PNCA Multimedia, Portland, OR

Luc Tuymans Lecture

lradon@pnca.edu (PNCA) — Tue, 22 Jul 2014 23:51:00 GMT

Luc Tuymans Lecture

The Philip Feldman Gallery + Project Space is pleased to present an exhibition of prints by the influential artist, Luc Tuymans. “Luc Tuymans: Graphic Works - Kristalnacht to Technicolor” runs from Mar 6- June 14 2014.

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Though he is known primarily as a painter, Belgian artist Luc Tuymans (b. 1958) continues to produce extraordinary work in the discipline of printmaking. Graphic Works - Kristalnacht to Technicolor brings together an array of Tuymans’ printmaking works. The pieces were produced between 1992 and 2013 and range in technique from color photocopy of Kristalnacht, 1992 to the twelve stone color lithograph of Gene (Plant), 2004. The exhibition will also feature examples of Tuymans’ experiments in printing on non-traditional surfaces such as Transitions A-B-C-D, 2008, which was produced with multi-colored screenprints on PVC plastic.
Luc Tuymans: Graphic Works - Kristalnacht to Technicolor is curated by Feldman Gallery + Project Space Director, Mack McFarland and PNCA faculty member, Modou Dieng, in direct collaboration with the artist.

About Luc Tuymans:
Belgian artist Luc Tuymans is widely credited with having contributed to the revival of painting in the 1990s. His sparsely colored, figurative works speak in a quiet, restrained, and at times unsettling voice, and are typically painted from pre-existing imagery which includes photographs and video stills. His canvases, in turn, become third-degree abstractions from reality and often appear slightly out-of-focus, as if covered by a thin veil or painted from a failing memory. There is almost always a darker undercurrent to what at first appear to be innocuous subjects:
Born in 1958 in Morstel, near Antwerp, Belgium, Tuymans was one of the first artists to be represented by David Zwirner. He joined the gallery in 1994 and had his first American solo exhibition that same year. In 2013, Luc Tuymans: The Summer is Over was on view in New York and marked his tenth solo show with the gallery.
In 2013, a solo presentation of the artist’s portraits, Nice. Luc Tuymans, was hosted by The Menil Collection in Houston, Texas. His work was recently the subject of a retrospective co-organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It traveled from 2010 to 2011 to the Dallas Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; and the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels. Previous major solo exhibitions include those organized by the Moderna Museet Malmö, Sweden in 2009 and Tate Modern, London in 2004. Other venues that have presented recent solo shows include the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain (2011); Haus der Kunst, Munich; Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (both 2008); Mucsarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest (2007); and the Museu Serralves, Porto, Portugal (2006).
A catalogue raisonné of the artist’s paintings is currently being prepared by David Zwirner in collaboration with Studio Luc Tuymans. Compiled and edited by art historian Eva Meyer-Hermann, the catalogue raisonné will illustrate and document approximately 500 paintings by the artist from 1975 to the present day.
In 2001, the artist represented Belgium at the 49th Venice Biennale. His works are featured in museum collections worldwide, including The Art Institute of Chicago; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Tate Gallery, London. Tuymans recently donated his portrait of Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands to the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. He lives and works in Antwerp.

Image: Luc Tuymans, The Valley, 2012; screenprint; 71 x 72,5 cm; Edition: 75; Courtesy of the artist.

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2014 PNCA Commencement

lradon@pnca.edu (PNCA) — Wed, 4 Jun 2014 23:38:00 GMT

2014 PNCA Commencement

Spencer Beebe, Chair of Ecotrust’s Board of Directors, delivers the 2014 Commencement Address at the May 25 celebration for the graduating class of 2014, with students in PNCA’s undergraduate Studio Arts, Media Arts, and Design Arts programs and three of the graduate programs of PNCA’s Hallie Ford School of Graduate Studies: MFA in Visual Studies, MFA in Collaborative Design, and MFA in Applied Craft and Design.

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Feldman Gallery Lecture: Nicholas Blechman & Christoph Niemann

khanson@pnca.edu (PNCA) — Mon, 3 Mar 2014 22:25:00 GMT

In conjunction with Tear-Sheet: The Daily Grind of Illustration, the Philip Feldman Gallery + Project Space presents a public conversation with Nicholas Blechman and Christoph Niemann.

