Part 1: Based on the notes you took during class, write a brief description and response to each of the Faculty presentations.

Tammie Rubin: The whole of the work Professor Rubin showed us was her ceramic sculptures that mimic and mock nature. I found them reminiscent of Dr. Seuss worlds and illustrations, especially with all the cones, balls, and the vivid bright colors. I don’t have a large interest in 3D art because I like drawing much much better, so I had never seen work made out of clay that was as non-conventional as hers. Even after her presentation, I still felt odd that her ceramics didn’t serve a “useful” purpose, but I think that questioning if everything needs to serve a physical purpose is what the professor wants us to do when we look at her work. I really liked it, personally, and I’d love to go to a show and touch the pieces (just to kind of convince myself that they’re not actually plastic).

Kim Garza: Professor Garza showed us her graphic design work for the app Eventurist and the collaborative work she’s done with her husband using the film “Till The Clouds Roll By”. I kind of felt that the video had very little to do with graphic design and a film could have easily been shown to us by a teacher of any other VISU field of study (fine arts or photography) and still made sense. So I wish I had gotten to see more of her graphic design work.

James Lamb Shuren (?)…(he didn’t show his name on the screen, so I’m not sure how to spell it): I really enjoyed how he explained his work and what inspired his works. Just like Lynne Bowman Cravens, he was a little more open about the thought processes that feed his work, which is something I really enjoy hearing. I felt that his works were also very approachable and very relatable, perhaps because they were so personal. A lot of them had quite a bit of humor in them too, and he was very creative about what he photographed, so I really enjoyed his work.

Part 2: Reflection on this semester and course. Feel free to write any and all comments here. We want and appreciate your feedback (both positive and critical).

I enjoyed attending seminar (I mean except for the fact that it was at 3:30 since the rest of my classes ended before 1pm). I mainly enjoyed the intro class where we got to draw stuff, and the exquisite corpse day as well. I mean, obviously we would get lectured because it was a seminar class, but it’s tough on my ADHD to sit quietly for an entire hour, even if the stuff being presented is interesting.
I also would have liked to have more one on one time with the people who presented, or with you guys as well. Been able to talk about where we wanted to go with our careers so that you guys could give us some sort of direction on the steps to take to get there. I’m a very scatterbrained person and often find myself knowing what I want, but not knowing how to get it, and I’m sure many others feel the same way, so more specific guidance would have been nice, I feel.

Otherwise, I always enjoyed Hollis’ jokes and Tuan just kind of being very serious all the time about it while Bill sat in the corner and said sarcastic things every now and then. That was great.

Kevin Dart is an artist and designer working in London. His work has been said to blend modern scientific and design ideas with 60s aesthetics. His work tends to focus on lighting mixed with strong color compositions and vivid imagery. He has done commercials for Persol Eyewear and Coca-Cola, as well as worked on motion pictures like Paranorman, Mr. Peabody and Sherman, Her, and the TV special revival of the Powerpuff Girls that came out last year.

Pieces for a group show about Science and Nature set to open on December 4th

His work tends to be geometric and vector-like with very straight lines contrasting precise curves. My personal favorite parts of his work are his color schemes and the way he uses lighting to create the atmosphere in his images.

“Yuki7 off the clock” these are pieces which have been compared to 60s aesthetics by Andrew Webster, writer for The Verge

According to this article from “The Verge”, Kevin Dart got his start working on 3D Modeling for video games, but now does visual development for movies, among other aforementioned things.

Early visual development for for Disney’s “Big Hero 6”

Posters done for Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar”

And just to finish this off with something that combines his love of art and science, here is a spot he directed for Neil Degrasse Tyson’s reboot of Cosmos:

You can find Kevin Dart in the following links:
blog- http://kevindart.tumblr.com/
collaboration book “Fleet Street Scandal” with Christopher Turnham- http://www.book-by-its-cover.com/fineart/fleet-street-scandal-a-collection

Part 1: Based on the notes you took during class, write a brief description and response to each of the Faculty presentations or
“The Hollis, Bill and Tuan Show”

Tuan– Did lots of work you’d expect out of a graphic designer, such as designing packaging, tags, tote bags, posters, etc. But I also liked his moving boxes with screen printed designs on them (clever!) as well as the fact that he makes all his presents have a personal touch by either making them all himself, or adding a design of his. I’m the same way about my presents, and while I used to feel ashamed of never buying my friends things for their birthdays, I now feel like I don’t care if my present isn’t handmade! I also tend to do “design” work for my parents, even though I’m not a designer. Both of those things really resonated with me.

Hollis- I got very excited when Hollis showed us her autobiographical graphic novels because 1-I love graphic novels and 2-I make little comics about dumb things that happen to me all the time. Hollis’ work was a lot more serious than mine, of course. I also like how her drawings of natural disasters and debris are all very neat and linear, yet the illustrations she’s done for her graphic novel are more expressive. The installations were also very neat and I can’t imagine having the patience to arrange so many different objects into a shape that I feel is “right”. I also realized how even though my work always speaks to me, it’s not very very personal, and I want to do something much more personal for my final Visual Studies project.

Bill- I do not know too much about the world of photography, so I was amazed to find out that Bill is quite a high-profile guy! His story really seems to resonate with the traditional story of an artist being successful, then hating their success because it stopped feeding their souls. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure I like the images he does where he puts them into photoshop and sort of abstracts them, but I do like that he experiments, and I’d certainly like to know what it is exactly that he does in order to make the images look like that. Not that he’d tell us, probably.

