Symposiums

Pablo Helguerall 
Born in Mexico City

based out of NYC

Socially engaged art sculpture drawing photography

Also an author 

Solo show in Kent in NYC

Try to never repeat a presentation.. he never wants to boring 

Education for Socially- Engaged Art

Working in museums and museum education for 20 years

• education is intricate and a way to develop relationships with others 

When he started art he wanted to be a painter

• he could not get his communication across
• through teaching he became a better artist
• art that was not just and object but an experience

last art piece

• a game 50 participants only played once 
• will conclude in 2097 after all are passed away
• Friends, relatives and audience. Also 25 random visitors. All asked to engage in a life time commitment
• 16 envelops, only to be opened on a particular date
• all are doubled 
• the last is to be read on the day he dies
• he wrote a letter for the audience of the event
• each envelope have a series of instructions
• piecing together the past and giving us insight 

address concerns he already has. Time, with memory and relationships with individuals. The more we are connected the less we are in tune with each other. Create bonds with new people. The experience of being alive. See ourselves in the present. 

The Seven Bridges of Konigsberg. 2008

• similar rational 
• friends opened a alternative space in China Town
• Forever and Today
• Palm reading intrigued him, Gypsy 
• created his own set of cards, new and own system 
• Russian seven bridges, a mathematical problem, weather it was possible if you could crass all bridges then passing over one more then once. 
• by creating a proof, it founded systems theory 
• no life had a single path you can never recross a bridge or a time in your life
• the context of the images
• you teach not by giving people information by talking at, but help them articulate things they may know but not totally understand 
• people who would confess personal things and ideas 
• it was an art project, but it didn't matter to people, they felt as if it was real it was no longer a game
• getting out of the conventional environments of galleries and museums. we live in a world where art is an entertainment. Art is not just entertainment, it is supposed to ask questions and change minds and ideas.

Forum of Cultural Purification, Mexico City. 2003

• he wrote six papers and had actors learn them 
• organized a conference at a hotel and conference in a neutral zone.
• not one person knew it was a performance piece
• invited people who actually their papers next to the actors 
• the debates were strong and people were reacting in crazy ways
• the second panel he was the moderator
• final meeting- his friend ryan hill
• Ryan Hill for Rudy Gulianni 
• next day there was a press uproar, someone asked him if it was a performance... he told them nothing 
• does it matter if it a performance or not?
• Forcing a conversation that needed to be said

The Juvenal Players, 2009

• blurring the beginning and end
• For the art makers
• he wanted to do a play
• retrospective of a fictional artist
• died seven years ago 
• famous latin poet who is the father of satire
• he hated everything
• on the day of the opening there was a symposium there was a panel 
• all actors they knew nothing about art
• they can be more real then the real person
• no one knew it was fake
• be able to maintain the fiction till the very end
• at the end the characters confess their insecurities, how their lives are out of sorts
• moment of them questioning themselves
• they all leave except the one young woman
• she delivers a monolog
• she was a real artist
• how art is a very difficult thing  
• economic downturn

The BOy Inside the Letter

• diary, things everyday
• had to write even if it was stupid
• started writing to himself but in the future
• found a box and found his old diaries
• it was a younger but older him
• when he read it it made sense 
• Novel 
• confront that moment of a transition 
• we finally know who we are
• going from an art student to an artist
• child to adult
• from Mexico to U.S.
• showed it like an archeology museum

Wakefield 2010

• portrait of him and his daughter
• personal biography
• be brutally honest about the moment you are in
• not just confessional piece
• why do we need to share thins
• why does anyone care
• difficult to be a parent 
• Wakefield Nathaniel Hawthorne 
• feel completely contemporary
• changes his path, lease a room across the street from his house, what happens when he is not there
• still watching through the window, he finally leaves the room and goes across the street and walks right through the door.
• the possibility of breaking patterns 
• the social commitments 

Jordan Rathus
Non fiction that blends in narrative devices, Jordan uses these themes
Lives in Brooklyn

Questions..
1)about her work
2) lifestyle question

unusual trajectory to becoming an artist.
theater- writing and acting
16 got her first camcorder
went to paris for her film class
Went to NYU for film
production assistant job right away and worked for tv production
She wasn't making art or film the way she wanted to
and went back to school
Columbia MFA program
Writing a little, making work, teaching, exhibiting, gallery space. Mix and mach of art and life

--Video based, attacking the image, but it can be entertaining and she pulls from entertainment shows and humor. And she bleieves that is the best way to attack the system. Lightness to work.

--Real work/ the game show

• video piece
• surreal and insane 
•  like the real world and its a blur of reality and fiction
• how to create on camera persona "reality" 
• so much consideration on a person's performance
• adjusting and editing while things are happening
• who is really in control?

Relation with reality tv

• using the skill set that she worked for tv and applying it to working with artists. 
• help these people that don't know how to make a full production

Shipping container

red carpet

cut out

and 8x8 step and repeat 

Celeb culture 

hired a friend to be a paparazzi with her and took a picture with "her"

Create work from work

Have an evolution

After graduation- residency in Michigan 

• Ox bow
• documentation of landscape and her experience 
• persona- when you are in the middle of no where
• NY persona in the wilderness

--Offseason

recycled story boards scripts and notes all put together in a grid

reduced each frame from each scene and lay it back onto the paper

narrative disjointedness. people not being able to communicate reasonable, obscured and inspired by the plays in high school

story within the story, showing the production side. No fake name, persona of the artist. Extreme versions of herself. What is right and what is fair when it comes to using a culture and showing it in a piece. 

20 min short film Double Agency 

appropriating different sources- copy and pasted sounds bites from breaking bad and double identity in a critical context using humor 

stretching the idea of artwork



Tim Rollins and K.O.S. 
Studied at the University of maine
MFA at NYU
special ed teacher in new York
Based in NYC

His Story
All works of art are like a time machine. It can take the past to the present and translate to the future.

September 11 2001
in studio in Chelsea

• big beautiful painting about a mid summers night dream
• top to floor windows looking towards the twin towers, see the trade centers are on fire
• collaboration of students, adjacent of the destruction
• now we know what side we are on
• opened the windows, the smell from the south. Smelt like burning garbage but unfamiliar. 

sept 11 1981

• just out of school from MAin and now in NYC
• 24 years old
• just help the school, 52 kelly street south bronx
• just keep going on the train, elevated tracks.mile and miles of devistated empty burnt out buildings, the 9/11 smell. Packs of dogs and druggies and in the middle of the mess was a mother with her kids on the way to school.
• chaos of the school.
• they bet he wouldn't show up
• the school was shut down on two floors, everyone was crammed.
• graffiti tags, ceiling is covered with tags and charcoal 
• the kids were diabolical about being creative
• in the hip hop era because of him being a hero for showing up to this school
• death mask face
• make the best drawing you have ever made in your life, now. 
• favorite word in the universe NOW
• music and drawing
• "will you stay" his whole life passed before his eyes
• listen to the voice
• His hero- Martin luther king Jr
• The strgrenth of love -- anger has roots in grieving. 
• its hard to teach art when they cant even spell paint
• everything was learned through art-- history math english
• