Category Archives: Parsons

RESCHEDULED: NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium Present: Colette Gaiter

News, Parsons

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Colette Gatier on Emory Douglas:
50 years of Revolutionary Art

Colette Gaiter will talk about former Black Panther party artist, designer, and illustrator Emory Douglas’s work on The Black Panther newspaper in the 1960s and 70s. His subversive and proactive political cartoons and drawings visualized a movement and galvanized activism that persists into the twenty-first century.

Colette Gaiter is an Associate Professor teaching Visual Communication at the University of Delaware. After working in graphic design she became an educator, artist, and writer, exhibiting her work internationally and in galleries, museums, and public institutions in the United States. She wrote the introduction for the second edition of Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas, which also contains her essay on his work. Since 2004, she continues to write about Douglas’s work including his current international human rights activism.

The 161st meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium with Colette Gatier has been rescheduled to Tuesday, October 18th, 2016 at 7pm at Parsons School of Design, The New School, 2 West 13th Street, in the Bark Room (off the lobby).
Free and open to the public.

Pictoplasma Returns to Parsons!

News, Parsons

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5th 

PICTOPLASMA NYC 2016

Conference on Contemporary Character Design and Art

November 4th, 2016

Parsons School of Design

The Auditorium, Alvin Johnson/J.M. Kaplan Hall

The New School

66 West 12th Street

New York, NY 10011

nyc.pictoplasma.com

***Please note there are a limited number of FREE seats for New School students, faculty and staff, but you must RSVP HERE. Once we’ve reached capacity the RSVP form will shut down. But you can find details on purchasing tickets at http://nyc.pictoplasma.com

Pictoplasma returns to New York City with a dense program of inspiring artist talks, state of the art animation screenings and lively panel discussions to celebrate the next generation of character design and art! Taking place November 4th at The Auditorium of renown Parsons School of Design, the conference invites artists, producers, animators, illustrators, character designers and all creatively curious, to network and exchange strategies for tomorrow’s visual culture. 

Speakers include graphic artist and illustration master-mind Jean Jullien (FR), whose iconic ’Peace for Paris’ symbol became an instant global meme; children’s book author and illustrator You Jung Byun (US), known for her detailed narrative and commissioned work inhabited by strange beasts and lost children; everyone’s favorite gif-wunderkind Julian Glander (US), creator of bubblegum-colored digital illustration, indie games and interactive artwork, all subsumed under the catchword ‘digital toys’; animator, writer, and producer Ben Bocquelet (FR), creator of the famed animation series ‘The Amazing World of Gumball‘; Martina Paukova (SK), illustrator with an incredibly fast-paced career, whose jam-packed images in a trademark palette and Memphis-inspired patterns mirror our mundane lives in the digital age; and Jaime Álvarez, renown for his 3D rendered Mr. Kat (PE) universe, fusing pre-Columbian with contemporary kawaii aesthetics.

The conference is co-hosted by Parsons School of Design and organized by Pictoplasma, the Berlin based annual Uber-Festival for Contemporary Character Design and Art. Prior to the conference’s 5th return to NYC, the Pictoplasma Academy will be hosting a week-long intense Character Design Development course in Mexico City. 

NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium Presents: Martha Rust

News, Parsons

Wheel of the ten ages of man – Psalter of Robert de Lisle (c.1310), f.126v – BL Arundel MS 83

Martha Rust on
Circles, Lines, and Coils:
Picturing Life Stories in Medieval Manuscripts and Rolls.

The set of all points in a plane that are equidistant from a given point, a circle is also an image of totality and completeness. Any two points in the circumference of a circle define a line, making a line the figure of connection and also of boundaries. A version of a circle, a coil suggests cycles as well as wholeness. By way of a separate etymology, “coil” also denotes the busy tumult of life, the “mortal coil” made famous by Shakespeare. All three of these design elements feature in medieval images and diagrams depicting typical life stories and exemplary life practices that were meant to aid a viewer in successfully negotiating that busy tumult. Among these works, images of the Wheel of Fortune are primarily pictorial while Wheel of Sevens diagrams based on the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer are primarily textual. In between are diagrams that feature a smaller circular element, the roundel. A look at the use roundels in a range of contexts–in stained glass, in Books of Hours, in genealogies–demonstrates that unlike the all-encompassing circle, the roundel isolates specific items of information and lends them visual emphasis.The use of roundels in a diagram displaying the ten stages of human life renders each a subject of contemplation, even as the lines connecting all ten roundels to a central hub pictures an individual life as part of a larger cycle. By contrast, the use of roundels of the “Pater Noster Table” in the Vernon Manuscript creates a visual hierarchy of information, in which the content of the roundels not only have priority over the lines of text that connect them but also become subject to a viewer’s mental manipulation.

