Category Archives: Events
Guest Entry: Roxie Vizcarra at the Pictopia Festival!
Editor’s Note: This guest entry comes from Illustration Senior Roxie Vizcarra, who participated in the Pictopia/Pictoplasma Festival in Berlin, Germany this past March.
When the Illustration Department invited me to help represent them at this year’s Pictopia Festival (part of the acclaimed character design organization Pictoplasma), I was excited to be able to visit a city I’ve never been to, especially one with some much history as Berlin. What I didn’t know at the time was that there couldn’t have been a more perfect location for Pictopia to take place. It’s impossible to go very far without encountering some form of art that incorporates strong character design.
I spent a couple of days watching over Parsons’ exhibition, Ugly is Beautiful, at the Collegium Hungaricum, which also featured work by other Pictopia Character Walk artists. The set-up for the show was long and tedious, but in the end it was worth the effort as everything looked fantastic, and I can attest to the fact that most people who came by to have a look were rather impressed by the variety of unique characters Parsons students have to offer.
Jillian Tamaki gives a MoCCA/Mini-Comics workshop!
What: Mini Mini-Comics Workshop!
When: Saturday, April 25 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Where: 8th Floor Illustration Library, 2 W. 13th
Who: Jillian Tamaki and YOU!
Come learn about comic conventions, the comics industry, self-publishing, and constructing your own zines, artbooks, and mini-comics. A great introduction to those considering submitting work to this year’s MoCCA Festival! Some people think these conventions are only about comic-comics (pictures in panels), but Jillian has amassed a huge collection of books at these types of festivals that run the whole gamut of arty, comic-y, narrative, non-narrative, silkscreen, photocopied, etc. etc. She will also talk about her experiences making her first mini-comic and how she did it SOOO wrong. She’ll talk about how to construct these things in a non-painful way. Plus, she’ll answer any other comics industry related questions!
Don’t miss this truly great opportunity to meet with Jillian and get the benefit of her experiences!
Parsons Reunion Weekend
Parsons Reunion Weekend 2009: April 17-19, 2009
The Parsons Reunion is for all alumni (all class years, all programs) and is an annual opportunity to gather your classmates, reconnect with Parsons, and network with fellow alumni. We encourage you to take the weekend to reconnect with Parsons and your fellow alumni. See below for information about the various events, ticketing, and more.
This year, 2009, is also a special reunion for the classes of 1959, 1969, 1974, 1979, 1984, 1989, 1994, 1999, and 2004!
Friday, April 17
8:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. View Spanning the Decades: 100 Years of Student Work from the Kellen Archives in the Gimbel Library. On display will be examples of student work from 1906 through 2007, including sketches, travel diaries, presentation drawings, and more. Departments and disciplines represented in the exhibit include Advertising Design, Communication Design, Costume Design, Environmental Design, Fashion Design, Graphic Design, Illustration, Interior Architecture & Design, Product Design, Printmaking and Photography.
4:00-5:00 p.m. Tour Parsons’ Kellen Archives. The Kellen Archives documents the history of Parsons, with materials including archival records, manuscripts, posters, art and design works on paper, oral histories, photographs, films, videotapes, serials and ephemera. Wendy Scheir, Director of the Kellen Archives, will lead the tour and answer alumni questions about the materials. An RSVP to alumni@newschool.edu or 212-229-5662 x3784 is required for this event. Please indicate your class year or any questions you have about Parsons history when you RSVP, as the information on display will be specially geared towards alumni attendees. For more on the Archives, click here.
5:00 -8:00 p.m. Visit Parsons’ Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at 66 5th Avenue. In the Aronson Gallery you’ll find a student project called “Oyster Gardens” led by faculty member Mara Haseltine. In the Kellen Gallery you can view “Into the Open: Positioning Practice,” which is coming from the Venice Biennale of Architecture.
6:00-8:00 p.m. Join Felicitas Oefelein ’95 and Christine Leitner ’95 for a reception celebrating the launch of their new website, DESIGNintermix, a networking resource for designers.
Continue reading
Ben Katchor’s “A Checkroom Romance” adds second show!
New York Public Library – Cullman Center presents
A Checkroom Romance by Ben Katchor and Mark Mulcahy
Wednesday, May 13, 2009 at 7pm SOLD OUT
Just added: Friday, May 15, 2009 at 7pm TICKETS AVAILABLE!
5th Avenue and 42nd Street
New York, NY 10018
In this new, musical tragicomedy by cartoonist Ben Katchor and musician Mark Mulcahy, one man’s casual obsession with the architecture and culture of coat checkrooms ensnares him in a desperate struggle between employment agents, maitre ‘ds, lovesick podiatrists, low-budget contractors, and paraphilic playboys.
A Check-Room Romance was commissioned by the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.
Order tickets online here or call 212.868.4444.
Tickets: $15 general admission/$10 Library Donors, Seniors and students with valid ID.
Humbug (Arnold Roth and Al Jaffee) at the Strand tomorrow
An Evening with HUMBUG at the Strand, April 14th!
FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS AND THE STRAND PRESENT: AN EVENING OF HUMBUG
In 1957, five artists — Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder, Arnold Roth, Al Jaffee and Jack Davis – hot on the heels of creating MAD magazine, pooled their money and their talent and entered into the creative, exuberant folly of a lifetime by creating the greatest satirical magazine of their careers. Join HUMBUG co-founders Arnold Roth and Al Jaffee in a book signing and discussion about this historic publication with Fantagraphics Publisher and editor of the collected HUMBUG, Gary Groth. Attendees will also enjoy an exclusive screening of a documentary short film about the late Will Elder.
An Evening with HUMBUG
Featuring Arnold Roth and Al Jaffee in conversation with Gary Groth
Tuesday, April 14, 7:00PM
The Strand Bookstore
12th St. & Broadway,
New York, NY
Devil’s In The Details Group Art Show Opening at Giant Robot New York
Giant Robot is proud to present Devil’s in the Details, a 10-person group art show. Contributors range in artistic styles and backgrounds, from illustration and graphic design, to graffiti and fine art. Representing some of the most prolific and engaging voices in the art world today, each artist has created new original works for this show.
Participants include:
- Sean Boyles – Applying his loose, yet honed style to drawings, paintings, printmaking, and even photos and videos, Boyles has the uncanny ability to make carefully composed depictions of the street appear effortless.
- Ako Castuera – Castuera depicts a hyper-colored, gravity-defying world that is somewhat terrifying but also super fun. When she is not making her own art, she is a character artist for the Metacopalypse animated TV series.
- French – Utilizing a distinct, finely detailed method to his drawings, French’s subjects include the morbid, the classic, the contemporary, and the strange, all executed with care and precision.
- Maxwell Loren Holyoke-Hirsch – One of the hardest working artists in the art scene today, Holyoke-Hirsch has maintained his artistic vision and expanded on his style while showing in galleries around the world.
- Andrew Holder – The patterns and shapes of Holder’s art are as distinct as the compositions he creates with both. Continually making work that exemplifies the direction of modern art, Holder most recently graced the cover of Arkitip.
- Jordin Isip – Isip’s mixed media work combines the look of raw sculpture with simple, modernist design, and graces book covers, album covers, and magazine articles. [Parsons Illustration faculty!]
- Yellena James – In her artwork, James combines complex abstract forms to form larger images that take on lives of their own. Her colorful arrangements of organic shapes and tangled lines are at once floral and alien, organic and sci-fi, crafty and fantastic.
- Jeremyville – Art, product design, animation–Jeremyville seems to do it all, and always with his trademark, innovative style and sophisticated presentation. His work has been shown around the world, and he continues to fill galleries with art that defies definition.
- David Jien – Still developing as an art student, Jien’s pencil drawings incorporate a dream like world that embraces such elements as graffiti, aliens, and the people around him.
- Matt Lock – At once, Lock’s colorful, heavy metal-inspired paintings recall the crudest of notebook doodles with the most epic sci-fi landscapes. They are simple, stunning, and thought provoking.
Devil’s in the Details
April 11 – May 6, 2009
Reception: Saturday, April 11, 2009 at 6:30 p.m.
Giant Robot Gallery
437 East 9th Street
Between 1st Ave. & Ave. A in the East Village
New York, New York 10009
(212) 674-GRNY (4769)
grny.net
Submit your poster idea for Make Music New York!
Make Music New York, a unique, free outdoor celebration called “the largest music event ever to grace Gotham” (Metro New York), is now accepting proposals for a visual identity and urban intervention for this yearʼs festival, taking place on Sunday, June 21, 2009.
Over the last two years, Parsons students have designed the festivalʼs logo, websites, posters, and advertisements, appearing in Time Out New York, Metro New York, amNewYork, Filter Magazine, and more. This year, we are asking not only for designs to use in the media, but also for a related urban intervention, existing alongside the musicians on June 21st, who will perform on the streets, sidewalks, parks, plazas, and cemeteries of New York.
Please submit very short proposals, of no more than 2 pages (in PDF format), to makemusicny@gmail.com by April 15th. Proposals should have two parts: (1) a sketch of a poster design, and (2) a description of an urban intervention, to take place at a large number of concert locations on June 21st. There is no limit to the number of proposals you can submit.
