Musical band The Neuroses recently released Hope For Somewhere Better, the first single from their untitled second album. Written by current CalArts student Joshua Elza Breen-Tucci (Music MFA 21), the meditative song is a “cautiously optimistic anthem of hope” for those living with chronic depression.
In the wake of current events, including COVID-19 and ongoing civil unrest in US cities, The Neuroses’ new single takes on another layer of meaning. On their website the band stated, “We have come to view the song as representing something bigger: a hope that we as a nation and world will overcome our collective inner-demons and move through the pain and uncertainty of this moment towards somewhere better and brighter.”
The Neuroses are Hañalina Lucero, Robin EA, Suzi Karnatz and Elza Breen-Tucci.
In an email, Elza Breen-Tucci talked about the band’s beginnings:
The band began as a solo project for my garage/indie-rock/noise-pop recordings, and became a band in Los Angeles, in 2017. Most of our music centers around struggles with insecurity, mental illness, and loneliness, but from a place of optimism and love.
Elza Breen-Tucci is a mixed-genre composer and producer, sound-artist, installation artist, and illustrator. He’s been a recording artist since 2005, and The Neuroses is the fifth band he’s founded, fronted, and managed.
Tommaso Frangini’s (Film/Video MFA 20) thesis film Finis Terraewill compete as part of the Settimana Internazionale della Critica (International Film Critics’ Week) section at the upcoming 77th Venice International Film Festival (Sept. 2-12). The film is among seven features in SIC@SIC, or the Short Italian Cinema (SIC) category of the Settimana Internazionale della Critica (also abbreviated as SIC).
Finis Terrae follows Travis and Peter, two childhood friends now in their mid-20s. The pair decide to spend a winter weekend camping on California’s Pacific coast to celebrate Travis’ departure for school abroad. While Travis is about to embark on a new chapter of his life, Peter is in a depressed state, feeling stagnant in his hometown and unsure of his future path. The desolate setting underlies the differences between two people who once shared an unbreakable connection, and are now unsure of how to communicate with each other.
The phrase “finis terrae” is Latin for “the end of the land.” Environment plays an active role in the film, which was shot at Montaña De Oro State Park in San Luis Obispo, Calif. Frangini described the setting as a “desolate landscape” which “envelops the protagonists and their insecurities.”
“My project aims to tell what is considered the mid-twenties crisis, a depression state that touches a lot of young people in a desperate search for a trajectory for their lives,” Frangini shared on the project’s Indeigogo page. “This project also has a personal component, as I’m exploring for the first time the theme of friendship and farewell, something I experienced moving here to the US to attend CalArts.”
Written and produced by Frangini, Finis Terrae features a host of CalArtian talent:
Co-producers: Rui Xu (Theater MFA 20) and Betty Hu (Theater MFA 18)
Frangini is an Italian filmmaker whose previous films include Ecate (2017) and The Plague (2017), both selected and awarded in several international film festivals. While studying at CalArts, he directed the shorts Patient 1642 (2018) and Memories of a Stranger (2019), the latter inspired by Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground.
Check out the full International Film Critics’ Week lineup here.
Don Cheadle received an Emmy nomination for his portrayal of Mo in Black Monday | Photo: Erin Simkin/SHOWTIME
CalArtians earned more than a dozen nominations for the 72nd Emmy Awards when they were announced via livestream Tuesday morning (July 28) by presenters Josh Gad, Tatiana Maslany, and Laverne Cox and host Leslie Jones.
We knew her when: The now Emmy-nominated Cecily Strong in a 2004 CNP production of 11 September 2001. | Image: CalArts
Don Cheadle (Theater BFA 86) earned his 10th nomination for his portrayal of Mo Monroe in Showtime’s Black Monday in the Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series category, while Cecily Strong (Theater BFA 06) received her first Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her work on the long-running Saturday Night Live.
Director of Photography M. David Mullen (Film/Video MFA 91) was nominated for Outstanding Cinematography for a Single-Camera Series (One-Hour) for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. This marks Mullen’s third Emmy nomination—and he won the same category last year with Mrs. Maisel.
Ron Cephas Jones at a School of Theater guest artist lecture in 2019. | Image: CalArts School of Theater
Former Theater faculty and visiting artist Ron Cephas Jones, who starred in the production of CNP’s Prometheus Bound at the Getty Villa in 2013, was nominated in the Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series category for his work on NBC’s This is Us.
Executive Producer Casey Kriley (Film/Video MFA 98) earned three Emmy nominations in two categories this year. In the Outstanding Unstructured Reality Program, she was part of the producing team for Kevin Hart: Don’t F**k This Up; in the Outstanding Competition Program, she earned nods for Nailed It and Bravo’s Top Chef. Kriley, already an Emmy winner with Top Chef in 2010, has been nominated 19 times throughout her career.
Producer Chelsea Yarnell (Dance BFA 12) has also been nominated in the Outstanding Unstructured Reality Program for her work on Cheer. The Netflix docuseries focused on a Texas cheer team earned six nominations total. David Nordstrom (Film/Video MFA 05), who worked as a supervising editor on Cheer, received a nomination for Outstanding Picture Editing for an Unstructured Reality Program.
Foley artist Gregg Barbanell (Theater BFA 77) was nominated for two Emmys this year as part of teams for AMC’s Better Call Saul in the Outstanding Sound Editing for a Comedy or Drama Series (One Hour) category, as well as for El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie for Netflix (in the Outstanding Sound Editing for a Limited Series, Movie or Special category). These Emmy nominations are Barbanell’s 11th and 12th, respectively.
Art director Gloria Lamb (Theater BFA 06) is part of the team nominated for Outstanding Production Design for a Variety Special for their work on the 62nd Grammy Awards Telecast for CBS. This is Lamb’s sixth Emmy nomination; she won the Emmy in 2016 for her work on the Oscars telecast. Nominated in the same category is Angel Herrera (Theater MFA 12), who was nominated for his art direction on the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards, which aired on NBC.
In the lighting category, CalArtians are once again vying against each other for the top prize. For Outstanding Lighting Design/Lighting Direction for a Variety Series, Robert Barnhart (Theater BFA 87) was nominated for the So You Think You Can Dance Finale (FOX) and Dan Boland (Theater BFA 95) and Johnny Bradley (Theater BFA 07)were nominated for The Voice Finale.Christian Hibbard (Theater MFA 92), lighting designer, and Kille Knobel (Theater BFA 94), lighting director, were part of a team nominated for Jimmy Kimmel Live! • Jimmy Kimmel Live in Brooklyn.
Additionally, Barnhart picked up another nomination for his work on the Super Bowl LIV Halftime Show Starring Jennifer Lopez and Shakira in the Outstanding Lighting Design/Lighting Direction for a Variety Special category.
In the Outstanding Main Title Design category, designer Benjamin Woodlock (Art MFA 13) was part of the team that created the nominated sequence for HBO’s Watchmen, which earned the most nominations of any show this year with 26.
The Emmy Awards will be presented on Sunday, Sept. 20 on ABC.
To welcome and connect with new and returning students, The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts presents a virtual concert on Wednesday, July 29, at 6 pm PT. Faculty members will perform live music from their respective studios and living rooms on twitch.tv/calartsmusic. A Q&A session with the performers will follow the concert via Zoom.
The program features:
Miroslav Tadic and Yvette Holzwarth 3 Balkan pieces Classical guitar / Baritone guitar, and Violin / Viola Arranged by Miroslav Tadic, InstrumentalArts: Guitar faculty Yvette Holzwarth (Music MFA 16), Violin / Viola
Andrew McIntoshGalanthus (snowdrop) Linda Catlin Smith’s Galanthus (snowdrop) for violin Andrew McIntosh (Music MFA 08), InstrumentalArts: Viola / Violin faculty
Nick Deyoe Peel, Replace Electric guitar and objects Nick Deyoe, Director of Instrumental Arts
Tim Feeney Improvisation Percussion and field recording Tim Feeney, Instrumental Arts and Performer-Composer faculty
Amy Knoles and Houman Pourmehdi Flood Daf Tar, Ney, Tambour, Voice, Analog / Digital Electronics Amy Knoles, faculty of InstrumentalArts: Percussion and Electronic Percussion Houman Pourmehdi, faculty of World Music Performance: Persian Music, World Percussion
Rachel Rudich Air / Hon Shirabe Toru Takemitsu’s piece Air (1995) for solo flute / Traditional Honkyoku piece on shakuhachi entitled Hon Shirabe Rachel Rudich, faculty of Instrumental Arts: Flute
Clay Chaplin Improvisation CMOS synthesizer and video Clay Chaplin, Composition and Experimental Sound Practices faculty
Limitations of space and communication are challenged in Space to Space, a spring 2020 virtual exhibition by CalArts Center for Integrated Media (CIM).
The exhibition title is inspired by a quote from Korean American artist Nam June Paik, known as the “father of video art”:
Telephone is point to point communication system. Radio-TV is a point to space communication system … like fish egg. Ultimate goal of video revolution is the establishment of space to space, or plain to plain communication without confusion and interference each other.
With the exhibition stymied by coronavirus and migrated to a virtual platform, CIM and Program in Art and Technology Director Tom Leeser questions: “What happens to the artist’s ability to communicate due to an undesired eviction from their common space––an unwanted revolution caused by a virus that instills interference and confusion. What ensues when the artist’s physical space is no longer deemed safe and it is forcibly replaced by the virtual?”
