Untitled Magazine

May Photo Highlights

khanson@pnca.edu (Killeen Hanson) — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 16:58:34 PDT

Every month or so, we present to you a few photos that capture the spirit of the community at PNCA. These snapshots celebrate recent accomplishments and memorable moments from life at the College.

So much is happening here. Thesis proposals and defenses. Commencement speeches and tassel-turning. Scholarships and departmental awards. Graduate exhibitions. An Annual Gala with trapeze artists and clanging percussion. Studio visits. A new issue of SUBMIT magazine. Summer art programs. Goodbyes, hellos, and fond memories of a great year. End-of-year street parties. Vacations and long, warm summer days.

Missed something? Or simply want to relive the experience? Check out the photos below.

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All images courtesy of PNCA’s Communications Office and Continuing Education Program. Photos by Matthew Miller ’11, Marissa Boone ’14, Micah Fischer ’13, and Sara Kaltwasser ’06. See more great photos from PNCA on the College’s Flickr site.

Studio Visit: Leslie Vigeant, MFA ‘11

khanson@pnca.edu (Killeen Hanson) — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 07:38:17 PDT

UNTITLED Magazine visits the working studios of PNCA students, faculty, staff, and alumni, taking a closer look at lives and spaces of sustained creative practice.

Sometimes it takes a little while for content to make its way through our editorial hopper and onto the page. Such was the case with this particular studio visit.

This past fall, Leslie Vigeant, MFA AC+D ’11, generously invited us into her basement studio to peek around and check out her (then) newest work. We joined her for a mid-morning tea and talked about dreams, doppelgangers, and exploring different mark-making techniques. Since then, most of the works-in-progress we saw that day have made it onto gallery walls in one of the numerous shows Vigeant has had since our visit. Looking at her website, you can see the finished versions of many of the pieces pictured below.

Vigeant came to PNCA as part of the inaugural class of the MFA in Applied Craft + Design (a joint program with Oregon College of Art and Craft) as a painter. Vigeant set up her home studio in her basement when she graduated in 2011 and has worked as a studio painter and illustrator since then.

“I had just gotten out of school and needed a place to be,” said Vigeant. “Nobody comes down here. I just kind of got all private. I’m alone and I like it. When I started the studio, I had other chairs down here, I thought it could be a little lounge. But I’m the only one down here. I don’t need four chairs.”

She looked around the space and grinned. “It’s a mess. It’s like the whole room’s about to explode.”

Click on the images below to see them larger. Use your arrow keys to navigate between images.

All photos by Wayne Bund, MFA VS ’10.

On the walls and shelves are evidence of past projects: vials of brightly-hued marmoleum powder and other glass bottles from her thesis project, Material Rescue League. A “lace” room divider made out of stretched and melted plastic bags. Cyanotypes and embroideries from artist friends cover the walls. Each project blends into the next.

Since graduation, Vigeant has returned to her painting practice.

“Painting was a skill I had and I hadn’t done it in a long time. Before I went to grad school, I felt I knew how to paint. That I couldn’t learn anymore. And then I went to school and realized how stupid that was. There’s always something new to learn.”

She laughed.

“I always do this. I work a lot, and then I start changing what I was doing… it’s just part of the learning experience,” she added. “I need to find a way to merge them and bridge these more traditional looking paintings with these more open spaces. But you can see the progression, where it’s all coming from, where it’s going.”

“Painting is something I always go back to. Maybe it’ll be a constant. Or not. Maybe I’ll be working with stop motion animation. But it’s the one consistent form of making that I’ve always done.”

When we visited, Vigeant was working on a number of paintings for a show at Lizard Lounge in NW Portland [“Strangers,” Oct 2012]. She points to a recently completed portrait of her mother and sister.

“With this painting, I let myself do things I was nervous to do,” Vigeant said. “I have to talk myself off the edge all the time. I just really let myself do it with this piece. I put some pencil marks down at the beginning and I wanted to erase them immediately. I get really precious about things immediately. I want everything to be so presentable, despite the chaos it’s all housed in. But I just let this one ride. I left the pencil marks. I mean, Giacometti left the pencil marks.”

“I love the freedom of that painting, how open and washy it is. Sometimes I feel the pressure to fill every space – there are so many layers in that painting. I work in layers, but they’re just so watery you don’t see them. It’s so open, but it’s framed, and there’s a contradiction there that I like.”

Vigeant took advantage of the two years of grad school by launching herself into unfamiliar media and subject matter. She worked with discarded materials (thrifted textiles, copper pipes, and plastic bags, for example), explored encaustic, and experimented with different branding strategies. Her graduate practicum project, titled Material Rescue League, played with ideas of recovery and rehabilitation through the treatment of discarded goods. Through an internship with Portland Recology, Vigeant sourced objects from the city landfill, transformed those objects into raw material, and packaged and rebranded the resulting material.

The project grappled with what Vigeant called “material classism,” which she defines as a prejudice or discrimination against certain kinds of materials based on their history, wear, or source location.

“I obviously like different materials,” she explained, “and like to express myself, to exercise skills in different materials, like collage. I love collage because I can be really wacky with it. Basically, if it makes me laugh, I do it. I love sticking people in little objects, or other absurdities. Whatever it is I can do [with collage], I’m really into it.”

The photo imagery Vigeant uses in her collaged works on paper has informed a number of her larger painting projects. She keeps the photos in piles, depending on how much she like them. A photo of a woman hunting appeared in Ego. Two women in classic Pendleton jackets appear in Emma and Aurora. Another example is a photo Vigeant sourced during her Recology internship. The photo shows a young girl, whom Vigeant has named “Sue.”

Something about Sue’s face, or stance, or solitude in the photo captured Vigeant’s visual imagination and she’s used Sue in a number of drawings and large-scale oil paintings. On one small panel, three Sues stand side by side as eerily identical triplets. On another, a solo Sue rests against a blue and white horizon line.

“I like to beat an image to death. I find every different way for me to get my arms around what I like about an image. I’ll do a big drawing, and then a watercolor, and ultimately make an oil painting. In some cases, I’ll have fifty versions of something.”

In many ways, Vigeant explains, she’s used the people she finds in old photos as a stand-ins or symbols for herself.

“I think of these as alter egos.”

Vigeant’s work recently shifted significantly when she began to use her own face in her paintings.

“I just had to face the facts,” Vigeant explained. “I’ve been painting all these other people and thinking about myself when I was painting them. I was avoiding painting myself.”

Click on the images below to see them larger. Use your arrow keys to navigate between images.

All photos by Wayne Bund, MFA VS ’10.

Currently, Vigeant is working on a series of paintings inspired by imagery from the Dust Bowl and jackrabbit hunting.

“For two years, all through grad school, I was having nightmares about tsunami waves,” Vigeant said. “These waves were huge, just huge. And then I was at Powell’s and saw a book on the Dust Bowl. Immediately, my stomach dropped. I thought, ‘Oh my god. That’s it. It’s that thing. That’s the image I see at night.’ It was almost déjà-vu. The waves in my dreams were on the scale of a dust storm, way bigger than a four-story building.”

She elaborated. “I think the dust storm dreams were about my feeling a lack of control in my life and over the things around me. The epic nature of the images of the Dust Bowl really resonated with my dreams.”

In her research around the Dust Bowl, Vigeant encountered stories of massive plagues of jackrabbits. In order to combat the hundreds of thousands of jackrabbits that overran the Dust Bowl states in 1935, some towns staged “jackrabbit drives” in which townsmen herded the rabbits in pens and smashed them to death with clubs and baseball bats.

“I saw pictures of all these people murdering, brutally killing rabbits. It was disgusting, but it obviously struck me,” said Vigeant. “I was interested in the symbolism of rabbits in art. Rabbits, in my eyes at least, always signaled wealth or affluence. Then there are ideas around rabbits multiplying and boxing rabbits… Which, interestingly, are usually female rabbits, boxing away over-friendly males. You wouldn’t think that. You think of Thumper’s girlfriend [from Bambi]. It’s a gender/role-reversal, the same way images of women in pants and holding guns in the 1920s reversed the usual order of things.”

Today, Vigeant is finishing up the last of her Dust Bowl/jackrabbit series in preparation for a class at Anderson Ranch later this summer.

“I’m working towards getting more in my head about what I’m making and why to get ready for this critique course.”

Vigeant is also playing with using words in her paintings. In her work for the Applied Craft + Design program, she’s been able to exercise a few graphic design muscles.

“I’ve never used text in a painting before because I felt people always looked at the word, not the image,” said Vigeant. “I always want to keep feeding myself, to keep exploring. I try all these different techniques and they all feed my painting. I learned to work with material and branding [in Material Rescue League], and then, a few years later, graphic design appears in my paintings. I learned Photoshop and now some of my paintings look like I’m manipulating them digitally. I learn these skills, and then bring them back to the painting.”

You can follow Vigeant on her website.

The Class of 2013!

khanson@pnca.edu (Killeen Hanson) — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 16:58:11 PDT

Congratulations graduates!

Check out the gallery below for a selection of portraits of this year’s graduating class. The full collection of portraits (including those of the entire group) are available through the link below.

All images courtesy of Megan Holmes Photography. Photos by Megan Holmes. You can see the full collection of Graduation photos here and look through more great photos from PNCA’s photo archive on the College’s Flickr site.

Big Dreams for the Future

khanson@pnca.edu (Killeen Hanson) — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 16:23:18 PDT

Talk about the Transformative Power of Creativity:

PNCA students have big dreams for their futures – dreams for careers, projections, and collaborations which will transform lives and cities. They are painters, innovators, sculptors, filmmakers, illustrators, animators, writers, designers, and question-askers. They are curious. They think creatively. They hold up a lens to the world and show us what works, what’s broken, and how we can make it better. PNCA equips students to achieve those dreams.

Since PNCA was founded in 1909, PNCA has graduated 3533 artist and creative thinkers. These graduates have left their mark on the world in ways both large and small. The students featured in this video represent the the many talented thinkers, makers, and educators in the PNCA student body and alumni family. Their voices demonstrate the potential of a creative education.

Thank you for supporting the students of PNCA.

PNCA Students Dream Big

PNCA Students Dream Big from PNCA – Pacific Northwest College on Vimeo.

Video production by Janique Robillard, Paulius Kontijevas, Harrisen Howes, Alison Grayson, Shawn Willis, Jake Lyon, Raven Flemming, Killeen Hanson, and Alisha Sullivan.

Featuring Kyla Mucci, MFA AC+D ’13, Laura DeVito, MFA CD ’13, Marshall Astor, MA CT+CR ’13, and Nicolo Gentile ’14.

Produced for PNCA’s 2013 Annual Gala at Vigor Industrial to support student scholarships on June 1, 2013. Learn more about PNCA and our vibrant community of talented faculty, mentors, and alumni at pnca.edu.

You can watch this and other PNCA videos on PNCA’s Vimeo page.

2013 Joan Shipley Civic Imagination Award

khanson@pnca.edu (Killeen Hanson) — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 17:06:36 PDT

On June 1, 2013, Pacific Northwest College of Art presented the 2013 Joan Shipley Civic Imagination Award to the Maribeth Collins Family. The Award recognizes inspiring civic leaders who have demonstrated significant, lifelong achievement in imagining, creating, and promoting a vibrant cultural and educational community in Portland and throughout Oregon. The award, presented to the Maribeth Collins Family by PNCA president Tom Manley and John Shipley, honors the late Joan Shipley, whose visionary leadership made an indelible impact on Portland. Like Joan Shipley, Maribeth Collins and her entire family embody philanthropy as a value and have dedicated themselves to promoting fairness, opportunity, education, and creativity as the heart of a strong and vibrant community. Truman Collins, Jr. accepted the award for the family.

“At a time when our capital campaign is enjoying real momentum, it was a great night to celebrate the kind of stalwart support that women like Dolly Lemelson, Maribeth Collins, and Joan Shipley have provided the College and the greater Portland community for so many years,” said Tom Manley, president of PNCA. “Thanks to them and the hundreds of supporters who enjoyed the Gala with us, we celebrated both how far PNCA has come in 104 years and our vision for its dynamic future.”

2013 Joan Shipley Civic Imagination Award

2013 Joan Shipley Civic Imagination Award from PNCA – Pacific Northwest College on Vimeo.

Video production by Janique Robillard, Paulius Kontijevas, Harrisen Howes, Alison Grayson, Shawn Willis, Jake Lyon, Raven Flemming, Killeen Hanson, and Alisha Sullivan.

Featuring Tom Manley, Lee Kelly ’59, and Cynthia Addams.

You can watch this and other PNCA videos on PNCA’s Vimeo page.

2013 Juried Scholarship Award Winners

khanson@pnca.edu (Killeen Hanson) — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 10:59:06 PDT

Siteworks Scholarship $2,500

Awarded on an annual basis, the Siteworks Outstanding Artist Scholarship was created by Jean-Pierre Veillet ’97, a PNCA alum and owner and founder of Siteworks Design/Build firm in Portland.

Shannon Willis ’13

“Sexnology,” by Shannon Willis ’13. Photo via the artist’s website.

William Jamison Scholarship $1,500

Awarded on an annual basis, the William Jamison Memorial Scholarship was created in memory of William Jamison, a passionate supporter of the arts and a devoted member of our community. Jamison, a well-known Portland art dealer who passed away in 1995, was pivotal in the development of Portland’s River District and in founding “First Thursday,” Portland’s monthly, art-focused street fair.

Courtney Coles ’13

Self portrait by Courtney Coles ’13. Photo via artist’s website.

Wilbur Larson Scholarship $1,200

Awarded on an annual basis, the Wilbur Larson Memorial Scholarship was created in memory of Wilbur Larson, a passionate supporter of the arts and a devoted member of our community. Larson and wife Carole Smith-Larson were some of the Pearl District’s first residents and helped develop the blocks around Irving Street and PDX Contemporary.

Rachael Pearson ’15

Painting by Rachael Pearson ’15. Image via the artist’s blog.

Helen Director Scholarship $1,200

Awarded on an annual basis, the Helen Director Memorial Scholarship was created in memory of Helen Director, a passionate supporter of the arts, devoted member of our community, and mother to Arlene Schnitzer.

Kristi Krueger ’14

“Self-portrait,” by Kristina Krueger ’14. Image via Homeroom.

Nancy Tonkin Scholarship $1,000 each

Awarded on an annual basis, the Nancy Tonkin Memorial Scholarship was created in memory of Nancy Tonkin, a passionate supporter of the arts and a devoted member of our community.

Gabi DeLeon-Larson ’14 and John Summerson ’15

“Jambon d’ardennes” by Gabi DeLeon-Larson ’14. Image via the PNCA Illustration Department Tumblr.

“The Writing Process” by John Summerson ’15. Video via the artist’s website.

Nancy Tonkin Scholarship $500 each

Awarded on an annual basis, the Nancy Tonkin Memorial Scholarship was created in memory of Nancy Tonkin, a passionate supporter of the arts and a devoted member of our community.

Morgan Carver ’14 and Molly O’Leary ’15

Monotype by Morgan Carver ’14. Image via Homeroom.

Sculpture by Molly O’Leary ’15. Image via MIMI.

Creative Intelligence and the Art of Reframing of the Future

khanson@pnca.edu (Killeen Hanson) — Fri, 31 May 2013 14:49:46 PDT

Welcome to you all and congratulations to the Class of 2013 and congratulations to your parents, families, friends, and mentors who have supported you in your journey to this day.

Welcome also, of course, to our honoree and speaker, Roger Mandle, and to the members of the talented PNCA community—Governors, faculty, staff, alumni and students. I want to take this moment to acknowledge especially our dedicated faculty and staff, whose commitment to your education, graduates, has been unflagging and passionate.

Let me start with a little informal poll. How many people in the audience, other than our graduates and faculty, have a portfolio of their creative work? Graduates? Faculty? OK. We’ll get back to that.

Graduations may be time-honored occasions with rituals and regalia rooted deeply in the past, but we cannot deny that current times present different and perhaps greater challenges to college graduates and their families than ever before. So even at the beginning of this celebration, we need to acknowledge two things.

First, that to get here today has required real sacrifice, courage and commitment on your part and, in many cases, on the part of your families and loved ones. We stand in admiration of your perseverance and gratitude for the gift of your creative effort.

Second, tomorrow you will face new questions, uncertainties, dilemmas and unknowns. And unlike graduates in prior eras, the very value of what you have worked so hard to claim—a college education—is being called into questioned and not without good reason.

The news media is filled with reports about the unsustainably high cost of postsecondary education and the related rising student debt, which has surpassed one trillion dollars. In a post recession world, where the economic landscape is radically altered, how will new graduates find employment, pursue careers, and make lives that are meaningful and manageable? In such, times some ask, is an investment in a college education wise?

My answer to the value question is not and never has been an unequivocal “yes.” Rather, I would tell you it depends largely on how you choose to use and grow what you have worked so hard to learn with your faculty at PNCA. To think that we can measure the lifetime value of learning in terms of the first job you find six months after graduation is symptomatic of what is wrong with much of our approach to an educational system that generally suffocates creativity and confuses standards with standardization. This is a huge flaw in my opinion of the media and government critique of education.

And, mind you, I am very much a proponent of reshaping the higher education system to make it affordable and more efficacious. Along with other schools of art and design, PNCA is engaged in an active discussion to reinvent that model through innovation. Our honoree and commencement speaker, Roger Mandle, is very much a part of that conversation. But as we know, there is a difference between the tools and techniques we acquire and the imagination, knowledge and talent with which we apply them.

But here is the unequivocally good news for you, graduates. Your faculty and your College believe you are not just prepared to meet the future, we are confident that you will be among those who invent it and that places you at a distinct advantage tomorrow. Why do we feel you are so well prepared?

Because based on the tools, techniques and knowledge you have developed here and HOW you have applied them, evidence of which abounds in the stunning thesis exhibition that awaits us after this ceremony, you have proven your capabilities to observe, envision, think, play, collaborate, experiment, fail, problem solve, iterate, prototype, stand in ambiguity, contextualize, critique, pivot, make and reframe. According to Bruce Nussbaum, author of Creative Intelligence, this last capability—reframing—may be the most powerful and relevant to current world circumstances because it allows people, especially people with a lot of creative intelligence, that would be all of you, to break the routine of “narratives that structure our lives…frames we were born into-–and even many of the ones we’ve created ourselves…In a world that doesn’t change much, in a time of relative stability, the need for reframing is not quite so urgent. But if you are enmeshed in narratives that don’t work, changing your frame just may be the first step toward changing your life” (92). And I would add, changing the world.

Now, how does this relate to finding a job? That will still take work, but we have to recognize that we are not in a time of relative stability. That’s why Thomas Friedman, the author and New York Times columnist and many others have echoed Nussbaum’s idea on reframing by emphasizing that in the current economy if you need a job you should have the skills to design one for yourself. As inventors and makers, you have those skills. In fact, a study commissioned by none other than IBM surveyed 1,500 CEOs from 60 countries and 33 worldwide industries and found that the most sought after capacity for “successfully navigating an increasingly complex world” is creativity. That’s creativity, not finance acumen, management discipline, linear thinking, or business degrees. No offense to anyone, I’m not making this up, this is IBM—International BUSINESS Machines talking.

The world needs people with creative intelligence and creative training, people with the highly human skills that can’t be performed by robots or easily outsourced. The world needs practitioners of creativity: painters, sculptors, animators, illustrators, writers, photographers, designers, printmakers, filmmakers—it needs makers. And here you are.

But there’s no GRE or GMAT test for creative intelligence so how will you prove yourself? Not to worry. It turns out that many leading companies (not just design firms) in search of creative practitioners aren’t interested in only seeing a resume—if they want one at all. They want to look at your portfolio, have your work “juried”, hear and see presentations; all things that you have done here and should continue to do and hone.

Let me conclude with a parting gift to you, one which we hope will keep you connected to our community. Starting this fall PNCA will establishing a new resource center called BridgeLab—an idea developed by one your fellow graduates, David Laubenthal—Where is Dave?

Among other things, BridgeLab will help current students and alumni span the gap between college experience and creative professional practice through mentorships, workshops, coaching in business and legal basics, entrepreneurial skills, and networking. It will be the regions first ever incubator dedicated to art, design and creative practice, a place where you can get assistance in how to grow your ideas as you invent your futures…and ours. It is bridge for you into the world and bridge that brings you back.

We wish you good luck, graduates. We are here for you always.

Thank you.

President Tom Manley delivers his introductory remarks at the 2013 Commencemnt Ceremony. Photo by Micah Fischer ’13.

What Did You Say? Thoughts about Contemporary Art

khanson@pnca.edu (Killeen Hanson) — Fri, 31 May 2013 14:33:36 PDT

What Did You Say? Thoughts about Contemporary Art

By Roger Mandle, PhD
for Commencement 2013, Pacific Northwest College of Art

It is an honor and pleasure to speak to you all today at Pacific Northwest College of Art. You are so fortunate to live and work in this community. Portland is an extraordinary city – no, it is a state of mind – that, with its heritage of beauty and civility, continues to inspire generations of creative people. Nurturing both right and left parts of your brains, Portland is the perfect location for a school as stimulating as PNCA. This jewel of a city is filled with cultural institutions and people that show what can be accomplished with the wit and resources to make positive differences in the lives of the citizens here. And at PNCA, you are lucky to have a great Board, President, and faculty, whose big ideas make sense in this intimate college.

I want to congratulate Tom Manley, who this year is celebrating his 10th anniversary as your President. During his time at PNCA, the College’s community has together made many improvements of the College both programmatically and spatially. Community service has been one of PNCA’s passions, through which many of you have contributed to the education, design functionality, and environmental sustainability of the region. C4D is a great example to other design schools of ways PNCA has helped to improve the region’s social and economic viability while giving students a chance to engage with clients in design services.

My talk today – “What did you say?” – is about making a difference in your own life, in the local community in which you live, and in the world at large. How is that possible? How can artists and designers help shape the future? Make people’s lives better today? I want to describe the attributes of a creative life, how they can be applied, and give you some encouragement to get involved with the important issues of your time.

Here it goes – the “Commencement Address.” I can see some of you now rolling your eyes, whispering to each other. I understand that commencement addresses are among the most forgotten lectures ever given. Right now, thousands – millions – of speakers’ words are echoing in the back of auditoria or college quadrangles. Their remarks are shouted over the heads of euphoric graduates and their relatives and friends who can’t wait for the ceremony to end so that they can give each other congratulatory hugs. At the last word of these addresses, after polite applause, the President will rise to award the degrees. Finally “it” is over. Commencement speakers’ words die with the often-repeated ideas they have represented. “This is not the end, it is just the beginning,” etc. etc. etc. Cliché after cliché rattle forth. “What did you say?” will be among the questions I may get following my address here today.

I do remember my own Commencement at Williams College; that is, I recall who spoke. Not what he said, but who he was. Our speaker was Robert McNamara, then Secretary of Defense, during the Vietnam War. His platitudes, whatever they were, were willfully ignored by my classmates, many of whom stood up and turned their backs to his words in protest. They were not protesting his remarks, but protesting his role in directing a needless war. Many of my graduating class never returned from the war in Vietnam that Robert McNamara managed. And I painfully recall also the thousands of Vietnamese and Cambodians who perished in napalm attacks on burned villages and rice patties during that war.

Now fifty years later, I see pictures in my alumni magazine of smiling college classmates sitting in cafes in Saigon as tourists, admiring the rich gentle friendly culture that has welcomed Americans back to their shattered land after we nearly destroyed it. Robert McNamara, now gone to his own reward, apologized in his later years for his role in stoking the war. “It was wrong, terribly wrong,” he said.

The artists and designers whose art protested that war, just like those whose work has been protesting the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, the conditions at Guantanamo prison, and similar matters today, help to remind others of their responsibilities to act in humane ways.

My point in sharing with you this bitter reverie, is to exemplify that what you do counts for more than what you say. In your own time, issues of world politics have become even more complicated and difficult than ever. Gun control, illegal wars and terrorism, gay marriage, the economy, immigration, racial politics, and the environment confront you now. What will be the issues you will face in the years to come? And what will you do about them? Of what value is your own voice as an artist or designer?

Okay. Now I come to the only words I want you to remember from my remarks today. It should be easy: you see these words on signs in airports, bus stations, and government buildings everywhere these days. They accompany our fearful nation’s recognition that no one is any longer immune to the world’s turmoil. Remember these words: “If you see something, say something.”

But every time you see these words, “if you see something, say something,” think about them in relationship to your roles as artists and designers – and as citizens of the world. In what you make and what you do, “if you see something, say something!” To put it another way, “if you see something, make something.” Have something to say through your work. This is the theme of my talk today.

Jeffrey Sachs, the internationally renowned author and Director of The Earth Institute, has written in his book, The End of Poverty, that it is now our generation’s turn “to advance the Enlightenment vision of Jefferson, Smith, Kant, and Condorcet.” Sachs lists four goals that we can pursue to better the world:

• “To help foster political systems that promote human well-being, based on the consent of the governed
• To help foster economic systems that spread the benefits of science, technology, and the division of labor to all parts of the world
• To help foster international cooperation in order to secure a perpetual peace
• To help promote science and technology, grounded in human rationality, to fuel the prospects for improving the human [and environmental] condition.”

As artists and designers we have a role in these goals. We can speak through our art. We can take lessons from our education and apply them in taking actions that help achieve Sach’s goals. And by speaking out we can assuage our own consciences as we become our generation’s witnesses to the tough issues of our day. Can we be quiet about the workers’ tragedy in Bangladesh, and design clothing that we know will be made in unsafe factory conditions? Can we paint landscapes of our magnificent coastlines and mountains, while these views are threatened by human interventions? Can we turn our backs on prejudice against people of other cultures than our own, while incorporating the power and charm of their art in ours? If we see something, we must say something in our lives and in our work.

In your education at PNCA you have been taught to see; and to see differently from others. You also have been taught to think differently. Or your natural tendency to think differently has been enhanced at PNCA. You have been applying your distinct thought processes to making things; solving visual problems. Many of these visual problems have been what I call “self referential,” in that they are about the process of making art. These are issues of composition, materials, texture, form, and function. You also have been exposed to history, literature, architecture, and scientific subjects that you’ve been challenged to integrate into your thinking.

Hopefully you’ve also been observing the world around you – the condition of humanity and the environment. As Charles Landry, author of The Creative City has written, “Creative people question rather than criticize, ask ‘why is this so?’ and are not content to hear ‘it has always been like this.’” In the same way that you have been taught to challenge your own perceptions, you can apply this creative skepticism to the conditions in the world you encounter. And your work can refer to issues outside the perimeters of your work. Thus your work becomes “world referential.”

Being worldly means being informed. It is easy as an artist or designer to become so absorbed in your own work that the rest of the world becomes distant and irrelevant to it. And to you. Yes, there is still a war in Afghanistan, terrorism in Boston, people living next door below the poverty line, more proof of global warming, etc. One can live on without all of these important issues impacting you directly. Yet the condition of the world affects us all; being informed can bring you to action. Frank Bruni wrote recently in The New York Times that “a clueless electorate is a corruptible one, and one that seems ill poised to make the smartest, best call…” Art that isn’t connected to urgent issues can be corrupted into slickness; art that isn’t backed by fact can become propaganda.

You probably have been encouraged at PNCA to inform yourself, and to become involved in issues of social change and community improvement, either on campus or in the environs of Portland. PNCA’s program in which some of you have participated, called the Applied Craft and Design program, attempts to motivate student entrepreneurs for change. Maybe this commitment to action is generational; more likely the need for artists and designers to use their talents and skills to help improve our society is very necessary now. Some schools are even calling their programs Design for Social Change, and teaching students “social entrepreneurship.” YoYo Ma’s Silk Road Project and Harvard University have just created fellowships to activate cultural entrepreneurs that will improve their social environment.

Why are art colleges pushing their students out of the studio into the “real world” to become social activists? Because you, like students in all art schools, have been trained to observe, process, and react in uniquely creative ways. By thinking “outside the box” you can add perspectives that are divergent from traditional means of solving community and world problems. Although your talents are useful to make art and design, they also could be applied to other aspects of life. Creative resolutions to business, social, and environmental concerns are your gift and your opportunity.

You may lack the answers to the important questions about which you are speaking through your art. If you only state these questions clearly in your work however, you may have already made an important contribution to society. Or your actions themselves could suggest new pathways toward answers to society’s problems. So much of the issues about which we ought to care seem so large that traditional organizations seem unable to cope, incapable of deciding what to do.

So many people in institutions, government, and business seem locked into ways of seeing and doing things that simply don’t work any more. Our national government now seems frozen. Legislators are locked in endless struggles without resolution while people with great need wait for action. Some politicians seem more interested in their own reelection than in serving the people who voted them into office. Some business leaders seem more interested in their own personal gain than in helping equalize opportunity for others. The haves seem to have pulled up the ladders, leaving those on the lower rungs without the resources to move upward toward success.

As artists and designers, you can bring fresh perspectives through your work that will motivate people to act on others’ behalf. In this climate of so much need, artists and designers have so much to offer. Yet there has always been the tension between art that pleases and art that challenges. Daniel Levy-Strauss has written, “…debates about the social utility of art generally break down into the age-old argument between the essential and the contingent: [between] being and doing. Art of the highest order just is. If [art] is expected to do something, it can only do so in a debased form and at the expense of its true nature. The clearest statement about this dilemma that I know shifts the argument just slightly, to the relation between doing and making. In De Monarchia, Dante says that “there are things to be done which are regulated by political wisdom, and things to be made, which are regulated by art.” Dante goes on, “This is not so much a conflict as a collaboration, since both realms are ‘handmaidens of speculation, as the supreme function for which the Prime Excellence brought the human race into being.’” Hannah Arendt said at an earlier juncture, ‘The conflict between politics and art…cannot and must not be solved.”’ This tension is for the good of humanity!

Salman Rushdie, the renowned activist author, has written in a New York Times op-ed piece recently, “It is a vexing time for those of us who believe in the right of artists, intellectuals, and ordinary affronted citizens to push boundaries and take risks and so, at times, to change the way we see the world. There’s nothing to be done but to go on restating the importance of this kind of courage, and to try to make sure that these oppressed individuals … are seen for what they are: men and women standing on the front line of liberty. How to do this? Sign petitions against their treatment, join the protests. Speak up. Every little bit counts.”

Every little bit does count. Your own artwork needs to carry messages of meaning as does your life – which will come from your work. Infuse your works of art with statements that teach, inspire, and motivate people to be concerned with the plight of others. Get involved with political movements – bring awareness to our two political parties of the issues of the day through your own artistic expression. Take to the streets, using yourselves as an example of what concern can mean as living forms of art. Live your lives as though they count as art; make your actions into art that carries meaning for others. Acts of citizenship can be expressed as art.

I am not suggesting that the only good art is political. A lovely landscape painting, a beautiful ceramic dish, a handsome layout of a new book: all these are a bulwark against incivility, and bring pleasure to many people. These works of art do say something that helps to remind us of the universal quest for humanity, peace, and harmony. If you are inspired by beauty, make something beautiful.

So I come back to the slogan: “If you see something say something.” By now I hope you will realize why you should remember this statement, and what you can do about it. If you see inequities among peoples, if you see intolerance and prejudice, if you see environmental degradation, you have an obligation as an artist to say something about it – either in your art, or in your actions. Be a force for change; make something happen. Manifest in your art and in your life the positive values of the arts themselves – openness, clarity, purity, breadth of understanding – and care.

What did I say? I said, in your art as in your life, “If you see something say something.”

2013 Commencement Address: Roger Mandle

PNCA is pleased to welcome art historian, curator, and educator Roger Mandle to deliver the 2013 Commencement Address May 26, 2013. Mandle is the Executive Director of the Qatar Museums Authority, and the former Director and Chief Curator of the National

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BCCTV Provides Video Workshops at Bud Clark Commons

lradon@pnca.edu (Lisa Radon) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 07:52:24 PDT

On Monday, June 10 at 7pm, a program of short video works will be shown on the big screen at the Hollywood Theater. Included in the program are personal documentary, live action horror, comedic sketches, fictional dramas, and a variety of animated shorts.. What they have in common is that they were all created by Portlanders who are now or who have experienced homelessness.

For a year now, a group of artists and designers, most of whom are affiliated with PNCA, have been in residence at the Bud Clark Commons, a center which serves people experiencing homelessness. It’s located just across Broadway from the future home of PNCA’s Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design. Every Saturday, these artist led workshops for clients at the Commons to teach them to make, edit, and share videos. The project was called BCCTV.

As the Saturday workshops and meetings progressed, five dedicated participants developed more elaborate works. David Boston, Sumaiyya Evans, Eugene Olson, John Pinney, Russell Waggener, conceived and produced individual works and others with the entire BCCTV group. These will be screened at BCCTV ON THE BIG SCREEN, Monday, June 10 at 7pm at the Hollywood Theater. Admission is free.

This unusual artist residency was funded by The City of Portland Percent for Art Program through the Regional Arts and Culture Council. BCCTV’s artists in residence included Carl Diehl, Ariana Jacob, Joan Lundell, Mack McFarland, and Jeffrey Richardson. Diehl teaches in PNCA’s Video and Sound program. McFarland is the curator of PNCA’s Philip Feldman Gallery and Project Space. Lundell received her MFA in Collaborative Design from PNCA. Ariana Jacobson and Jeffrey Richardson are social practice artist and filmmaker, respectively. Diehl, McFarland, and Richardson are members of the performance video collective Weird Fiction.

Two of the clients who participated in BCCTV have received scholarships to an accredited film school and another received permanent housing. And the program may continue. Carmen Denison is a student in PNCA’s MA in Critical Theory and Creative Research program. She has an internship with Transition Projects, one of the two organizations working out of Bud Clark Commons. And one aspect of her work at the Commons may be recruiting other PNCA students to both teach workshops and provide open hours to make equipment and editing software available.

Selected Works from PNCA’s Spring 2013 Submit Magazine

khanson@pnca.edu (Killeen Hanson) — Tue, 28 May 2013 12:56:43 PDT

Submit Magazine is an annual student-managed publication featuring original visual and literary works from PNCA’s community as well as submissions from visiting artists and writers. This year, PNCA offers awards in two categories for the most recent issue. These students continue the tradition of excellence among the student artists and writers published in Submit.

Congratulations to Laurel Cook ’13 (Literary Award) and Micah Fischer ’13 (Visual Art Award) and to runners-up Demian Dine’ Yazhi’ ’13 and Edward Trover, MFA VS ’13 (Literary Award) and Lorna Marissa Boone ’14 and Ally Hulsey ’16 (Visual Art Award).

The Spring 2013 Issue of SUBMIT, PNCA’s literary and arts magazine. Photo by Matthew Miller ’11.

Laurel Cook ’13 – Literary Award

Compacting Experiment
I hired a team of scientists
all well known professionals
experts known to the scientific community
chemists biologists alchemists philosophers
interested in the things
I expressed need in
pervertedly or otherwise
they laid me on a metal table
no arm or leg straps
no anesthesia or paper warnings
to sign
or lessons on breathing
to relieve pain
and they began folding me
knee over chest over ear over pelvis
face in my back and toes against my rib cage
writing numbers on a chalkboard for
for every impossible angle
dividing them by my determination
and then adding figures
depending on the levels of
fiction
in my requests

my breasts were on the cold metal
where the back of my calves
were before and my calves
were directly above them
and beneath where my neck was
fold after fold I took up less space
incrementally less every time
until I was a mere ball
twisted like rubber bands
twice as dense
and when they had gotten me compact enough
so that I made no sound
they brought you in
you picked me up
like an orange
and wrapped your fingers around me
and touched every single part of me
at once
in the way I had planned
and if I wasn’t immobile before
that would have stopped me completely

Demian Dine’ Yazhi’ ’13 – Runner-Up, Literary Award

Map to Bagby Hot Springs

Edward Trover, MFA VS ’13 – Runner-Up, Literary Award

Two Phrases Taken at Random from The New York Times

At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I won’t. I liked to read the dictionary in my eighth-grade English class. The furthest I got that I can remember was the word abominable. I mainly did it for the attention. I wanted to appear to be an intellectual. In high school, I was told by an upperclassman, now my wife, that I was brought up in discussion during her English class. The teacher, whom I admired and looked up to, stated that I was the most non-conformist student. This angered my future wife, for she knew that I was just like everybody else, just not like the people in our small town. I’m not sure Mr. Wright was wrong, but she was definitely right. Now, I prefer to use a thesaurus, arriving in a culture steeped with titillation.

Micah Fischer ’13 – Visual Art Award

Photo by Micah Fischer ’13.

Ally Hulsey ’16 – Runner-Up, Visual Art Award

Painting by Ally Hulsey ’16, via Submit Magazine, Spring 2013.

Lorna Marissa Boone ’14 – Runner-Up, Visual Art Award

Painting by Marissa Boone ’14, via Submit Magazine, Spring 2013.

There is No Safety

khanson@pnca.edu (Killeen Hanson) — Wed, 22 May 2013 14:51:13 PDT

When Portland-based poet Graham Murtaugh began his search for illustrators for his new book project, he looked no further than PNCA. With some help from Martin French, chair of PNCA’s BFA in Illustration program, Murtaugh connected with five recent PNCA Illustration alums and commissioned two pieces of artwork from each.

The resulting book, There is No Safety, is a compilation of new work by Murtaugh and features illustrations by PNCA students and alumni: Beth Austin ’11, Danny Frazier ’11, Lea Rebecca Karlsen ’12, Autumn Northcraft ’12, and Adriana Vawdrey ’12.

“I didn’t give them any direction,” Murtaugh explained. “Each of them picked a poem that they liked and responded to it through illustration.”

Murtaugh met with each of the artists after that first finalized illustration to talk about the artist’s process and details behind how and why each made the artistic choices he or she did. After that meeting, the illustrators returned to their studios and produced an additional finished piece. The book includes five poems, each accompanied by two illustrations, and one short story.

“I was impressed by the professionalism of all the artists,” Murtaugh said. “They were courteous. Everything was done on deadline or earlier. The quality of the work was really impressive.”

“Sackcloth and Ashes,” by Lea Rebecca Karlsen ’12.

PNCA’s Illustration Department, one of the fastest growing programs in the country, specifically prepares students to respond to texts through courses such as Word & Image, Narrative Image, and a Literature Seminar. These courses combine creative writing and illustration in order to explore the confluence of visual and verbal art, while addressing the need for the modern illustrator to be a multi-dimensional communicator. Over four years, students gain fluency in using writing to discover and articulate visual tropes, and using images to sharpen, deepen, and refine writing.

Text and image go hand in hand for a reason – when done well, each expands and nuances the other. Through the process of working with these five PNCA alumni, Murtaugh learned new things about his own work.

“The title, There is No Safety, is a line from one of the poems and speaks to the conviction that there is no guaranteed safety in the world,” Murtaugh explained, “either physical or emotional. But I like the fact that it also spoke to the collaborative process. I put a poem out there. An artist did something with it. I didn’t know what I’d get. That uncertainty echoes the idea of ‘no safety.’”

Murtaugh was so pleased with collaboration with PNCA alums that he hopes to work with them in the future. The book release is scheduled for June 6, and proceeds from the sale of the book will help to fund future projects and collaborations.

“We have Samantha Mash [Illustration ’13] in the pipeline for the next project, and I’m eager to meet other PNCA students and alumni,” said Murtaugh. “I like that these artists are young and not terribly well represented yet. This is an opportunity to give them a leg up and to help show their work.”

Look below for an excerpt from There Is No Safety:

“Phoebus and Phaethon #1,” by Autumn Northcraft ’12.

Phoebus and Phaethon

by Graham Murtaugh

I knew him when we were young.
I knew his darkened eye, his sad sneer
and defiant stance.

Once, behind the library, we kissed, cool
fingers along my throat. When he beat
that boy for talking shit he didn’t know
shit about (he always wore a patch
after that) I didn’t see

him for a while: expelled,
cast out, all over
anger at a father more
absent than my own.

Mine said, Good riddance.
Saying He deserves the truth
earned me a constellation
of bruises.

To wonder—not to know—is worse,
though his mother always promised;
he said she said royalty:
a king, a star, a god.

Afternoons alone together, hiding
in the belly of a gutted house,
each window a face—god, king, father—
each shattered by a shameful brick.

We’ll see, he said.

Storm season raged that year,
left us wrung-through, blind, dark for days.
He was caught out one night, alone
on a crest, and struck:

twinned forks of lightning,
I heard, hurled from on high
lit him from within
(if you can believe it). I never

saw the body,
never said goodbye,
never thanked him
for the kiss.

Science and Art Intersect

khanson@pnca.edu (Killeen Hanson) — Fri, 24 May 2013 10:13:33 PDT

A few weeks ago, almost forty people from a wide swath of disciplines and specialties gathered in the MFA in Collaborative Design studios. It was more than your usual mixture of artists, though a healthy number of animators, illustrators, ceramists, painters, etc. were in the audience. Also present were four representatives from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and a healthy sprinkling of public policy makers, scientists, fisheries experts, and biologists. What brought them together was a shared interest in creative problem solving. Specifically, the challenges in communicating science (or other complex “wicked” problems) to a lay public and the role that artists can play in helping to distill and convey that information.

As one of the guests, William Stelle, Regional Director for NOAA Fisheries Northwest Region, put it, “This is exactly the pivot point where art and science evolve and turn into change. When you “normal” people, with your talents, take your understanding of the things we’re [NOAA specifically, or scientists more generally] wrestling with – how the landscape works, how streams and rivers and watersheds are interconnected, for example… You can take that stuff, this scientific, geeky stuff, and tell it a lot better. You can tell it in a way that really gets the point across, and immediately, in like two to five seconds. That’s not our strong point. It’s really hard for us. That’s where the opportunity for advocacy through art, for teaching or learning through art, occurs.”

Bird’s eye view of nearshore, shallow water habitat. A screenshot from the animated video for NOAA by Beryl Alee ’16 and John Summerson ’15. Image courtesy of John Summerson.

Stelle’s comments above were taken from a presentation he delivered at PNCA titled, “Communicating Science and the Role Artists can Play,” which explored ways in which artistic practices can support science and inform the public of pressing ecological concerns. The presentation and following discussion (including presentation of student work by PNCA students and alums Cameron Hawkey ’12, August Lipp ’12, Liliya Drubetskaya ’13, Ona Pitschka ’13, and Chelsea Stephen, MFA CD ’13) was largely inspired by a recent collaboration between NOAA and PNCA’s Animated Arts program.

Young salmon in natal environment. A screenshot from the animated video for NOAA by Beryl Alee ’16 and John Summerson ’15. Image courtesy of John Summerson.

“Because NOAA’s a scientific agency,” said Katherine Cheney, head of the agency’s regional communications team in Portland, in a recent press release from NOAA, “we tend towards technical language that turns people off. We need to communicate our science to a non-technical audience.”

And so NOAA turned to PNCA and to the College’s Animated Arts program for help. On the advice of Rose Bond, chair of the Animated Arts program at PNCA, NOAA sponsored a contest with a $1000 prize for the students with the strongest proposal. Where communicating news and other important information used to mean issuing a boring press release, today the possibilities are far broader. It’s a much richer challenge, one that can involve audio visual complexity.

Rose Bond works with Animated Arts students in the program’s lab space at PNCA. Photo by Matthew Miller ’11.

“Peter Schoonmaker [Chair of the MFA in Collaborative Design program] and I received an email out of the blue,” Bond explained. “Katherine Cheney, from NOAA’s Communications Office in Portland, wanted our students’ help in communicating the importance of shoreline restoration and shoreline health for salmon populations.”

As homeowners develop and clean up their shorelines, these kinds of habitats disappear. The messy waterfronts salmon like are replaced by nice lawns, bulkheads, and evenly raked gravel shores. But these makeovers are problematic. As NOAA explains in a recent press release, “young salmon facing a formidable two or three years in the ocean need vegetated, shallow water habitats with woody debris and rocks to stay cool, eat and grow, and escape predators as they transition to life in the ocean.”

The challenge, as NOAA put it, is finding a way to send this message to shoreline property owners in the Puget Sound and other places without getting so technical or preachy that landowners simply ignore the message.

Stelle said, “With us, you tend to get really technical, really careful, really bureaucratic language. It’s legally enforceable, but unintelligible to the normal person.”

Juvenile salmon exploring an altered landscape. A screenshot from the animated video for NOAA by Beryl Alee ’16 and John Summerson ’15. Image courtesy of John Summerson.

This past fall, NOAA and PNCA’s Animated Arts program invited students to submit storyboards and design sketches for the chance to produce a 45 second to 1:30 minute animated piece for the Federal agency communicating the importance of shoreline habitats to salmon populations. The contest was judged jointly by Animated Arts faculty and NOAA scientists.

The winner was Foundation student Beryl Alee ’16, who soon enlisted John Summerson ’15 to help with the animation and sound design. Alee will head up the art direction and background illustrations. Alee and Summerson will receive $1000 when the project is finished at the end of May.

NOAA presents an award check to Beryl Alee ’16 and John Summerson ’16 for their work on an animated video promoting shore rehabilitation and salmon preservation.

“It’s incredible,” said Bond. “Beryl’s a Foundation [first-year] student. She’d only ever taken beginning Time Arts. But she’s a crack animator and a smart girl. We were all really impressed by her work.”

“One of the most interesting things was seeing the initial sketches,” said Cheney. “I noticed that these fish were really anthropomorphic. What a great way to draw people in, to get people engaged. These fish look sad! The emotional hook gets you connected. That’s fantastic.”

“The world is proliferated by screens,” said Bond. “We’re training people not for Pixar or Disney, but to respond to those screens and to think about where it may go, what’s possible. Science, fine art, or whatever, animation allows you to go wherever you want. It’s limited only by your imagination.”

John Summerson, one of the student involved on the project agreed. “Animation can pack an emotional wallop. You can make anything happen. So it’s totally true: you can make salmon look sad. For example, Beryl drew this evil small mouth bass. Because it’s animated, you can make him look like the most evil small mouth bass ever. Some things are possible with animation that aren’t possible in video because you can coordinate all of it, choreograph all of it.”

Michael Tehan, another of the visiting NOAA scientists said, “Walking around your campus, looking at the art on the walls, in the rooms… You look and you know instantly what the message is. That’s why we’re so excited about these potential partnerships and collaborations.”

Bond agreed. “We try to offer options to students that are real life. Collaborations, like this one with NOAA, that are real life. This is our first little foray in.”

Beryl Alee ’16 and John Sommerson ’15. Photo by Rose Bond, via NOAA.gov.

End of Year Party

khanson@pnca.edu (Killeen Hanson) — Tue, 21 May 2013 12:59:31 PDT

Despite the flurry of end-of-year events – Focus Week, Thesis exhibitions, locker clean-outs, Commencement – each year PNCA puts other deadlines on hold and pauses to celebrate another great year of art, students, and community with a everyone’s-invited celebration.

Last Friday, despite grey skies, the entire PNCA community turned out for an evening BBQ block party. The street was closed, spirits were high, the music was rockin’ (thanks to music by The Fasters, featuring bassist and PNCA librarian extraordinaire Dan McClure, Cat Hoch +Band, Grey for Days, and Big Girls), food and drinks plenty, and the raucously cheerful buzz of conversation could be heard from around the block. Student Services, who planned the entire event, organized shuttles to transport students back and forth to the Applied Craft and Design Practicum exhibition, Low-Residency MFA in Visual Studies chair Tracey Cockrell took to the stage with her accordion, and the PNCA sloth mascot chummed it up and handed out high-fives.

Check out photos from the event below, courtesy of Rachael Allen, and make sure to mark your calendars for next year’s party.

The PNCA community gathers on NW 13th Ave for the 2013 End-of-Year Party. Photos by Rachael Allen, Associate Dean of Student Services.

The Biggest Time: Michael Curry’s Outsized Imagination

khanson@pnca.edu (Killeen Hanson) — Wed, 15 May 2013 17:00:14 PDT

With a portfolio that boasts not one but two epic winged entrances (Britney Spears’ 2011 Femme Fatale concerts and Madonna’s 2012 Super Bowl performance) as well as endearing oversized puppet characters like Scrat from Ice Age, Michael Curry’s creations are always larger than life. It’s what the award-winning designer and his core team of fifty artists and technicians at Michael Curry Design have been known for ever since he made his big splash with costumes and masks for Julie Taymor’s Broadway production of The Lion King. That’s why, when an event requires kinetic flair and spectacle, producers turn to Curry. Over his 25 years of designing costumes, puppets, and productions using state of the art performance technologies, Curry has worked with The Walt Disney Company, Cirque du Soleil, The Olympics, and Universal Studios as well as a number of international opera and stage companies. He’s taken home four Emmys and a Tony, among other honors. Now the PNCA alumnus, who graduated in 1981, returns to his alma mater this June as Artistic Director for the 2013 PNCA Gala.

A scene from Julie Taymor’s “The Lion King,” the Broadway production that launched Michael Curry into the theatrical big leagues. Photo courtesy of Michael Curry Design.

As a child, Curry grew up among master builders, loggers, and woodworkers in Southern Oregon.

“I was raised in a faith-healing Christian group quite isolated from the world,” said Curry. “I never saw theater or had art exposure. We saw films at the drive-in. I could imagine and draw things at an early age, and it became my special thing. It was not taken seriously by my family until it was clear I could not stop.” Curry says that he has been dealing with ADD his entire life and that his world as a child was in great part fantasy.

At PNCA, Curry studied painting, illustration, and sculpture. He attributes his success in theater to the fact that he never studied it.

“The strong fine art background has served me well,” Curry says. “The focus on figure drawing gave me an insight into anatomy of man and animal. Critiques and discussions honed my verbal skills to enable my business.”

But his most striking memory of PNCA is of an unconventional intervention by a handful of PNCA’s most respected professors.

Michael Curry ’81. Photo courtesy of Michael Curry Design.

“After my first year in 1976, Paul Missal, George Johanson, Bill Moore, and Tom Fawkes explained correctly that I was too immature to absorb what they wanted to offer. They liked my work ethic but advised me to return the following year. They all were kind and gave me their advice, which ranged from hitchhiking around the country, which books to read, what art to see, etc. I did it all like a soldier and indeed returned a much improved art student. This mentorship has always touched me, and it is my best memory of the school. It is the teachers, not the place.”

Curry graduated from PNCA in 1981, and in 1986, he moved to New York City with his wife, intending to continue making paintings and sculpture.

“The energy of the city caused my work to burst open and start incorporating more of my skills. Movement and storytelling showed up in my work and boom! I was approached by theater folks who enlisted my skills to create unusual kinetic sculptures onstage,” Curry says. “My first attempts were transformative and converted me into the theater man I’ve become.”

When his work was displayed in galleries, Curry was keenly aware of how few people saw his work. In contrast, he says, “In the theater every night at 8:00pm, I have a warm feeling that tens of thousands of people are seeing my work in service to great, uplifting storytelling.”

The Ice Bear from the Opening Ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, BC. Photo courtesy of Michael Curry Design.

April Photo Highlights

khanson@pnca.edu (Killeen Hanson) — Thu, 09 May 2013 12:28:09 PDT

Every month or so, we present to you a few photos that capture the spirit of the community at PNCA. These snapshots celebrate recent accomplishments and memorable moments from life at the College.

After a month of exceptional weather, blue skies, and classes moved ‘en plein air,’ it’s a particular pleasure to look back at April through our photographers’ eyes and re-live spring at PNCA. The past month included lectures from such notables as Rebecca Solnit for the 2013 Edelman Lecture, and readings by Chuck Palahniuk, Lidia Yuknavitch, and Tom Spanbauer to celebrate the launch of PNCA’s new BFA in Writing. April also saw incredible progress on ArtHouse, the College’s new student housing community, which will open to its first class of residents in Fall 2013. Students took trips off campus: some to Westwind for the CT+CR Spring Colloquium, and others to Leland Iron Works, the Oregon City-based studio and property of Lee Kelly ’59, where they camped for four nights and built a sweat lodge. Young artists in PNCA’s youth arts program smiled and hammed for the camera, while BFA classes toured local galleries with alumni mentors.

You can sense the increase in momentum around campus as the academic year crescendos. Check back next month for photo peeks into graduate thesis exhibitions and performances, and Commencement festivities.

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All images courtesy of PNCA’s Communications Office and Continuing Education Program. Photos by Marshall Astor, MA CT+CR ’13, Wayne Bund, MFA VS ’10, Matthew Miller ’11, Clinton Chambers ’13, Micah Fischer ’13, and Sara Kaltwasser ’06. See more great photos from PNCA on the College’s Flickr site.