Shortly after April 15th, the Make Music New York board of directors will choose the most promising proposal, and ask the designer to complete the poster design (by May 15th), and implement the urban intervention (by June 21st). The chosen designer will receive recognition in our e-newsletter, press release, and websites, credit on the poster, and a check for $350.
ABOUT MAKE MUSIC NEW YORK
• All concerts take place outdoors, at 400+ locations throughout NYC on Sunday, June 21st — the first day of summer. Most musicians perform on sidewalks; many perform in parks; some close off streets.
• Every genre of music is represented, performed by amateurs and professionals of all ages. Last year there were 875 performances by NY Philharmonic musicians, high school rock bands, circuit benders, Beijing Opera companies, big bands, punk bands, bluegrass bands, and more.
• The spirit of the event is free and spontaneous, much like Halloween. Instead of stages with high production values, people just show up and play. See photos at www.makemusicny.org.
ABOUT THE POSTER
• Metro New York will print 50,000 copies of a 4-color, 15″ x 22″ poster on newsprint, and include it in the concert listings as a centerfold.
• Musicians / locations should be able to personalize the poster to promote their concerts — please leave a blank section that can be filled with individual information (see example above–made by Parsons Illustration student Jay Moreno and Nicole Fowler).
• Posters should not lead audiences to expect a particular genre of music. They should be equally suited to classical music, punk rock, jazz, hip hop, etc.
• Posters should have some clear connection with the proposed urban intervention.
ABOUT THE URBAN INTERVENTION
• The intervention should be absurdly cheap.
• It should be present at a large number of MMNY concerts, in both street/sidewalk and park spaces, and should improve the festival experience in some way.
• The intervention should relate to the poster, and tie the various MMNY concerts together visually.
• The intervention can be consistently implemented. (For example, Carlʼs Carpet Warehouse donates 3,000 square feet of red carpet; each musician picks up a piece of carpet on June 20th and uses it as a “stage” on June 21st.) Or it can be a consistent concept, implemented in different ways. (For example, artists in each neighborhood design and weave carpets for their local musicians, with a different color scheme in each borough.) In either case, describe who will carry out the project, and how.
• The intervention should be legal. If youʼre not sure, submit it anyway, along with a backup proposal. Emily Colasacco from the NYC Department of Transportation will go over all submissions and ensure compliance with NYC regulations.
Questions? Email Aaron Friedman at aaron@makemusicny.org.
Good luck!
[Note: Make Music New York pigeon logo by Parsons Illustration student Danielle MacIndoe!]
Aftertaste3–New Agendas for the Study of the Interior
It is not hard to imagine an apartment whose layout would depend no longer on the activities of the day, but on functional relationships between the rooms… It takes a little more imagination, no doubt, to picture an apartment whose layout was based on the functioning of the senses. We can imagine well enough what a gustatorium might be, or an auditorium, but one might wonder what a visuorium might look like, or an olfactorium or a palporium.
Georges Perec, “The Apartment”, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces [1974]
London: Penguin Books 1997, 31.
AFTERTASTE 3, the annual international symposium dedicated to the critical review of Interior Design, intends to provoke a discussion about the richness of the senses and their role in the comprehension of space and inhabitation. Experimental in character, this conference aims to consider projects and ideas that stem from investigations into the workings of the senses.
Writer Georges Perec famously urged us to imagine separate rooms for taste, hearing, sight, smell and touch, yet one might also inversely challenge the primacy of visual perception by bringing the more peripheral and intertwined aspects of sensory experience into focus.
AFTERTASTE 3 will feature accomplished designers, architects, and artists whose work specifically addresses the complex and still relatively unexplored role of sentient perception in the imagining of interiors.
Here’s a list of participants:
James Auger
Robert Israel
Kent Kleinman
Robert Kirkbride
Joanna Merwood-Salisbury
Charlie Morrow
Jorge Otero-Pailos
Victoria Anne Rospond
Mayer Rus
Emily Thompson
James Tichenor
Sissal Tolaas
Sabine von Fischer
Joshua Walton
Alfred Zollinger
And here is a link to the full schedule.
Aftertaste 3
Friday, April 3rd, 3-7 p.m.
and Saturday, April 4th 10-7 p.m.
Parsons The New School for Design
Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Auditorium
66 5th Avenue, New York
Ariel Schrag and Gabrielle Bell at Desert Island Comics this Friday!
Gabrielle Bell and Ariel Schrag will appear at DESERT ISLAND BOOKS from 7 to 9 this Friday, March 27th, to celebrate their new books (“Cecil and Jordan in New York” and “Likewise”) with a slideshow/signing/book release party.
Friday, March 27th
7-9 p.m.
Desert Island Books
540 Metropolitan Ave
Brooklyn NY