Space to Space showcases projects ranging from a choose your own adventure experience to an augmented reality (AR) mobile app to even an ASMR video. Kai-Luen Liang’s (Music MFA 20) Flag ASMR is filmed with all the characteristics used to elicit the autonomous sensory meridian response: whispers and soft speech, slow movements, and deliberate noises. The installation seeks to draw the viewer’s attention to their sensory memories, inspired by the artist’s “silent” recollections of 9/11.
CIM is an interdisciplinary, peer-to-peer, project-based learning environment for qualified graduate students wanting to explore and critique: multimedia performance, electronics, interactive systems, immersion, non-linear narrative, and the Internet as part of their creative practice. In 2019, CIM presented Project Scream, an eclectic digital sound archive hosted on its online curatorial space viralnet-v4.net.
Check out the Space by Space CIM online exhibition here.
On Saturday (Aug. 1), Hooray, What A Day!/¡Viva,Qué Día!, a bilingual children’s book by nonbinary artist Molly Allis (Art, Integrated Media MFA 14) was officially released. The uplifting story about identity, self-esteem, and friendship follows a 10-year old Frankie and their best friend Jesse spending time in their queer and colorful community. Some of their adventures include going to a parade, making DIY projects together, and helping out at their local community garden.
Hooray, What A Day!/¡Viva,Qué Día! was added to the Gender Inclusive Classrooms’ curriculum resource list of books for teachers. Allis is also developing an animated children’s show called All Together Now! based on the world and characters in their book.
‘Hooray, What A Day!/¡Viva,Qué Día!’ follows Frankie and Jesse on an adventure through their queer and colorful community. | Image courtesy of the artist.
Allis is a queer artist, educator, award-winning filmmaker, and musician. Before attending CalArts, they studied directing and design for theater at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, with a focus on puppetry. Allis’ work largely focuses on community-building through various forms of storytelling and play.
Emerson Whitney (Critical Studies MFA 14) (they/them) shares a gripping exploration of childhood, causality, and the body in their first prose book Heaven (McSweeney’s Publishing).
The book diarizes Whitney’s resolve to understand their relationship with their mother and grandmother, and their initial glimpses of womanhood growing up. Through “deeply observant, psychedelic prose,” Whitney folds in ideas from thinkers like Judith Butler, Donna Haraway, and C. Riley Snorton as they “engage transness and the breathing, morphing nature of selfhood.” The account vacillates between theory and memory in an attempt to examine “what makes us up.”
Praised as an “electrifying, gorgeous, defiant” work, Heaven has been named a best book by The A.V. Club, PAPER, Literary Hub, Refinery29, Ms. Magazine, Chicago Review of Books, The Observer, and The Seattle Times.
A starred review from Kirkus Reviews noted: “An incisive, nuanced inquiry into gender and body.” The Seattle Times cited the author’s ability to make the reader “think about what we are underneath false binaries and the performance of self.”
Whitney is a poet and author of Ghost Box (Timeless Infinite Light, 2014). They were a 2015 REEF artist in residence, and was among several CalArtians participating in the immersive performance event One House Twice in 2017. Whitney’s work has appeared in various publications, including Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, Bombay Gin, and Jupiter 88. They currently serve as a faculty member in the creative writing program at Goddard College in Vermont, and is a postdoctoral fellow in USC’s gender studies program.
Named for mystery and horror writer Shirley Jackson, the awards are annually voted upon by a jury of professional writers, editors, critics, and academics. Evenson’s book was the winning entry in the “single-author collection” category (see the full list of 2019 winners here).
Song for the Unraveling of the World is a 240-page collection of 22 of Evenson’s short stories that have appeared in various horror and literary fiction publications. With each narrative situated at the nexus of horror and science fiction, an NPR review noted how the book uniquely “manages to disturb the reader, to instill a sense of danger, a permeating feeling of confused anxiety.” The work was given a rare starred advance review by Publisher’s Weeklyin June 2019:
These stories are carefully calibrated exercises in ambiguity in which Evenson … leaves it unclear how much of the off-kilterness exists outside of the deep-seated pathologies that motivate his characters.
Song for the Unraveling of the World has also recently been announced as a finalist for a 2020 World Fantasy Award in the “collection” category.
Evenson’s previous works have also been named finalists for the Shirley Jackson Award, including his novella The Warren (2016) and his novels Windeye (2012) and Last Days (2009, Underland Press), the latter also a recipient of an ALA-RUSA Award.
Evenson, who also writes under nom de plume B.K. Evenson, is the author of more than a dozen fictional works like A Collapse of Horses (2015) and Ed Vs. Yummy Fur: Or What Happens When a Serial Comic Becomes a Graphic Novel (2014). He is also the recipient of three O. Henry Prizes, the 2006 International Horror Guild Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship.
AI(R)C was formed in February 2020, by three graduate students in the Program in Film and Video at CalArts: Gavati Wad (MFA 22), Nehal Vyas (MFA 22), and Isabela Costa (MFA 22). The collective creates educational and informative experiences for artists who want to engage in open and peaceful dialogue, and raise important questions. Each session focuses on the nuances of socio-political issues that concern specific regions, countries, or communities, and are led by an artist-member of the topic in focus.
Led by LaFountain, Session 5: Native America begins a conversation about the roots of the political and social turmoil that is so prevalent in the United States of America today.
From the program notes:
Manifesting our destiny. Manifestations of destinations. Defying the lies of erasure. Defining our lines into the future. The people, the Indigenous peoples of these lands, continue to survive in the post apocalyptic world we’ve traversed for 528 years and counting. At the helms of our ships we sail through the stories of our ancestors and continue to build our futures.
LaFountain is a Los Angeles based multimedia artist and educator. She is also the Senior Admissions Counselor for the School of Film/Video at CalArts. Her work has been shown in venues and festivals around the world. LaFountain is a Sundance New Frontier and Indigenous Documentary MacArthur Fellow.
Iris Company Artistic Director Sophia Stoller’s (Dance MFA 15) electrifying short dance film Screaming Shapes is now available to watch online.
Characterized by Stoller as a “visceral and raw” piece, Screaming Shapes is a display of undulating choreography against a near-frantic modulated staccato soundscape—an “exploration of music and movement existing as one entity.”
Among the Iris Company dancers featured in the film are fellow CalArtians Bryanna Brock (Dance BFA 16), Joan Holly Padeo (Dance BFA 16), and Shane Raiford (Dance BFA 12). The music was composed by Peter S. Shin and performed by the Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra.
In an interview with Matthew Toffolo, Stoller discussed the process and inspiration behind the film. The idea took root in 2017, when Stoller undertook an artist residency with the Cohan Collective, which paired choreographers with composers. Stoller was paired with Shin, where they developed what would eventually become a stage piece:
The first iteration of the piece that we created at the residency was all about the dance visualizing the music, and the music speaking the sounds of the dance. The vocal sounds in the music were pulled from a recording of a poem being read, written in response to the 2016 election in the US. Although Peter (Shin) manipulated the vocal sounds heavily so you no longer hear any words, the unusual rhythms created from the vocal sounds give the piece a wild and frenetic feeling.
In 2018, the stage piece was adapted into a film, produced in collaboration with Stoller’s husband Peter Amodeo Gould, a filmmaker and CEO of video production company Amodeo Creative.
Screaming Shapes was an official selection for the 2019 Oklahoma Dance Film Festival, In/Motion Chicago’s 2019 International Dance Film Festival, and Jacksonville Dance Film 2019 Festival. It was also a semifinalist at Dance Camera West 2020 in Los Angeles, which marked the conclusion of its festival circuit.
Founded in 2016, Iris Company is an LA-based dance group “dedicated to creating socially relevant, thought-provoking and moving experiences through dance, immersive performance, and film.” The company quickly made its mark with The Other Side, a large-scale immersive dance theater performance that premiered in May 2017 at Gramercy Studios. In November 2019, Iris Company presented Breath + Body, a series of five new dance works in collaboration with The Contemporary Choral Collective of Los Angeles (C3LA). The company was also among a CalArtian-heavy lineup at the 2019 LA Dance Festival.
Recent School of Theater graduates share their voice acting work in the 2020 Voice Over Showcase, billed as the first-ever showcase of its kind produced by an actor training program in the nation.
The work in the showcase was produced by graduating BFA and MFA students in a course taught by ML Gemmill (Theater MFA 90) and Bernie Van De Yacht (Theater MFA 89), who are also partners in ProADR Looping & Voice Casting. Throughout the course, students acquired the voice-over skills and tools necessary to quickly analyze scripts, effectively self-direct, and consistently perform on each take. Gemmill and Van De Yacht also offered advice for setting up professional home studios and navigating remote recording sessions. The Institute’s partnership with ProADR “embraces voiceover as a crucial facet of the professional actor’s career,” an asset in especially high demand due to pandemic restrictions.
“This year was a monumental task due to Covid,” said Gemmill. “We worked above and beyond to virtually coach our students through remote recording to complete their VO reels. In addition to their regular class time we gave each student three private one-on-one virtual sessions. Their confidence soared.”
More than a dozen graduates have since booked professional voice acting jobs, in fields ranging from commercials, podcasts, audiobooks, and video games. Among them is Pricilla Chung (Theater MFA 20), who worked as part of the loop group for the HBO drama Lovecraft Country, which premieres Aug. 17.
“Lovecraft Country allowed me to get my SAG card,” shared Chung. “We had learned to do loop grouping sessions remotely in class and ML coached me before the Lovecraft Country looping session. To prepare for improvising on cue, I learned the vocabulary of the series’ Korean War-era characters and medical terms for voicing nurses.”
School of Theater Dean Travis Preston noted: “The CalArts Voice Over Showcase launches our graduates into an exciting professional landscape and has already produced opportunities for CalArts actors. It is one of many professional opportunities that defines the CalArts School of Theater’s commitment to fostering professional acting careers at the highest level.”