Nicholas Blechman, illustrator and Art Director of The New York Times Book Review will be in conversation with Berlin-based author and illustrator Christoph Niemann about the ups, the downs, current trends and gossip in illustration today.

Feldman Gallery Lecture: Nicholas Blechman and Christoph Niemann

In conjunction with Tear-Sheet: The daily grind of illustration., the Philip Feldman Gallery + Project Space presents a public conversation with Nicholas Blechman and Christoph Niemann.

About Nicholas Blechman:

Nicholas Blechman is an internationally recognized illustrator, designer and art director, based in New York. His award winning illustrations have appeared in GQ, Travel + Leisure, Wired, and The New Yorker. He is currently the Art Director of The New York Times Book Review. Since 1990, Blechman has published, edited, and designed the award winning political underground magazine NOZONE, featured in the Smithsonian Institution’s Design Triennial. He has taught design at School of Visual Arts and illustration at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Blechman co-authors a series of limited edition illustration books, One Hundred Percent, with Christoph Niemann. His latest project is the children’s book Night Light.

About Christoph Niemann:

Christoph Niemann is an illustrator, graphic designer, and author. His work has appeared on the covers The New Yorker, Time, Wired, The New York Times Magazine, and American Illustration, and has won awards from AIGA, the Art Directors Club, and The Lead Awards. Since July 2008, Niemann has been writing and illustrating the whimsical Abstract City, a New York Times blog, renamed Abstract Sunday in 2011, when the blog’s home became The New York Times Magazine. For his column he draws and writes essays about politics, the economy, art and modern life. He has drawn live from the Venice Art Biennale, the Olympic Games in London, The 2012 Republican Convention and he has drawn the New York City Marathon — while actually running it. Niemann is the author of many books, most recently Abstract City.

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Animated Arts Lecture: Miguel Petchkovsky

khanson@pnca.edu (PNCA) — Mon, 3 Mar 2014 22:13:00 GMT

PNCA, in partnership with The Art Gym and the Department of Art at Marylhurst, welcomes Miguel Petchkovsky to give a presentation on the activities of Netherlands-based Time_frame Foundation and NIMK in taking video beyond the confines of a gallery or theatrical setting. Examples of video beyond the screen to include: Visual Dome, Video Guerrilha, immersive new media technology, monumental video art, urban projection mapping, as well as an introduction to related projects from Time_frame partners, SAT Montreal and Currents Santa Fe.

The Immersive Showcase and Video Beyond the Screen

Pacific Northwest College of Arts welcome artist Miguel Petchkovsky, International Media Arts Curator, of the Time_frame Foundation.

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Feldman Gallery Lecture A.L. Steiner

lradon@pnca.edu (PNCA) — Wed, 22 Jan 2014 19:12:00 GMT

Feldman Gallery Lecture: AL Steiner

In concert with the exhibition Feelings and How to Destroy Them in the Feldman Gallery + Project Space, A.L Steiner will present an artist talk delving into her solo and collaborative projects.

In concert with the exhibition Feelings and How to Destroy Them in the Feldman Gallery + Project Space, A.L Steiner will present an artist talk delving into her solo and collaborative projects with Chicks on Speed, robbinschilds, A.K. Burns, and Zackary Drucker.

A.L. Steiner uses constructions of photography, video, installation, collage, collaboration, writing, performance, and curatorial work as seductive tropes channeled through the sensibility of an activated skeptical queer ecofeminist androgyne.

The exhibition, Feelings and How to Destroy Them, is presented in conjunction with PICA’s TBA:13 Festival.

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MFA VS Lecture: Ann Hamilton

khanson@pnca.edu (PNCA) — Mon, 6 Jan 2014 22:08:00 GMT

MFA VS Lecture: Ann Hamilton

The MFA in Visual Studies welcomes Ann Hamilton as part of the 2013-2014 Graduate Visiting Artist Lecture Series.

Ann Hamilton is a visual artist recognized for her large-scale multi-media installations, as well as her work in video, sculpture, photography, textile art, and printmaking. Among her many honors, Hamilton has been the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, United States Artists Fellowship, NEA Visual Arts Fellowship, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture, and the Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. She has represented the United States in the 1991 Sao Paulo Bienal, the 1999 Venice Biennale, and has exhibited extensively around the world.

