Toy Story Told in Toy Book

Otis has one of only three Toy Design programs in the United States and it is featured (along with FIT) in the March 2008 edition of The Toy Book, an industry magazine for the toy industry.

The article lauded the impact the two programs have had on the industry- "Both feature professors still active in the industry, various internship opportunities, and a job placement rate for graduates that can't be beat." And- "The toy industry is one in which a new trend is declared the next best thing before you've even had a chance to turn around. The importance of that child giggling at home with Elmo, however, is one aspect that will be around 10, 20 or even 100 years from now. The Toy Industry 101 textbook may not have a specific chapter on this, but learning it early and having it reinforced often are things that make those who spend the two years at Otis or FIT very valuable for the future of play.

This piece is just the latest in a series that have highlighted the success of our Toy program and it is especially gratifying for the students' work to be acknowledged by the industry whose future they will shape.

Photo Otis Toy seniors courtesy of Candice Lavin and Otis Toy Design Flickr pages

A Brief Pause for Poultry

In 1978 Otis alum Jeffrey Vallance buried a store-bought chicken in a pet cemetery. "Blinky" as the bird was known, was given a "proper" burial complete with a service and a headstone.

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Blinky's burial and subsequent exhumation (conducted in 1988 to mark the 10th anniversary), Vallance created a chapel inside Track 16 Gallery.

Paul Young from the Los Angeles Times talked with Vallance about the project in the 03-06 edition of The Guide's "60 Seconds With..." section. The exchange included this question from Young and response from Vallance-

What's the Strangest Reaction to Blinky That You've Ever Seen or Heard of?
"Several people have told me that they stopped eating chicken. which makes sense because I was a vegetarian when I performed the piece 30 yeas ago. I didn't eat meat for health reason and because I was against the inhumane treatment of animals. Similar to the Unknown Soldier, Blinky represents all chickens that have been slaughtered for the dinner table."

The chapel and accompanying exhibition remain on display through April 5th.

A Complimentary Compare and Contrast

The thrust of Holly Meyer's February 29 review in the Los Angeles Times of the parallel solo shows at Carl Berg Gallery is that the two artists- Megan Williams and 2005 Otis grad Jessica Minckley are products of their respective generations and their work is reflective of those separate times. Williams coming of age in the turbulent 70's versus Minckley arriving in an art scene that is "booming; LA has become a widely respected art capital; galleries are sweeping up artists right out of school..."

Despite the significant differences that result from those two generations, Meyers found much to like about both shows. Of Minckely she said, "...has a much lighter approach: Her exhibition is quiet, delicate and contemplative. Each piece feels considered and specific in nature, a sequence of discrete conceptual statements..." And "The most enchanting works are the simplest: a series of pattern-oriented drawings made on the epigraph pages of books; a ceiling high stack of pink cake boxes; a MormonAd (a poster distributed by the Mormon Church) coated with a thick crust of salt. Concise yet enigmatic, each has the air of a meditative excercise."

Both shows close this Saturday- March 8.

Jessica Minckley
Untitled2007
Cake boxes
125 x 9 3/4 x 9 3/4 inches

From Carl Berg Gallery

Remembering Milford Zornes

Otis alum and noted watercolor painter Milford Zornes '27 passed away on February 24th at his home in Claremont. As noted in his obituary from the Claremont-Courier he was "the last living artist in the small but elite group of California Scene Painters." As noted in the The Oaklahoman, this group of painters were "credited with elevating watercolor to a legitimate art form..."

After completing his studies at Otis, which including taking classes from Millard Sheets, he completed a Bachelor's degree at Pomona College. Upon leaving college he taught art at several schools, including at Otis.

According to the Los Angeles Times he maintained an active artistic practice until the very end of his life- "He continued painting and teaching into his 90s, completing a mural for East Los Angeles College in 2004. He gave his last public demonstration in January at the opening of an exhibit celebrating his 100th birthday at the Pasadena Museum of California Art..."

As part of the College's Legacy Project, Mr. Zornes was interviewed last November and I have included it here.

Illustrating Influence

This week's Los Angeles Times Magazine is the spring fashion issue. It's full of Otis mentions including a nice piece about Ruben and Isabel Toledo written by Rose Apodaca. It's a nice plug for the upcoming "Inside the Designer's Studio" series that Fashion Chair Rose Brantley hosts- the next installment featuring her discussion with the Toledos on March 11th- but my favorite part of the piece is Isabel's response to Apodaca's question about why they have worked with our students so often-

"To us, the spirit of California is unique." (I) tell the students "Search your soul for your identity. Allow necessity to be the mother of invention and remember that, for a creator, time in obscurity is a blessing. It allows you to incubate your ideas."

Futbol Fashion Feature

Several Otis juniors in the Fashion Department are creating the new uniform designs for the Brazilian national soccer team. The project is being done in conjunction with Nike. Yesterday there was a fitting for the uniforms and local news channel KNBC4 was there to capture it!

Take a look:

Otis Fashion on KNBC4

Serving Up Support for the Santa Monica Musuem

Last week's Home section of the Los Angeles Times included this item- Otis alum Gajin Fujita was one of 12 artists commissioned by the Santa Monica Museum to create a limited edition plate in honor of the museum's 20th anniversary. At a cost of $2000 each set and with only 125 being made, it's doubtful that folks will be serving dinner on them though!

image from Los Angeles Times website by photographer Carlos Chavez

Juno May Get the Oscar but Otis May Get the Most Eyeballs

Shadowplay, the Los Angeles based studio created the opening title sequence for the multi-Oscar nominated film Juno. The sequence has received some buzz of its own including this interview with Shadowplay's co-founder Gareth Smith:

The Submarine Channel interview

Otis has worked with the folks at shawdowplay several times, most notably in the creation of our video "Discover Otis." They report that is one of the most viewed pieces on their site and it's been very successful for us!

One Year of Observing Otis

One year ago today I started The "O" Observed. It has been a wonderful experience to find and blog about Otis in the media, in museums and galleries and other places out in the world.

With a year's worth of posts I've only scratched the surface. For every post I make there are three more I could if I had more time.

I'm looking forward to another year of observing Otis and I hope you are too.

Cheers,

Marc

Otis in the OC and Endangered Species

This weekend I was at the Laguna Art Museum's Auction 100 event, which raised money for their exhibition and education programs. It was quite a fun evening and Otis was well represented with works sold from alums Billy Al Bengston, Sandow Birk, Kavin Buck, Adam Mars and Pattsi Valdez. In addition the evening's piece that fetched the highest price, nearly $30,000 was by another Otis alum, John Altoon.

I also caught the opening of the new group show Endangered Species at Santa Monica College's Pete and Susan Barrett Art Gallery (part of their new Performing Arts Center). It includes work by Otis grads Sarah Perry and Peter Zokosky along with Otis faculty member Robin Palanker. The show remains on view through March 8th.

John Altoon "Untitled" 1959

Motion Theory Magic

It seems like Motion Theory must be a pretty cool place to work. I should check in with Otis alum Cui Haozheng '06, who is an animator at the firm. With offices here in Venice as well as New York and Europe, they are able to work with a diverse set of clients including Beck, Hewlett Packard, Gatorade and Budweiser.

Probably the best description of what Motion Theory has done for the world of advertising comes from writer Diane Mehta in her story Loco Motion, which appears in the February issue of Fast Company magazine:

"Now it's leading a wave of New York- and L.A.- based companies that are reinventing the TV comericial, even the look of video itself, and changing the way advertisers and other clients connect with the public...no one blends those worlds better than Motion Theory, with its radically strange hybrid of live action, visual effects and 3-D animation."

When describing Otis' Digital Media program, I often use the phrase we are teaching our students to tell stories through motion. The work that Motion Theory does is an excellent example of what I've been trying to say. They have selected pieces on their website. If you only watch one, make it the video for Beck's song "Girl."