On Wednesday, July 29, faculty from The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts live-streamed a concert from their respective living rooms and studios to welcome new and returning students.
The six-part program featured a diverse range of sounds, styles, and instruments, from classical guitar to electronic percussion. Check out the full-length concert video above, or at twitch.tv/calartsmusic.
See the concert program below:
Miroslav Tadic and Yvette Holzwarth: 3 Balkan pieces Classical guitar / baritone guitar, and violin / viola Arranged by Miroslav Tadic, InstrumentalArts: Guitar faculty Yvette Holzwarth (Music MFA 16), violin / viola
Andrew McIntosh: Galanthus (snowdrop) Linda Catlin Smith’s Galanthus (snowdrop) for violin Andrew McIntosh (Music MFA 08), InstrumentalArts: Viola / Violin faculty
Nick Deyoe: Peel, Replace Electric guitar and objects Nick Deyoe, Director of InstrumentalArts
Tim Feeney: Improvisation Percussion and field recording Tim Feeney, InstrumentalArts and Performer-Composer faculty
Amy Knoles and Houman Pourmehdi: Flood Daf Tar, Ney, Tambour, Voice, Analog / Digital Electronics Amy Knoles, faculty of InstrumentalArts: Percussion and Electronic Percussion Houman Pourmehdi, faculty of World Music Performance: Persian Music, World Percussion
Rachel Rudich: Air / Hon Shirabe Toru Takemitsu’s piece Air (1995) for solo flute / traditional Honkyoku piece on shakuhachi titled Hon Shirabe Rachel Rudich, faculty of InstrumentalArts: Flute
Clay Chaplin: Improvisation CMOS synthesizer and video Clay Chaplin, Composition and Experimental Sound Practices faculty
In response to the global pandemic and its effect on artist communities, MOZAIK Philanthropy created Future Art Awards, an inclusive contest open to professional and amateur U.S. artists. The organization asked artists to submit work that was inspired by the current crisis and could help reimagine alternative futures. The winning artworks are part of a virtual exhibition that opened to the public in June.
From more than 1,100 artist submissions, two CalArtians were selected as winners: Jennie E. Park (Art, Critical Studies MFA 22) and Matthew Pagoaga (Art MFA 21).
Park was one of 10 Featured Artist awardees to receive a $2,000 prize for her piece Vision Test / Viewfinder(2020). Shortly after the CalArts campus closed in March, Park created a kinetic sculpture that references methods used by optometrists to perform eye exams. Images on an iPad are mediated by the kinetic sculpture, which superimposes a variation of four phrases: “WE ARE THE VIRUS,” “THEY ARE THE VIRUS,” “WE RESIST THE VIRUS,” and “THEY RESIST THE VIRUS” on the images.
From the artist’s statement:
COVID-19 exists in a world already structured by metaphorical “viruses”: the unhoused, imprisoned, migrants or refugees, and other “others” are deemed societal “diseases”; because we have already socially distanced ourselves from them by sequestering them away where they will not disrupt “normal” ways of life, they are largely unable to practice social distancing to protect themselves from COVID-19. At the same time, capitalism, pollution, social media, and protests or social movements are also deemed viral. In a given context, what is a “virus,” and who are “we” and “they?” As “resist” has political and immunization-related meanings, what does it mean to “resist the virus?”
Pagoaga was one of 40 Special Mention artists to receive a $1,000 prize for his piece Myself When I’m Not Real (2020), a 60×60 inch self portrait. The abstract images that are broken up into quadrants are partly inspired by our virtual portals to the outside world—Zoom, Facetime, Google Hangouts etc.—that we rely on during this isolating and disconnected time of quarantine. In his artist statement, Pagoaga states, “The pixels that represent ‘us’ amidst the new reality of quarantine reveal a strange miasma of information when collected, expanded, and oscillated.”
Check out the MOZAIK Future Art Awards’ virtual exhibition on its website.
Numbers and Trees is a continuation of Gaines’ critically admired exhibition Charles Gaines. Palm Trees and Other Works, presented in 2019 by Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles. Created in a similar manner with gridded tree formations of acrylic and Plexiglass, Gaines evolves the methodical system employed in his previous works. The “successive modification to scale, color, and background” in the new works support his claim that although “the system has never changed, the outcome is always different.” Each of the exhibition works are titled as the state in which the featured palm is native flora.
Images of trees took root in Gaines’ works in the mid-1970s, first appearing in Walnut Tree Orchard (1975–2014), which also features a numbered grid system. A later tree-centric series, Numbers and Trees (1986), is the genesis of this most recent palm trees exhibition.