This event is co-sponsored by Elizabeth Leach Gallery.

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MFA AC+D Lecture: Randy Hunt

khanson@pnca.edu (PNCA) — Mon, 6 Jan 2014 18:34:00 GMT

Photo by Sara Kerens photography.

MFA AC+D Lecture: Randy Hunt

The MFA in Applied Craft welcomes Randy Hunt as part of the 2013-2014 Graduate Visiting Artist Lecture Series. This event is co-sponsored by Scout Books for Design Week Portland.

Randy Hunt is the Creative Director at Etsy, where he leads the team of designers building web products and creating off-line experiences. He believe designers must be able to build what they design. Currently, he’s writing Product Design for the Web, which will be published by New Riders in November 2013.

This event is co-sponsored by Scout Books for Design Week Portland.

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2013 Homecoming Lecture: Samuel Rowlett ‘02

khanson@pnca.edu (PNCA) — Mon, 2 Dec 2013 21:29:00 GMT

2013 Homecoming Lecture: Samuel Rowlett ‘02

PNCA is pleased to announce Samuel Rowlett ’02 as this year’s Homecoming Speaker.

The annual Homecoming address is one of PNCA’s four Cornerstone Lectures, which also include the College’s Convocation Lecture in September, the Edelman lecture in March, and the Graduation Address given at Commencement in May.

While trained as a painter, Samuel draws parallels between explorer and artist, building objects that articulate the physicality of the body and using the concepts of studio practice as a means to engage the outside world. Through a multidisciplinary approach, he often filters sculpture, performance, video, and photography through the lens of painting and drawing.

Samuel holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Pacific Northwest College of Art and a Master of Fine Arts from Cranbrook Academy of Art. He has received fellowships from Yale University School of Art and the Vermont Studio Center, and recently was artist in residency at MASS MoCA’s Kidspace. Samuel has exhibited widely with solo exhibitions at The Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy, New York and Real Art Ways in Hartford, Connecticut. His work has been reviewed in The Boston Globe, spotlighted on WNPR—Connecticut Public Radio, and included in the New York Times.

Preceding the lecture, PNCA alumnus Michael Curry ’81 will present the Laura Russo Distinguished Alumni Award to alumnus and faculty emeritus George Johanson ’50. Please join us in honoring one of PNCA’s most beloved and accomplished alumni.

To learn more about Rowlett’s practice, visit his website.

You can also read more about Samuel Rowlett and his work in the following UNTITLED articles:

Journey Underneath the City
3 Questions with Samuel Rowlett
Samuel Rowlett ‘02 Steps Up

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MFA CD Lecture: Jay Harman

khanson@pnca.edu (PNCA) — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 23:43:00 GMT

Inventor, entrepreneur, futurist, Jay Harman thinks big, outside the box but inside of nature. He is one of the world’s leaders in biomimicry research and development as well as founder of several companies that create industrial solutions that are clean and green and based on mimicking nature’s design solutions. Harman has just published his first book The Shark’s Paintbrush: Biomimicry and How Nature Is Inspiring Innovation.

Harman’s Portland lecture focuses on what he sees as the immense potential for biomimicry to change business as usual and create a shift from a resource depleting and pollution spewing economy to a clean and green economy. Entrepreneurs and scientists are turning to nature to find inspiration for future products, and how to build them in a way that is not only more energy and cost-efficient but friendlier to the environment. Harman has been at the forefront of this movement as a nature-inspired designer of boats, fans, pumps, propellers and mixers, and founder of several companies to bring these products to market. His book, The Shark’s Paintbrush is equal parts memoir, explanation of biomimicry breakthroughs, and business advice.

Photo by Joseph Greer ‘16.

MFA CD Lecture: Jay Harman

A native of Australia and now a U.S. citizen working out of San Rafael, California, Harman is a gifted storyteller and successful businessman. Best selling author Paul Hawken says of Harman and The Shark’s Paintbrush, “Imagine Indiana Jones, Huckleberry Finn, and Erasmus Darwin rolled into one person, and you will have some sense of what it is like to roam and see the world through Jay Harman’s biomimetic eyes.”

Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, manufacturers have built things by a process now known as “heat, beat, and treat.” They’d start with a raw material, use enormous amounts of energy to heat it, twist it into shape with heavy machinery, and then maintain its design, strength, and durability with toxic chemicals. Harman encourages government and industry to consider biomimicry, to respect nature’s talent as the ultimate designer of more effective, efficient, powerful, profitable, and cleaner technologies not to mention profound biotherapeutic discoveries made by applying nature’s secrets to biotech and the business of public health. A force of change in industries as diverse as construction, biomedical devices and pharmaceuticals, transportation, and information technology, biomimicry is inspiring a new industrial revolution that will dramatically alter the landscape of the business world.

Read UNTITLED’s interview with Jay Harman here.

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MFA AC+D Lecture: Mary Smull

khanson@pnca.edu (PNCA) — Tue, 5 Nov 2013 01:38:00 GMT

Photo by Marissa Boone ‘14.

MFA AC+D Lecture: Mary Smull

The MFA in Applied Craft and Design welcomes Mary Smull as part of the 2013-2014 Graduate Visiting Artist Lecture Series.

MARY SMULL is an artist, writer, and curator living in Philadelphia, PA. She merges object and action in a practice centered around textile processes to expose the diversity of attitudes toward labor and the complex relationships surrounding art and craft, amateur and professional, producers and consumers. Recently, Smull’s work has been exhibited at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia International Airport, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Temple Contemporary, Bridgette Mayer Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, and at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Public Fiction Gallery in Los Angeles, CA, Cranbrook Museum of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. In 2013 and 2014, Smull will be featured in exhibitions at the Racine Art Museum in Racine, WI, and the Craft Alliance, in St. Louis, MO. Smull holds a BFA from the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI, and currently teaches in the Fiber Department at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD.

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MFA AC+D Lecture: Benjamin Lignel and Namita Gupta Wiggers

khanson@pnca.edu (PNCA) — Wed, 30 Oct 2013 17:40:00 GMT

Photo by Micah Fischer ‘13.

CraftPerspectives Lecture | Namita Gupta Wiggers and Benjamin Lignel on Contemporary Jewelry

Museum of Contemporary Craft and the MFA in Applied Craft and Design welcome Benjamin Lignel and Namita Gupta Wiggers.

Contemporary jewelry is doing OK. It does not need another pat on the back in the form of a 300-page book of images. When taking on the task of editor in 2010, Damian Skinner decided to treat Contemporary Jewelry in Perspective as an opportunity to examine jewelry as a mature, fully developed practice. Rather than propose yet another set of justifications for its existence, he led a project to provide instruments to navigate the spaces in which jewelry lives (Part 1), to understand the history of the field (Part 2), and to grasp some of the contentious issues that animate jewelry today (Part 3).

This joint lecture by Benjamin Lignel and Namita Wiggers, both contributors to Contemporary Jewelry in Perspective, Part 1, will look at the history of contemporary jewelry through the lens of some of its defining moments. Why was the critique of preciousness so important? What exactly is de-skilling, and does it herald the end of bench-based craft? Why is inheritance an issue for long-term preservation of contemporary jewelry?

Lignel and Wiggers will also discuss the spaces of contemporary jewelry, revealing how they are both found and invented as products of contemporary practice. We will show how such spaces are determined by maker’s willingness to appropriate them and to challenge the limits of what is historically “given.”

While we share some assumptions about contemporary jewelry, our positions as curator and editor/maker have colored, and to some extent polarized, how we think about the field. This lecture is meant to test our methodology and to better understand the functionality of the book as a user-friendly tool kit. The lecture will pick up selected tools in a non-linear presentation of a non-linear book with the goal of leaving the audience with the strange urge to burn, and then redraw the plinth on which contemporary jewelry sits.

This program is co-sponsored by Art Jewelry Forum and the MFA in Applied Craft + Design. A book signing will follow the lecture.

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MFA CD Lecture: Christopher Phillips

khanson@pnca.edu (PNCA) — Tue, 29 Oct 2013 00:35:00 GMT

MFA CD Lecture: Christopher Phillips

The MFA in Collaborative Design present Christopher Phillips as part of the 2012-2013 Graduate Visiting Artist Lecture Series.

The United States needs constitutional change, but how to get it done? Christopher Phillips has the right answer. Get Americans talking to Americans about how we can improve our nation. Phillips has combined the approach of Socrates and the wisdom of Jefferson to show us the way. To this end, Phillips has inaugurated Constitution Café and Socrates Café dialogue groups, and is the founder of the nonprofit Democracy Cafe.