Enjoy!

Many Mentions of the Monk

Shaolin: Temple of Zen, a photography exhibition by Justin Gurarglia will debut at Otis' Ben Maltz Gallery this Saturday, February 2nd with a reception from 5 to 7 PM but the show is already showing up throughout the blogosphere. In addition to being the Monday feature on Artdaily, it has attracted attention from several blogs and was picked up in Calendar Live.

In addition to the photographs, opening night visitors will see a live demonstration by one of the monks featured in the work, Shi De Chao, who has traveled from his temple in Henan, China.

The show, an outgrowth of the book published by Aperture will continue in the Gallery through 29th.

Additional Mentions (added Feb 1):

LA Cityzine
A Little Birdy Told me
Sean Slavin Photography
Flavorpill
Ian O'Phelan Artlog
Apartment Therapy
Lady Hooligan
ArtSlant
Marshallastor
Nothing to Do in LA

Some Paintings Some Party!

Last Saturday, I went to the opening of the opening of Some Paintings, the LA Weekly's third Biennial at Track 16 Gallery. I got there pretty late- after 10:30 and the place showed no sign of slowing down. I was thankful I had not arrived any earlier!

Curated by Doug Harvey, the show features Los Angeles painters, including alums Sandow Birk '88 and Steve Roden '86 (doing double duty by also standing in for Robert Williams) as well as Otis faculty member Carole Caroompas. Ben Maltz Gallery Director Meg Linton also had a mention related to artist Don Suggs.

With the crowd and over 70 artists, the experience was a bit overwhelming. My favorite part of the show (apart from seeing the work) was Harvey's statements about each artist. It was a rare treat to have the curator's thoughts about each artist available as a wall label.*

Gifted multimedia narrative populist Sandow Birk’s amazing “Depravities” show at Cal State Long Beach in December used up his store of new Iraq-war paintings, but he dug out an early-’90s collaboration with graffiti artist Devin “Relm” Flynn for “Some Paintings.”

Carol Caroompas’ punkadelic patchworks of archetypal gender conflicts played out by glamorous rock stars, clip-art domestics and B-movie exotics over eye-boggling textile patterns bring Pattern and Decoration through the looking glass of experimental narrative semiotics into the 21st century.

Renaissance dude STEVE RODEN’s multivalent work is imbued with a profound familiarity with Modernist design principles and an avant-gardist appetite for getting lost in translation. But it was his paintings that first caught my attention, and which never fail to dazzle and mystify.

Even though DON SUGGS seems to have spent most of his career making fame-evasive shifts in style and media, his own persistence is beginning to catch up with him. Last spring’s OTIS survey (curated by me and Meg Linton) exposed the still center of the spinning Suggsian universe, and there’s nowhere left to hide! Ha ha ha ha ha!

Some Paintings remains on view through February 16.

*All of Harvey's statements are also available in his LA Weekly article about the show.

Roll Call Roundup

Artillery magazine's "Roll Call" spread is chalk full of Otis folks in the latest edition (volume2 number 3):

Christian Mounger at Haus Gallery (Martin Gantman show)
2007 "O Award" recipient Kori Newkirk at High Energy Constructs (Mark Dutcher show)
Roy Dowell, Carol Caroompas and an unidentified Adam Mars at Western Project (for Carole's opening)

The two year old magazine has frequently covered the work of Otis faculty and alums and recent MFA grad Tucker Neel is a regular writer.

You can pick up a copy of Artillery in the Ben Maltz Gallery and at many galleries around LA and NYC.

Santa's Southland Workshop

The holidays are over and old St. Nick is back in the north pole working on all the toys for 2009. He's not alone in that effort. Otis has the leading program for Toy Design in the country and over the years it has received a lot of media attention- stories in the Los Angeles Times and news spots on KNBC and ABC World News Tonight being just a few.