Naima J. Keith, vice president of Education and Public Programs at LACMA and curator of his 2014 survey exhibition Charles Gaines: Gridwork 1974–1989, commented on Gaines’ process in the official release:
Charles continuously challenges himself to maintain a systematic approach to producing works of art, and because of his willingness to push the algorithm ever so gently each time–whether that’s with scale, the background image, or color–artists, curators, and viewers know he is still committed to working in a certain way, but is open to taking on more risks as his practice grows and as he grows as an artist.
Gaines’ works will also appear in the upcoming February 2021 exhibition New Work: Charles Gaines, hosted by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). The multimedia installation emerged from the artist’s research into the Dred Scott Decision of 1857, which proclaimed Black people were not US citizens and thus barred from rights granted by the Constitution.
The artist has had more than 80 solo shows and numerous group exhibitions around the globe, including the 2007 and 2015 Biennale di Venezia. Last year, Gaines was named the 2019 recipient of the Edward MacDowell Medal in the Arts.
The Hollywood Reporter (THR) recently released its 2020 list of Top 25 American Film Schools, which features CalArts’ School of Film/Video ranking eighth.
The annual list typically comes as a result of facility evaluations and interviews with deans and faculty from campuses across the nation, as well as with alumni and industry experts. Schools are assessed by multiple factors, including practical program experience, alumni achievements, prestige, and access to cutting-edge equipment. The 2020 ranking takes on a new dimension of COVID-19, which has significantly impacted both the education and entertainment industry.
This year’s top 25 schools are lauded for their flexibility in the face of coronavirus (notably for the transition to remote instruction), and their “commit[ment] to ensuring their graduates will be ready” for their film careers.
Watch the video below to see an example of the Institute’s dedication to creating a full educational experience through remote learning this semester. Created as part of the fall 2020 new student orientation (Sept. 1-13), the video introduces film students to the Film/Video Cage and how to access equipment.
THR also highlighted CalArts as one of the schools offering more courses in Black film theory.
Here’s what THR had to say about the School of Film/Video:
As expected with a school that was founded by Walt Disney, CalArts leads in animation education. Since the creation of the best animated feature Oscar category in 2001, 12 of the 19 winning films were directed by CalArts alums. Grad Bruce Wayne Smith co-directed the recent Oscar-winning short Hair Love; the school is now investing in new classes about animation and identity like Afro-Centric Character Design in its Character Animation Program. Looking outside the scope of traditional animation, CalArts has also brought on Pulitzer winner and alum Ann Telnaes to teach Commentary Through Cartoons.
Thesis exhibitions by School of Art 2020 MFA graduates were abruptly upended when campus went into lockdown in spring 2020, barring them from their typical studio spaces. Students have combatted these limitations in Time is Out of Joint, a series of three successive exhibitions running Thursday, Sept. 3 to Saturday, Oct. 31 at the MAK Center’s Mackey Garage Top and Courtyard Spaces in Los Angeles.
Organized by School of Art faculty Scott Benzel and the participating artists, the postgraduate exhibitions offer a new solid platform to share their work as they enter the next phase of their practices as working artists. The works reflect the artists’ process of “remembering,” “starting anew,” and “constructing homes” for themselves in recent months while addressing the maelstrom of racial and social issues amplified by the pandemic. Each of the three exhibitions feature 10 artists.
Time is Out of Joint takes its title from Act I, Scene V of Hamlet: “The time is out of joint; O cursed spite!/That ever I was born to set it right!” The exhibitions also echo the work of French philosopher Catherine Malabou, specifically her 2020 essay “To Quarantine from Quarantine: Rousseau, Robinson Crusoe, and ‘I.’” The essay quotes a passage from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions, in which he documents his confinement during a plague outbreak in Genoa:
I began to arrange myself for my one-and twenty days … I proceeded to furnish the chamber I had chosen. I made a good mattress with my waistcoats and shirts; my napkins I converted, by sewing them together, into sheets; my robe de chambre into a counterpane; and my cloak into a pillow. I made myself a seat with one of my trunks laid flat, and a table with the other. I took out some writing paper and an inkstand, and distributed, in the manner of a library, a dozen books which I had with me. In a word, I so well arranged my few movables, that except curtains and windows, I was almost as commodiously lodged in this Lazeretto, absolutely empty as it was, as I had been at the Tennis Court in the Rue Verdelet.
By fashioning a new normal through what Benzel describes as an “improvisatory creative process,” students find solutions to the everyday issues of artmaking. Each of the exhibitions will be accompanied by livestreamed launch events featuring School of Art faculty, as well as an “unbound publication” based on the legendary Fluxus-era yearboxes and Fluxkits, and painter Marcel Duchamp’s Boîte-en-valise (de ou par Marcel Duchamp ou Rrose Selavy), 1935-41.
To ensure the safety of gallery visitors, the number of visitors in exhibition spaces at any one time will be limited; masks are required and social distancing will be enforced. Visitors will be asked to sign a liability waiver.