You can also read 3 Questions with Christopher Phillips.

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MFA AC+D Lecture: Liz Lambert

khanson@pnca.edu (PNCA) — Thu, 24 Oct 2013 21:28:00 GMT

The MFA in Applied Craft and Design welcomes Liz Lambert as part of the 2013-2014 Graduate Visiting Artist Lecture Series at the Hallie Ford School of Graduate Studies.

Liz Lambert is “the avatar of cool for the inn crowd’s in crowd.” Thirteen years ago, Liz Lambert bought a seedy motel on South Congress Avenue, in Austin, and transformed it into the sleek, modern, high-end, achingly fashionable Hotel San José—an early sign of life injected into what is now the Capital City’s famously vibrant SoCo district. She’s done the same in Marfa, Houston, and San Antonio.

Lambert will also be hosting graduate students from the Applied Craft and Design program to El Cosmico (Marfa) in March 2014.

MFA AC+D Lecture: Liz Lambert

The MFA in Applied Craft and Design welcomes Liz Lambert as part of the 2013-2014 Graduate Visiting Artist Lecture Series.

Photo by Matthew Gaston ‘16.

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2013 Convocation Address: Lisa Strausfeld

khanson@pnca.edu (PNCA) — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 17:34:00 GMT

Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) opens its 2013-2014 academic year with a Convocation Address by Lisa Strausfeld, Global Head of Data Visualization at Bloomberg LP. Convocation, which derives from the Latin term for “calling together,” is an annual opportunity for the College’s community of students, faculty, staff, and board members to come together to mark the beginning of the new academic year. The annual Convocation address is one of PNCA’s four Cornerstone Lectures, which also include the College’s Homecoming Lecture during Alumni weekend, the Edelman lecture in March, and the Graduation Address given at Commencement in May.

Lisa Strausfeld joined Bloomberg LP in January 2012 as its first Global Head of Data Visualization and is the CEO of Major League Politics (MLP), which she founded in April of 2011. Prior to founding MLP, Lisa was a partner at Pentagram from 2002 to March 2011. She and her team specialized in digital information projects including the design of large-scale media installations, software prototypes and user interfaces, signage, and websites. Her clients included One Laptop per Child, GE, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, Bloomberg LP, MIT and the New York Times.

Strausfeld received the 2010 National Design Award for Interaction Design and was a finalist for the award in 2009, the year the Interaction Design category was created. Fast Company magazine featured her as one of its 2009 Masters of Design. She was named one of BusinessWeek’s “Cutting Edge Designers” in 2007, and her work has been featured in two MOMA design exhibitions, including the current show “Talk to Me.” She has received six International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) and her projects have been regularly honored by the Art Directors Club, the Type Directors Club, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, and the Society for Environmental Graphic Design.

MLP is the second start-up Strausfeld has founded. The first was Perspecta, an information-architecture software company, which was later sold to Excite @Home. She joined another startup, Quokka, a digital sports entertainment company, to lead the development of its real-time data visualization products. She later left to start her own studio InformationArt.

Strausfeld holds five patents relating to user interfaces and intelligent search and retrieval. In 2006 she was named to the Senior Scientist program at the Gallup Organization. She has taught interactive design at the Yale School of Art and at NYU’s ITP program. Strausfeld has a BA from Brown in art history and computer science, an M Arch in architecture from Harvard, and an MS from MIT’s Media Lab. She is also a member of the PNCA Creative Leaders Council.

2013 Convocation Address: Lisa Strausfeld

Lisa Strausfeld gives the 2013 Convocation Address on Friday, September 13 in the PNCA Commons. Strausfeld is a design professional, information architect, and currently Global Head of Data Visualization at Bloomberg.

2013 Convocation Address (Transcript)

Lisa Strausfeld, Global Head of Data Visualization, Bloomberg LP

I’m here, presumably, because I’ve achieved some level of success in my career.  And the presumption is that perhaps I could share some wisdom with you, as you embark on your own design and art education and future careers.

I’ll break it to you now. I can and I can’t. I am both an inspiring and a cautionary tale, depending on your character makeup.

What I mean by that is I’ve always loved doing the work, but I still struggle on a daily basis with all of the other “stuff” that’s required to get the work made.

