPS Digital Photography). Group exhibition, “Natural Aficionados,” Amsterdam Whitney Chelsea, NYC, 12/7/121/26/13.

Jaime Permuth (MPS Digital Photography). Solo exhibition, “Curator’s Choice,” Ryugaheon Gallery, Seoul, 5/21-6/2/13.

Stacy Scibelli (MFA Fine Arts).

Group exhibition, “Calamity and Ruin,” Projekt 722, NYC, 3/93/31/13. Group exhibition, “Vowels,” Proof Gallery, South Boston, MA, 4/27-5/25/13.

Trish Tillman (MFA Fine Arts).

Group exhibition, “ROA:TILLMAN,” Present Company, NYC, 12/14/121/20/13.

2011 Jonathan Rider (MFA Fine Arts).

Group exhibition, “Drawing Up!,” Josée Bienvenu Gallery, NYC, 3/74/13/13.

Julie A. Schenkelberg (MFA Fine Arts). Solo exhibition, “Hearsay,” Asya Geisberg Gallery, NYC, 3/144/20/13.

2012 John Delaney (MPS Digital Photography). Solo exhibition, “John Delaney: Golden Eagle Nomads,” Photo-Eye Gallery, Santa Fe, NM, 5/17-7/13/13.

Elektra KB (BFA Visual and Critical Studies). Solo exhibition, “There Are Women at the Gates Seeking a New World. . . ,” BravinLee, NYC, 5/22-5/28/13.

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End Page Now on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art is a new panoramic film installation and exhibition by T. J. Wilcox (BFA 1989 Fine Arts). The show, “In the Air,” runs until February 9, 2014, and occupies almost the entire second floor of the museum. Revisiting the “cinema in-the-round” panoramic presentations of the late 19th century, Wilcox modernizes the concept, using state-of-the-art technology to create a completely immersive environment.

“In the Air” continues Wilcox’s exploration of a personal narrative and the ever-changing history of a location built on fact, myth, memory and associations. The film was shot from Wilcox’s studio, which offers a 360-degree view of Manhattan from high above Union Square, and it highlights events, real and imagined, that could have been seen from the windows over the years: the Empire State Building as a landing site for transAtlantic zeppelins, Andy Warhol’s presentation of Mylar balloons VISUAL ARTS JOURNAL

Marco Anelli, T. J. Wilcox’s Studio, New York, 2012. © Marco Anelli. Courtesy Danziger Gallery, New York.

to the “popemobile” and the awe-inspiring “Manhattanhenge,” the summer solstice phenomenon that occurs when the rays of the setting sun align with the city’s east-west streets.

“I like my film and video work to appear as the visible record of my own journey through our saturated, mediated age, highlighting those things that have held my attention and captured my imagination,” Wilcox says. “Just as our perception of a present is a hybrid of personal memory; historical record; family lore; and political, social, national and artistic histories and mythologies, film and video provide the page upon which I make a collage of the ideas I hold most dear.”

Wilcox’s exhibition also contains related works that the artist selected from the museum’s permanent collection, including pieces by Morgan Fisher, Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Yoko Ono, and a film and video series devoted to ways artists have viewed the New York cityscape. [Dan Halm]

Mark Wilson, e20808, 2011, archival ink-jet print on canvas.

See “The Digital Avant-Garde,” page 9.

Office of External Relations 209 East 23 Street, New York, NY 10010-3994 www.sva.edu