While the summer of 2020 has been anything but typical, that hasn’t stopped CalArts’ Community Arts Partnership (CAP) from expanding its work with elementary, middle, and high school students across Los Angeles County, as well as with its own community of instructors. In addition to the CAP Summer Arts program (CAPSA), the annual four-week interdisciplinary arts program for high school students held in July, CAP also hosted a new instructor training program this summer, which was generously supported by donor Walt Miller. The goal of the summer training was to provide CAP educators, most of whom are CalArts students or alumni, with the necessary tools to engage with the young participants of the programs.
For Dr. Veronica Alvarez, the Wallis Annenberg Director of the Community Arts Partnership, providing instructors with training in the art of teaching has been a priority since she began as director of CAP in July 2019. In fact, Alvarez’s research as a doctoral student confirmed that most artist-educators were provided with little or no training that promoted their professional growth as teachers.
“Teaching artists are very talented and knowledgeable about their artistic practice,” Alvarez said. “But often they ‘fall into’ the teaching profession without receiving any training as an educator. Once they find themselves in front of a group of 12th graders, they’ll often realize that what worked with fourth graders doesn’t necessarily work with older students. Yet, no one has trained them to work with different age groups—or with the diverse student populations that they often encounter in the CAP program.”
The CAP instructors who engaged in the training program took this message to heart and embraced the opportunity to learn more about how to engage a range of students in meaningful ways.
“The various training sessions that we had on different aspects of creating a brave, accepting, and inclusive space for the students were really eye opening,” said instructor Charles Burns (Music MFA 20), who participated in the training. “Teenagers specifically have a finely tuned sense of whether or not teachers respect them, so finding ways to help them feel heard, and giving them a say in how their experience goes, is especially helpful in building trust and rapport.”
2018 CAP Youth Photography Exhibition in D300 | Photo credit: Rafael Hernandez. Image courtesy of CalArts
Despite having to remain socially distant during the training because of COVID-19, the experience still helped to bring participants together in important ways. “We were able to community-build and discuss topics such as institutional racism and its effect on educational opportunities, trauma informed pedagogy, and the importance of culturally relevant pedagogy—topics that became even more relevant with what we were experiencing during this time,” said Alvarez.
CalArts established the Community Arts Partnership three decades ago, inspired by the belief that arts education is a powerful tool to foster academic and social equity, especially for children. CAP provides free, hands-on arts programming for children between the ages of 6-18 at community organizations and schools across Los Angeles County. This includes CAPSA, which is run each summer at Dorsey High School in the Crenshaw/Baldwin Village section of Los Angeles. CAP continues to grow as it works to fill the gap in arts education created as a result of continuing budget cuts in public schools. The program recently entered into a new partnership with the Saugus Union School District, located in the Santa Clarita Valley, to offer virtual programming at all 15 of their schools, which serve more than 10,000 students in the Santa Clarita Valley, during the 2020-21 school year.
“Many of our students in CAP programs have little to no resources to strengthen and support their own narratives and modes of expression,” said instructor Diego Robles (Film/Video MFA 15). “I say this, because I was one of these students, and continue to look for ways to breakthrough, live up to, and give back to these same student populations I am from.”
Continuing to invest in the ways that CAP connects with and educates students—regardless of their experiences and backgrounds—is critical to the mission of the program. “Having instructors that are prepared (and feel prepared) to teach students in one of the most diverse cities in the world is essential, for both the instructors and the participants,” Alvarez said.
The instructors have a similar feeling. Instructor Catherine Marino shared her thoughts on the program: “It is incredibly fulfilling to take part in a program that serves a community that I deeply value and the students who I so admire for their tenacious hunger to learn no matter the circumstance.”
Ramsey Naito (Art MFA 95) has been promoted to president of Nickelodeon Animation, reports Variety.
Since joining Nickelodeon in 2018 as executive VP of animation production and development, Naito has been a driving force in nurturing new talent and projects, hiring more than 500 employees across several of the studio’s productions (150 of whom were hired after the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered physical animation studio spaces).
She also identified new key studio partnerships; specifically, overseeing a multiyear output deal with Netflix for animated TV series and features, with content pulled from the Nickelodeon catalog and original Netflix releases.
In the elevated post, Naito will oversee the network’s plethora of animated content in linear, digital, television, theatrical feature, and subscription video on demand (SVOD) formats.
“Ramsey has led the transformation of our animation studio through the combination of impeccable creative vision and on-point business instincts, and her appointment to president reflects the scope of talent and soul she brings to our organization,” said President of ViacomCBS Kids & Family Brian Robbins, to whom Naito will continue to report.
Naito is also credited with promoting an environment of diversity and inclusivity, and assembling studio teams that work well together—a necessity, according to Naito, since animation teams can often spend years together on a given project.
“When I started with the company, we focused on building content and we reinvigorated the culture to be creator-driven and creator-friendly and a place where artists could come and feel nurtured, where they could grow and that was inclusive and diverse across the board,” said Naito.