Paula Scher said this to me when I joined Pentagram. Creating the work is only half of the effort. (Brad Cloepfil, an architect, says the work is only 10% of the effort - which would suggest some relationship between scale of work and effort to get it made.)

Still I’m here. And you’re here. Presumably no one bribed you to go to art or design school. You had conviction in your work and you made a heroic choice – at a young age – to focus on it. I applaud you already.

It’s so nice to be here, by the way. In Portland and at PNCA.

So, like I said, I’m not sure anything I say will be helpful, but we’ve got some time, and I thought I’d tell you a couple stories about who I was as a design student, and how, despite some deep character flaws, I got here.

Years ago, while I was a student, I attended a two-week art workshop at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. I was there to draw and paint (and to learn about printmaking) so was quite disappointed by the very first assignment. There were about twenty students - each of us was given a block of plaster that was cast in a large plastic butter container, as well as a mallet and a chisel. We were asked to sit in a circle on the concrete floor and, for the remaining class time, carve a sphere out of the plaster block. No talking.

I rolled my eyes in frustration, sat down, and started chipping away. After an hour and a half of twenty tapping mallets and chisels on plaster blocks we were asked to stop working. The instructor joined our circle on the floor and asked the group to share what we’d been thinking about during the exercise. Everyone looked a bit stumped, but no one more than me. One confessional student said she was thinking about the rest of her day, including what she’d have for lunch after class.

Another student claimed he was thinking about the meaning of life. I said nothing. I couldn’t even recall what I’d been thinking about. About twenty minutes later, while I was on the the subway back to Cambridge it suddenly came to me. For the entire hour and a half I realized that I was thinking of only one thing. The sphere.

I have always defined success by the quality (and some degree of quantity) of my work. As judged BY ME. That’s important because there are other judges, as you well know. You can’t rely on any of them, even if they are paying you, or grading you. I’ve come to define happiness in my work by the sphere. By that blissful focus on a singular creative mission.

Creative success and happiness are related but not always bound together. I’ve found that the zen-like happiness I experienced years ago through drawing and writing code gets harder as you scale the scope and the ambition of your vision. Proportionally so. Collaborations, clients, institutional politics. Technology. Money - to fund the work or simply pay the rent. These all conspire at times against the work. And the work, in all honesty, has always been, for me, an escape from the real world. Just me and that block of plaster.

My sphere moments have come from two types of activities: programming (which I started doing in college) and any form of drawing, particularly the drawing I learned to do in architecture school. Both could occupy me for hours at a stretch, including countless all-nighters.  My first project in architecture school was to design a tower. It was a two-week project and I went, blithely, from an idea in my head to final drawings. What I learned in design school was what to do between that idea in my head and final drawings. I learned how to explore the idea and, to borrow a quote from Brad, to find, rather than invent, a solution. I learned to incorporate research, how to work and rework the form, push it and test it. I learned how to use drawing as an investigative tool rather than solely as a presentation tool. I had to actually learn that and I think it’s truly the most valuable suite of skills I took away from design school. I’ve been able to apply that rigorous investigative work process to other design disciplines outside of architecture.

Specifically, what I did in between an idea and production drawings, when I was an architect, was layers upon layers of plan drawings. The architectural floorplan, by the way, shouldn’t even really exist anymore, given the fully dimensional digital tools we have at our disposal. It’s a legacy representation. (I could do an entire talk about this but don’t want to veer off on too much of a tangent.) I bring it up because the odd abstract qualities of a plan (it’s an impossible horizontal slice of an occupy-able 3-dimensional object) provide the perfect opportunity for the investigation of an idea - an experiential idea. With this one drawing, this singular human-scaled activity, you can visualize and craft an experience through time and space. Like the sphere, I lost myself in that drawing type. The plan.

When I left architecture to move into the digital design world, I struggled with the loss of the plan drawing. It was my single most useful investigative tool. I’ve had to replace the plan with other tools of investigation but that’s a subject for another talk.

In architecture school, like many other art and design students, I worked day and night (mostly night) and I always stayed up all night before my studio reviews.