Often the stories come during Christmas time and this year was no exception when Toy Design Chair Deborah Ryan and faculty member Mark Taylor were featured guests on the KCRW show Design and Architecture, hosted by Frances Anderton. You can still access their interview via podcast here:

The Serious Business of Designing Toys

Enjoy the interview. If you wind up on the correct side of Santa's list next year one of your gifts might come via Otis!

Look Out for the Lueys!

In the latest volume of Hi Fructose magazine, there is a nice photo spread featuring Otis alum and faculty member Bob Dob's creation- "The Luey's." These hard living little critters have been prominent in his work and if you haven't seen them, take a look!











Universal Bad Habit 8" x10" (from bobdob.com)

Otis in 08

As we head in to 2008 I hope you will look forward to more notes about Otis in the media. I've been writing this blog for almost a year now and throughly enjoy it.

If you see some mention of Otis that you think would be a good mention, just give me a shout.

Happy New Year!

-Marc

A Sandow Sampler

Otis Fine Arts alum ('88) Sandow Birk has been a busy guy lately. Among his recent activities- His solo show "The Depravities of War" just closed at the Cal State Long Beach University Arts Museum (after premiering at Catherine Clarke Gallery) and he is participating in a group show at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art. His film latest "Dante's Inferno" was recently screened in London. Here is just a sampling of the buzz his work has been creating:

Depravities of War
Los Angeles Times review
Orange County Weekly review
Long Beach Press Telegram review
The District Weekly review

The Landscape of War
Metro active review

Dante's Inferno
London screening
Household Opera blog review
A Distant Mirror blog book comments

Passionate About Painters

(Chad Robertson Untitled 2006)

In this December 2nd piece for the Los Angeles Times Painting Gets a Broader Brush, Christopher Knight makes the case that painting is not dead, has not been dead for some time (if it ever was) and is not likely to be dead anytime soon- "Lingering animus toward painting is so end-of-the-20th century. Painting hasn't been the black sheep of the art family for a couple of decades now, except in academic backwaters of provincial thought."

Knight suggests that if anything, Los Angeles is the hot bed in the United States for painting- "Unlike New York, Los Angeles never had an established reputation as a painting town. That might help to explain the abundance of painting now: Without history's heavy baggage, the field seems wide open -- ripe for the picking."

To illustrate his points he identified 45 Los Angeles (broadly defined) artists under 45. The list includes seven Otis alums- Kevin Appel '89, Michael Brunswick MFA '07, Gajin Fujita '97, Sandeep Mukherjee '96, Chad Robertson '91, Steve Roden '86 and Timothy Tompkins '03. It was gratifying to see the College so well represented in Knight's list.

As a further illustration of the LA influence on painting, Knight called out Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects as the gallery that provides painters with the most "parity." Vielmetter represents both Roden and Tompkins.

Each artist was represented on the cover of the Arts and Music section (where the story ran) by a detail of one of their paintings. The full images can be seen on the Times' website.

(Kevin Appel Houses and Timbers 27, 2006)

Roden Resonates in Austin

Otis Fine Arts alum Steve Roden's recent two person show (the other artist was Stephen Vitiello) at Lora Reynolds Gallery in Austin struck a chord with reviewer Kate Green in the Dec/Jan issue of Modern Painters.

Describing the choice of the two artists, both involved with sound pieces for a long time Green wrote- "Steve Roden and Stephen Vitiello...share a Fluxus-influenced interest in how it (sound) might look or feel when synesthetically translated into other media. Their pairing...seems as if it should have happened a long time ago."

Green's take on Roden's work focused on the piece Another, Another Green World. Created in 2002, he sculpted clay forms with eyes closed and using only touch in response to music as his guide. "the resulting balance between intuition and discipline resembles the structured play of a musical composition."

In concluding her assessment of the show she said "This layered work embodies Roden and Vitiello's experimental dialogue about how visualizing sound emphasizes its ability to stimulate our other senses.