The pandemic has not slowed down Nickelodeon, which boasts 46 projects currently in (remote) production, as well as various up-and-coming projects. Among these are projects spearheaded by Naito, such as Star Trek: Prodigy, Big Nate, a new animated Smurfs series, and the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theatrical feature.
Naito is an American film producer and a member of Women in Animation, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), and the Producers Guild of America (PGA). In 2018, she also received an Academy Award nomination and a PGA Award nomination for DreamWorks’ The Boss Baby (2017), of which she served as producer.
The exhibition—which is accompanied by two new publications, a virtual tour, and a series of conversations—offers a critical look at CalArts’ role in the history of contemporary graphic design as it also reckons with issues of representation and race in the field. Inside Out & Upside Down runs from Tuesday, Aug. 25 to Sunday, Nov. 29 at REDCAT.
Featuring more than 300 student- and faculty-designed posters from the CalArts Poster Archive (many of which were long unavailable to the public), Inside Out & Upside Down features the work of influential figures in Southern California graphic design from the last half century. Among these are numerous CalArts alumni, including Denise Gonzales Crisp (Art MFA 96), Geoff McFetridge (Art MFA 95), Silas Munro (Art MFA 08), Brian Roettinger (Art BFA 04), Andrea Tinnes (Art MFA 98), Tim Belonax (Art MFA 11), Barbara Glauber (Art MFA 90), and Zak Kyes (Art BFA 05). Works by former School of Art faculty, including April Greiman and faculty emeritus Ed Fella, are also included in the exhibition.
In addition to the accompanying poster book Inside Out & Upside Down: Posters from CalArts 1980–2019, designed by exhibition curator and Graphic Design faculty Michael Worthington, Arceneaux-Sutton and Munro will critically engage the archive through new writings (some of which makes up the exhibition’s wall text), speculative posters, and conversations. This upcoming collection will serve as a “critical companion” to Worthington’s book, created by the exhibition organizers in collaboration with graphic design students, designers, and artists. Currently slated for release near the exhibition’s end, this as-yet untitled work functions as an intervention within Inside Out & Upside Down as it reflects on themes of inclusion, omission, equality, and race in the archive and the overall graphic design canon.
As part of the organizers’ upcoming texts, a series of public programs and salons kick off with “Unseen in the Archives: Inclusion and Omission in Inside Out & Upside Down: Posters from CalArts 1970-2019,” a virtual conversation about inclusion and representation in graphic design on Wednesday, Sept. 9. The talk features Arceneaux-Sutton, Munro, and Worthington, and will be moderated by REDCAT Exhibitions Manager Carmen Amengual. RSVP for the Zoom webinar here.
Arceneaux-Sutton is the principal designer of Blacvoice Graphic Design Studio, and graphic design faculty at Southeastern Louisiana University and Vermont College of Fine Art. Her research focuses on work produced by Black artists often omitted from the graphic design historical canon. Arceneaux-Sutton was also a guest on the CalArts Graphic Design Program’s Radical Practice podcast.
Munro is the founder of bicoastal design studio Polymode, which produces research-informed design for cultural institutions including MoMa, The New Museum, and The Phillips Collection. He serves as graphic design faculty at Otis College of Art and Design, and Chair Emeritus at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
REDCAT also teamed up with global engineering and consulting firm Arup, led by Paul Chavez, to bring the gallery experience online while the physical gallery space is closed due to COVID-19 restrictions. Check out the 360-degree virtual tour here.
On Saturday, Sept. 5, the virtual Dances with Films Festival presents Hollywood Fringe, an indie comedy directed by Wyatt McDill and Megan Huber. The film stars Jennifer Prediger, Justin Kirk, Nishi Munshi, and CalArts alum Rainbow Underhill (Theater BFA 97).
The story follows a married couple, who are struggling professionally and personally, and attempt to revitalize their relationship and acting dreams by putting on a site-specific play about their unsuccessful life in Hollywood.
In an early review from Film Threat, Hollywood Fringe is described as “beautifully cryptic and emotionally drawing; it feels original and fresh, leading audiences to brilliant realizations of both the film itself and their own lives.”
CalArts alum Rainbow Underhill (center) plays CHAK!RA! in the indie comedy ‘Hollywood Fringe.’ | Photo courtesy of the artist.
In Hollywood Fringe, Underhill plays CHAK!RA!, a Silverlake performance artist, bike messenger, and activist. She was cast in the role by fellow CalArtian and Casting Director Beth Holmes (Theater MFA 84).
Based in Los Angeles, Underhill is a theatrically trained actress, singer, and performance artist. She has worked across film, television, and theater in the productions Strong Medicine (Lifetime), Jack Rio, and Tempest with Shakespeare Center of LA Mainstage, among others.
Hollywood Fringe will be streamed live through the Dances with Films festival on Saturday, Sept. 5, at 4:30 pm PDT. Tickets are available through the festival website.