As I mentioned, I was a good student and a strong designer, but I was a horrible presenter. After my tower project, I came to resent doing production drawings and models because I never wanted to stop working on my projects. I often presented my investigative drawings and models, which went over well with some critics, and less well with others. I had a particularly difficult review in an option studio where a very well-known architect at the time was the guest critic. I will spare you and myself some details, but suffice to say that there were tears. My studio critic and this guest starchitect had some very harsh words to share (in this public forum) about my project and my drawings, which were so light and scaled so small, they were nearly illegible to everyone but me. My model was a messy process model and I had no elevations. I was never good at elevations and I never cared about elevations.

Three years ago, and a good twenty years after that studio review at Harvard, I saw that famous architect in the reception area at Pentagram, where I was now working as a partner. He was waiting to see another one of my partners about a project. I was passing by and introduced myself. When he said, “Nice to meet you,” I mentioned that I had met him years ago while I was a student at Harvard. He looked at me curiously and, completely unprompted, started telling me about a final review he was on years ago with a student who cried during her presentation. He talked about it in an almost epic way, as if he had either never seen anyone cry during a studio review, or as if he had been traumatized himself by the consequences of his critique, and was somehow still working through it, twenty years later. I hesitated for a moment, and then I surprised myself by saying, “I was that student.”

At this point, he looked a me again, now in utter disbelief. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but his reaction said it all. How could that student have become YOU?

I’ll tell you how. I was always then and am always now focused on the quality of the work by my estimation. I still remember and love that project, twenty years later, I still hate doing the equivalent of presentation drawings, but I’ve since learned the importance of communicating the work to people than other than myself. I don’t know that I regret anything I did or didn’t do in architecture school - or have any advice to dispense based on this experience, because I got a great education, but I do acknowledge that my presentation style was both inadvertently disrespectful and a missed opportunity for thoughtful feedback.

I saw Jony Ive, head designer at Apple, give a rare interview at a conference a few years ago. He was sitting in front of a large Apple monitor that was displaying a slide show of products shots. He very simply said, with a gesture like “this” in front of the base of the monitor we’re all so familiar with and probably take for granted – “You have no idea how hard that was.” He was a man of few words in that interview. Introverted or guarding corporate secrets, or both. But that one quiet sentence revealed everything. Both his conviction about his work, and the battle he fought for it - which no doubt was against cost, fabrication challenges, and gravity. He might have given his life for it, from what I saw.

I never saw myself as a fighter, especially in design school. And I still find it hard to believe it about myself now. There still are tears (not typically in public) and it is my nature to avoid conflict. But not where the work is concerned.

And through the fights and battles, I’ve gotten a lot of support, to be sure. Like-minded designers with similar challenges. It also helps that we all stick together.

So, yeah, there’s a lot of difficult stuff to deal with in a design career or as an artist. But that stuff only forces you to do better work because you will only fight for work you believe in.

One of my dearest friends and mentors died recently. Red Burns, who was the founder and director of NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program for nearly thirty-five years, still one of the most innovative design and technology programs today. She welcomed the incoming students on the first day of the school year with a list of hopes for her students. They’re worth looking at in full online, but I’ll leave you with a few.

I hope:

That you combine that edgy mixture of self-confidence and doubt

That you make visible what, without you, might never have been seen

That you look for the question, not the solution

That you find what makes the difference

That you think of technology as a verb - not a noun

That each day is magic for you

I hope that you find a friend and mentor as phenomenal to you as Red was to me.

Lastly, I hope you’re the kind of people who take no one’s advice on anything. You listen, like I did, maybe quietly sitting in the back of the room, but you find your sphere moments here as students at PNCA and do work you don’t just believe in, but will fight for. That, at least, is my understanding now of how I got here.

You all made it here and I believe in you. Welcome class of 2017 and good luck!

MFA LRVS Lecture: Ryan Pierce

khanson@pnca.edu (PNCA) — Mon, 26 Aug 2013 21:13:00 GMT

Ryan Pierce’s vivid, large-scale paintings depict our world after the end of human industry. He draws on influences from ecological theory, literature, and folk art to create scenes that portray the resilience of the natural world. His work has been recognized by the Joan Mitchell and San Francisco Foundations, Art in America and Art Papers. Pierce is co-founder of Signal Fire, a group that facilitates wilderness residencies and retreats for artists of all disciplines.

“Ghost Dance Delayed,” by Ryan Pierce. 2012, Flashe, ink, and enamel on canvas over panel, 72 x 96 inches. Image via RyanPierce.net

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