Michael Mohan: Filmmaker

On October 28, 2010 LA Filmmaker Michael Mohan visited the Visual Design Inquiry Group. He showed his work, and gave a lecture, and there was an informal Q + A afterward. Here are some highlights from the visit.

Michael talks about the music videos he's directed for Minus the Bear, Fitz and the Tantrums, and Hot Hot Heat.

Informal Q + A discussion with students. Michael talks about his experiences working with well-known stars such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Robert Downey Junior, and Kanye West.

Advice to students on working with clients:

1. Earn people's trust.
2. Embrace limitations.

3. Being naive can be your biggest asset.

4. You never know.

5. No bad ideas, only bad listeners.

6. Prepare as much as you can, knowing you'll never be 100% prepared.

Stephanie Grey: Design for the Senses

On Oct. 21st Stephanie Grey gave a lecture and workshop called “Design for the Senses.” The workshop presented unique ways for the students to engage with the design process via the five senses: sight, sound, touch, taste and smell.

Stephanie invites the students to interact with her thesis document, a tactile experience as the book is built from varied materials.

Stephanie’s workshop involved blindfolding the students, and giving them each an object to decipher through one or two of the five senses.

deCordova Museum

Two Big Black Hearts, 1985,
bronze, by artist Jim Dine

The deCordova Museum, located in Lincoln, Massachusetts, is absolutely enchanting. It is the largest sculpture museum in New England, featuring an outdoor sculpture park with many site-specific works. The park contains mostly modern and contemporary works of art. Some of the pieces are meant to be interacted with, and use a variety of mediums—from stacks of newspapers to recycled metal products. Viewers are invited to come within close proximity of the works, creating a personal experience. All the sculptures prohibit walking, standing, or climbing, but you are able to touch them with your hands. The outdoor sculpture field occupies 35 acres of scenic land. A walk around the park is truly surreal. The deCordova provides an incredibly genius artistic presentation of its outdoor collection.

VDIG poses amongst OZYMANDIAS, 2009,  
wood, paint, steel, by artist Douglas Kornfeld

Inside the museum there was an exhibit titled “Rubbers” by artist Martha Friedman. The work is all rubber and focuses on tongues and organic objects. Another exhibit is Leonardo Drew’s “Existed.” This exhibit concentrates on creation, decay, and regeneration. The medium consists primarily of rusted objects. I now know I can always visit the deCordova for inspiration.

Students interact with The Musical Fence, 1980, by artist Paul Matisse

Posing with Male Baseball #1, 2009, bronze
and chrome, by artist Yoram Wolberger

Our Visit To Acme Bookbinding

Outside Acme Bookbinders in Charlestown, MA

HEY BLOGGERS!
This week the Visual Arts Colloquium class took a visit to Charlestown to visit Acme Bookbinding! Acme is one of the oldest and largest bookbinders in New England. They're also in Guinness Book Of World Records for binding the largest book—which is 5 feet tall and 80 inches wide. To hold this book together, they used screw posts. Our tour guide, Pete, was very humorous and we thank him for taking time out of his day to show us around.

Pete, our tour guide, shows the “largest book in the world” to the students. He explains the printing and binding process that went into crafting it.

We learned that Acme was formally known as J. G. Roberts, and was founded in 1821. Pete opened the tour with a story of how the president of Acme, Paul Parisi, quit his job and founded Acme on the same day his son John Parisi was born, which is how they remember the company's age. Acme is a family company, so his son John also works there too, as head of manufacturing. As Pete took us around Acme, we were able to see some new equipment used to bind books, as well as some older ones. It was cool—they use a lot of unique materials for their books, such as leather and goat skin (sorry to all the animal lovers). 

Acme Bookbinding provides edition binding, library binding, textbook rebinding and other products. They use glue and sewing to bind books together, and when the machines finish sewing, or the glue is dried, the books go through a machine with a double sided blade, that is placed at an angle and it cuts and trims the book to the desired size. It was pretty amazing to watch the machines work. One of the fancier machines was the Hp indigo press 5500. One of our classmates (HALI) sketched up a picture of it for us. Their projects can take up to one weekend to a couple of weeks. Their motto is "never turn anything down" which may be the reason why they are New England’s favorite! :)

First Class Trip: Dynagraf

Everyone say “Dynagraf!”

Greetings,

The Visual Design Inquiry Group went to a printing company their first class trip. We went to visit a very successful company known as Dynagraf Inc. Dynagraf has been around for many years and has won many awards. More recently was the Sappi Fine Paper North American Printer of the Year award. They were awarded $20,000 which they will use to update their equipment and put towards marketing.

The printing process starts with pre-press. Pre-press is mostly done on computers. In this step, designers and other like employees will look at the files and make any color adjustments or layout tweaking that may need to be done. This digital department makes sure everything is ready to go even before anything has started to print. When everything is ready to go, they will then proceed to print off about 100 copies and then do a check to make sure all the colors are accurate and everything is in order. A representative from the company who hired Dynagraf for their project will inspect the work and if they're satisfied they will give the okay to start mass printing. In the next step, there is 3 cylinders used to create the prints at 12,000 sheets per hour. A project will typically take a few weeks or a few months from start to finish. Dependning on the type of material used and how many copies are required.

It was a successful first class trip, Heather didn't get us all killed! We all received multiple gifts from the company and learned a lot about the printing process.

Visual Arts Colloquium kick-off!

Curry faculty Iris Kumar presents her recent work.

“Quiet Chill” by Prof. Laurie Alpert

The Visual Arts Colloquium class kicked off with demonstrations by Curry Fine and Applied Arts faculty Laurie Alpert, Iris Kumar, and Heather Shaw. Each faculty member presented their work to the class on Thursday, Sept. 2, 2010.

The students—called the Visual Design Inquiry Group (VDIG)—asked many great questions and engaged in a dialogue with the faculty about their methodologies and approaches to their personal and professional works.

The Visual Design Inquiry Group (VDIG) are first year students who have expressed an interest in Graphic Design and/or Visual Arts. The Visual Arts Colloquium class is designed to inspire and engage the students in the arts through class trips, visiting lecturers, and workshops.

Visual Design Inquiry Faculty:
Laurie Alpert: www.lauriealpert.com
Iris Kumar: irismorehousekumar.wordpress.com
Heather Shaw: www.heathershawdesign.com