Part 2: Create a 5-year plan. What are your long term goals beyond college? What do you need to do to accomplish those goals?

I’m assuming this is a 5-year plan for after we graduate? I don’t know if I can come up with a specific and set plan but I could try…
I’m currently hoping to get a residency with the Mexican American Cultural Center, which would allow me to do small solo, or mostly solo gallery shows and teach classes at the MACC. The residency is renewed every 3 years, so I imagine that if I’m still living in Texas by the end of 2019, I’d renew my residency.
I’ve also been toying with the idea of volunteering at Houston Elementary to create an after school program where kids who don’t get to learn what they want in class (since the educational system only wants to focus on learning how to pass standardized tests) get to investigate and be inquisitive about the world. I’m still not sure about that because the bureaucracy is pretty awful and I don’t exactly know how to plan something like that.
On more down to earth ideas, I want to make comics and zines and put them up as a “pay what you want” type of thing on a website like gumroad. I’ve also wanted to learn how to create stationery and have actually learned quite a lot. I’d love to start a small hand-made stationery shop using etsy. In this case, I already have lots of materials, I just need to convince myself to actually do it now.
Then on the bigger scale of dreams, I really would like to work in film as an art director or something similar. With that, I suppose I have to build a strong portfolio and maybe start out working in small animation companies and work my way up. This means I need to get better at drawing things like landscapes because I do tend to cheat around that.

I suppose in the end though, my biggest obstacle is my fear of failure. I get so caught up in telling myself “I probably won’t succeed” that I don’t even bother trying, which I understand is detrimental to myself as an artist. I’m guessing it’s sort of like taking the plunge into cold water, but once you’re in it, you’re a lot more comfortable.

Post as least 2 images of your recent creative work. Please include captions and short descriptions.

I haven’t had time to do much finished personal work lately, but here are a few things I’ve done:

A practice piece inspired by Dice Tsutsumi’s digital painting style. (09/25)

A piece done for the seventh day of Inktober (10/07)

Then lately I’ve been influenced by Swiss International Design:

Testing out mock risograph printing with Radiohead lyrics. Not sure I like this though. I might just leave one “and the rain drops” in, except make it really big and still have the chromatic aberration sort of thing (11/6)

and lastly, a pokemon Christmas card kinda sorta done in that style:

Don’t really have a date of completion for this one, as I still need to refine things like the snowflakes and the pokemon itself. Also, a big thanks to Anthony (Truong Nguyen) for helping me out with the composition on this one 🙂

Part 1: Based on the notes you took during class, write a brief description and response to each of the Alumni presentations.

Lynne Bowman Cravens (Photography): She showed us many of her projects and the work she did as a student and after. Gave us personal insight into her art (which was really great) and talked to us about how grad school can be the most beneficial when you time it properly. Her work was probably my favorite out of all the photographer alumni that have come, and I like that she branched out into sculptural art as well.

Miranda Petrosky (Design): She talked to us about the different fields Graphic Design can branch out to and how it caters to designers who may have diverse focuses and talents. She also explained the pros and cons of working for both big and small companies. The only thing is she only showed one or two examples of her work and I really would have liked to see more.

Dustin Meyer (Photography): Dustin spoke to us about his career as a student and how he came to become a photographer. He talked to us about how he decided not to set his passion aside for money, but instead fought to find the way to make his passion his career (which is something I feel a lot of artists get discouraged with). He also talked to us honestly about how difficult it is to have your own business. I think my favorite part was towards the end where he talked about people who have not been trained in photography trying to be photographers, and how the difference shows, even if the person loves photography and isn’t too bad at it (the girlfriend of a friend of mine seems to think being able to take photos with a DSLR on automatic makes her a photographer and it really rubs me the wrong way, so it was nice to have my anger validated by an actual professional photographer). Also his photos were amazing, I like that he didn’t just do the whole “Stand under this arch of flowers and look pretty” type of photos, but instead made them into an entire scenario. Definitely the kind of photographer I’d want for my own marriage hehe!

Part 2: Many of our successful alumni say that their internship was one of the most valuable experiences they had. By searching the web, find at least 3 potential internships that you are interested in, and post the links on your blog. Many art, design, and photo companies, organizations, galleries have internship information on their websites.

1- Internship at Powerhouse Animation in Austin:
http://www.powerhouseanimation.com/jobs-internships/

2- Internship and the Austin School of Film (I’d like to do art direction for film)
http://austinfilmschool.org/get-involved/internships/

3- Chaotic Moon (I’m not a design major, but I really really like design…kinda like Alex Roka I guess)
http://www.chaoticmoon.com/careers/

4- Austin Film Festival (the marketing and PR one)
https://austinfilmfestival.com/get-involved/internship/

1. Who did you most relate to? and why? Definitely Alex Roka. I’m also a visual arts major, like he was when he first started here, but who really likes graphic design and at times tends to compose her work in a more design-ey way. His work was also around the style that I like too see in design (vintage, typography, badges, etc) so his work interested me much more.
2. Who surprised you? and why? I neglected to write her name, but the artist that works with Pump Project and all that was quite surprising. I didn’t think photographers would be really interested in giving artists studio spaces, and her work with NASA was really neat.
3. What was the most valuable piece of advice you heard today? Well, it was really encouraging to see that the old idea of “you’ll be a starving artist” isn’t necessarily true. As long as you know what you want and know how to use your resources, as well as have tenacity, you should be able to find work. And if you can’t, you can make your own work, be it by making Whiskey, or bugging people until they let you in!