Martha Rust is an associate professor of English at New York University, specializing in late-medieval English literature and manuscript culture. Her first book, Imaginary Worlds in Medieval Books: Exploring the Manuscript Matrix (Palgrave, 2007) envisioned the confines of a medieval manuscript as the potential territory of a virtual world; her current book project, Item: Lists and the Poetics of Reckoning in Late-Medieval England theorizes the list as a device that enables thinking in a variety of modes. She has also written about comics and picture stories in an essay entitled “It’s a Magical World: The Page in Comics and Medieval Manuscripts.”

The 161st meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2016 at 7pm at Parsons School of Design, The New School, 2 West 13th Street, in the Bark Room (off the lobby).
Free and open to the public.

NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium Presents: Seymour Chwast

News, Parsons

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As part of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium Parsons is happy to welcome our upcoming guest Seymour Chwast!

“Many of my illustrations and work that I do for myself fall under these categories. The subjects are graphically important to me.”
– Seymour Chwast on GOD WAR SEX

Seymour Chwast is co-founder of Push Pin Studios and has been director of the Pushpin Group where he reintroduced graphic styles and transformed them into a contemporary vocabulary.  His designs and illustrations have been used in advertising, animated films, and editorial, corporate, and environmental graphics.  He has created over 100 posters and has designed and illustrated more than thirty children’s books.  His work has been the subject of three books including, Seymour Chwast: The Left Handed Designer (Abrams, 1985).  Many museums, such as the Museum of Modern Art (New York) and the Library of Congress (Washington D.C.) have collected his posters.  He has lectured and exhibited worldwide and is in the Art Directors Hall of Fame. He is the recipient of the 1985 Medal from the American Institute of Graphic Arts.

 

The 160th meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016 at 7pm at Parsons School of Design, The New School, 2 West 13th Street, in the Bark Room (off the lobby).
Free and open to the public.

Parsons Illustration’s Lauren Redniss awarded fellowship with New America

Parsons

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We are pleased to announce that Assistant Professor of Parsons Illustration Lauren Redniss has been awarded a fellowship with New America.

The New America Fellows program supports thinkers—journalists, producers, practitioners, and scholars—whose work enhances the public conversation about the most pressing issues of our day. The full roster of 2017 fellows can be found here.

“I am pleased to welcome this latest class of fellows to New America,” Peter Bergen, New America vice president and Fellows program director, said. “The work this group of fellows will produce embodies the core values of New America. Their journalism and scholarship communicates with broad audiences, changes the way we think about policy, and represents a diversity of backgrounds and expertise.”

Lauren Redniss, a writer and artist, will work on a visual nonfiction book that tackles the question of environmental stewardship and the struggle of indigenous communities in the 21st century American Southwest. She has been a Guggenheim fellow and Artist-in-Residence at the American Museum of Natural History. Her most recent book, Thunder & Lightning: Weather Past, Present, Future won the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. She was a finalist for the National Book Award for Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout, and is also the author of Century Girl: 100 Years in the Life of Doris Eaton Travis, Last Living Star of the Ziegfeld Follies.

Launch party for The Storyteller by Evan Turk

Alumni News, Parsons

storyteller09Books of Wonder is delighted to host the launch party for EVAN TURK‘s debut work as BOTH author and illustrator. You and your young readers and listeners won’t want to miss The Storyteller, an original folktale that celebrates the power of stories and storytelling by this 2015 Ezra Jack Keats New Illustrator Honor recipient.

Long, long ago, like a pearl around a grain of sand, the Kingdom of Morocco formed at the edge of the great, dry Sahara. It had fountains of cool, refreshing water to quench the thirst of the desert, and storytellers to bring the people together.

But as the kingdom grew, the people forgot the dangers of the desert, and they forgot about the storytellers, too. All but one young boy, who came to the Great Square for a drink and found something that quenched his thirst even better: wonderful stories. As he listened to the last storyteller recount the Endless Drought, and the Glorious Blue Water Bird, he discovered the power of a tale well told.

Acclaimed illustrator EVAN TURK has created a stunning multidimensional story within a story that will captivate the imagination and inspire a new generation of young storytellers. So make sure you’re here on Thursday, June 30th when you can meet EVAN TURK and have him sign copies of all of his wonderful picture books! Ages 3-6. Thursday, June 30th, 6-8pm.

PARSONS FESTIVAL: Illustration 4-D Class Screening, Mon. 5/16 3pm-5pm

Parsons

Monday, May 16, 2016, 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm
Bob and Sheila Hoerle Lecture Hall, University Center, UL10563 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10003

Parsons’ Undergraduate students in the Illustration 4-D Class are screening end of year presentations in The New School’s University Center lower level, room U L105.

The 4D CLASS SCREENING is a sampling of animation work by Illustration students from the Spring 2016 semester. Open to the public.

This event is sponsored by the School of Art, Media and Technology and is part of Parsons Festival 2016.

ABOUT PARSONS FESTIVAL//
Parsons Festival is an annual series of art and design events in which cutting-edge student work is presented to the Parsons community and the public. The festival takes place at the end of each academic year and includes thesis exhibitions and critiques, thought-provoking public programs, interactive installations, gallery openings, workshops, and special events.

ABOUT PARSONS//
The New School’s Parsons School of Design, which was recently named the number one art and design school in the United States by Top Universities, has been a pioneer in art and design education for more than a century. Based in New York but active around the world, Parsons offers undergraduate and graduate programs in the full spectrum of design disciplines. Critical thinking and collaboration are at the heart of a Parsons education. An integral part of The New School, Parsons builds on the university’s legacy of progressive ideals, scholarship, and pedagogy. Parsons graduates are leaders in their respective fields with a shared commitment to creatively and critically addressing the complexities of life in the 21st century.

2016 Society of Illustrators Student Scholarship Show

Parsons

Four Parsons illustration students were awarded by the jury financial scholarships for their work in the 2016 Society of Illustrators Student Scholarship show. The judges had to select the recipients of the 29 scholarships from the 250 student works chosen for the show (this from the initial 7,500 submissions).

 

29, “squash,” Gouache and Acrylic on Canvas,45 x 45 ", 2015, Lauren Redniss, Thesis My overall goal with this series of drawings and paintings is to bring forward the theme of sports in the context of fine arts. This specific subject was chosen bescause of its significance in societies around the world. As a subject, it touches on issues of nationalism, spectacle, and my personal, the common human experience. This work is based mostly memory and skill. By tying the sport directly to the action of creating the work, my pieces will rethink the identities and abilities of individual athletes, thus showing a more total and universal appreciation of the performance. The drawings will not try to be realistic at all, shifting our notion of sports imagery and questioning high definition, hence presenting sports in its raw nature: pure emotion. The strokes, colors and quality of the works will be used to call into question the viewer’s memory of specific moments, shedding light on ideas of collective recollection.

Adrian Mangel

“Squash”

$2,000 Nancy Lee Rhodes Roberts Scholarship Award

Faculty: Lauren Redniss

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Qiaoyi Shi

“Childhood Memory V”

$1,100 The FoTN Award

Faculty: Paul Marcus

Image number 3 "Classroom" mixed media painting 19x22" Senior Thesis- Chang Park, Fall 2015 For my thesis project I would like to explore the worlds that exist within Haruki Murakami’s novels and short stories. I would focus specifically on Kafka On The Shore, The Elephant Vanishes, Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and 1Q84. What appeals to me about these stories is the existence of an alternate world and how characters and strange incidents parallel one another in each world. Rather than illustrating each novel or story on its own I would like to layer and mesh many of the different worlds together to create a new scenario that seems familiar yet removed.

Erica Mao

“Classroom”

$1,000 in Memory of Lila Dryer

Faculty: Chang Park/Guy Billout

5: "Ballerina Funeral". Needlefelted Wool. 7 x 2. March 2015. Caty Bartholomew. Toy Concept Development & Design. A little ballerina who didn't make it, but she still looks great.

Alexandra Glenn-Collins

“Ballerina Funeral”

$150 John Klammer 3D Award

Faculty: Caty Bartholomew

The Opening Reception and Awards ceremony will take place on Friday, May 13th.

BFACD Faculty Highlight: Tamara Maletic

AMT Home Slider, Parsons

Tamara Maletic began graphic design studio Linked by Air with partner Dan Michaelson in 2005. Linked by Air specializes in the creation of design systems and technological platforms that grow with institutions. Since 2005, they’ve worked with major cultural and educational organizations, charities, artists, architects, and corporations. The studio sometimes describes its expertise as the “production of public space,” whether in the world or online. Its interest is in creating systems that work for all their constituents, and that show their health by evolving successfully over time. Along with co-creating Linked by Air, Tamara teaches Core Typography in the Communication Design department. You can learn more about Linked by Air’s work on their website, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

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Eleven different computer programs in Prada’s New York store transformed and twisted customers’ images in beautiful and fun ways as they moved past. As a vendor to 2×4.

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The new identity for Columbia Books on Architecture and the City is a permanent placeholder whose aspect ratio always shifts to match the aspect ratio of the object it’s imprinted upon. The cover of the catalog displays many versions of the mark, corresponding to the different sizes of the books in the catalog.

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The Away With Words app is award-winning cinematographer Christopher Doyle’s celebration of how words and images collide to form new, often ironic associations. Users are encouraged to make their own associations with Chris’s street photographs, by attaching new words and images to existing ones.

 

Making Center Workshops

News, Parsons, Student News

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An ongoing goal at Parsons is to support learning beyond the classroom. The making facilities across the University serve as spaces for experiential and cross-disciplinary learning through hands-on practice, allowing students from varying departments and disciplines to work side-by-side, informing each other along the way.

 

The Making Center is proud to offer a suite of Technician led workshops for all Parsons students held throughout the Spring semester. Technicians in all of the Making Center facilities have a depth and breadth of knowledge in an array of mediums and industries. For the first time last semester, shop Technicians developed and led hands-on workshops outside of course curricula, to share skills and processes from their professional practices. The result was a success- with students from Product Design, Fine Arts, Interior Design and other Parsons programming working in collaboration to pick up skills that might support their studio work and personal practice. This semester, the shops are building from this pilot program to bring an even larger suite of workshops.

 

Workshops will be held at the making facilities in 25 East 13th st, and and 2 West 13th st. facilities. Sessions will be held on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:00-4:30pm. Topics include advanced woodworking techniques such as carving, lathing, and steam bending. Technicians will also lead sessions on sewing fundamentals, bending metal, and, for the first time, there will be workshops to learn the basics of electronics and Arduino.

 

We are excited by the opportunity this will allow both students and faculty and look forward to the discourse that follows this academic year, as we receive feedback and prepare for the coming Fall and the opening of the Making Center in 2 West 13th St. and 66 5th Ave. and the exciting new affordances it will offer.

 

Class size is limited and attendees must RSVP online at Resources.Parsons.edu.

 

Steam Bending

Led by Abby Mechanic

Parsons East, E4 Wood Shop

Tuesday, March 15, 3:00-4:30pm

For Sophomores and Above

Sign Up Here

 

Workshop attendees will use steam bending techniques to make a wooden bow. In this process, strips of wood are steam heated using a steam box. The applied heat and moisture makes the wood pliable enough to easily bend around a mould to create a specific shape. Eat Your heart out Katniss Everdeen!

 

 

Bending Metal

Led by Matt Leabo

Parsons East, E4 Metal Shop

Tuesday, March 17, 3:00-4:30pm

For Sophomores and Above

Sign Up Here

 

Workshop attendees will learn how to operate the E4 Metal Shop Di-Acro Bender. This newly refurbished machine is perfect for bending metal to shape metal stock for various applications from furniture to sculptures. Must wear boots and clothing appropriate for the metal shop.

 

Cyanotype Printing

Led By Sherri Littlefield

2 West, 9th Floor, L9 Work Shop

Tuesday, March 29, 12:00-1:30pm*

Open to all Parsons Students

Sign Up Here

 

In this workshop students will make cyanotypes, using the same process that captured the first photographic images. Students will have a hands-on approach to mixing chemicals, applying chemicals to paper, and utilizing sunlight to develop photographic prints. (*Note this time is different than others in the series.)

Sewing Fundamentals

Led by Matt Leabo

Parsons East, 4th Floor, E4 Wet Area

Thursday March 31, 3:00-4:30pm

For Sophomores and Above

Sign Up Here

 

In this workshop students will learn the basics of sewing and machine controls. This session is perfect for fine artists, product designers and Parsons students working with soft forms.

 

Handmade Electronics

Led by Hannah Mishin

Parsons East, 4th Floor, E4 Wet Area

Tuesday, April 5, 3:00-4:30pm

For Sophomores and Above

Sign Up Here

 

In this workshop, students will get an overview of DC electronics: reading simple diagrams, prototyping protocols for circuits, and soldering techniques for making permanent circuits. Students will leave with their own hand-wired LED circuit.

 

Wood Carving: Spoon Making

Led by Abby Mechanic

Parsons East, 4th Floor, E4 Wood Shop

Tuesday, April 7, 3:00-4:30pm

For Sophomores and Above

Sign Up Here

 

Wood carving and shaping by hand is perhaps the oldest style of woodworking. This workshop is for beginners and intermediate wood workers alike to gain an understanding of the properties of wood, grain and density. Students will make a hand carved spoon.

 

Intro to Arduino

Led by Hannah Mishin

Parsons East, 4th Floor, E4 Wet Area

Tuesday, April 12, 3:00-4:30pm

For Sophomores and Above

Sign Up Here

 

Arduino is a microcontroller, a mini computer, which takes code and translates that to electrical signals. Those signals send and receive information to one another, allowing students to program interactivity, algorithms, and even interface with certain programs within their laptops (Max MSP, Processing, etc.) The Arduino platform provides students a gateway tool to for inserting ultimate control over any project utilizing electricity.

 

Students will leave this workshop with fundamental and basic understanding of the Arduino IDE and code format and of basic DC electronics. This workshop will explain how the two go together. We will use Arduino to make an LED turn on and off with code and with analog and digital inputs.

 

This is a very basic course, if you have any Arduino experience, please do not sign up for this course.

 

Turning Green Wood

Led by Phoenix Lindsey-Hall

Parsons East, E4 Wood Shop

Thursday April 14, 4th Floor, 3:00-4:30pm

For Sophomores and Above

Sign Up Here

 

The wood chips will fly as attendees learn to turn freshly cut green wood on the lathe. During this hands on workshop, students will learn how to make a natural edge bowl. Everyone will take a turn!

 

Mold Making and Casting

Led by Max Garett

Parsons East, 4th Floor, E4 Wet Area

Tuesday, April 19, 3:00-4:30pm

For Sophomores and Above

Sign Up Here

 

Students will learn about synthetic mold making and casting materials. There will

be examples of how casting in different materials can deliberately alter an object’s original dimensions or weight. Students will then take part in a hands on demo experimenting with provided materials.

 

Tapestry Weaving

Led by Nica Rabinowitz

2 West, 9th Floor, L9 Work Shop

Thursday, April 21, 3:00-4:30pm

Open to all Parsons Students

Sign Up Here

 

Attendees will learn the basics of tapestry weaving with locally sourced yarn and peg looms. Students will design a small tapestry project and practice traditional and contemporary weaving techniques.

 

Glass Slumping

Led by Andrea Distefano

Parsons East, 4th Floor, E4 Metal Shop

Thursday, April 26, 3:00-4:30pm

For Sophomores and Above

Sign Up Here

 

Slumping glass is a highly technical operation that is subject to many variations, both controlled and uncontrolled. Attendees will learn and experiment with slumping processes. Must wear boots and clothing appropriate for the metal shop.

 

Raising Metal

Led by Heechan Kim

Parsons East, 4th Floor, E4 Metal Shop

Tuesday, April 28, 3:00-4:30pm

For Sophomores and Above

Sign Up Here

 

Raising is a metalworking technique whereby sheet metal is formed over a stake by repeated hammering and annealing. Must wear boots and clothing appropriate for the metal shop.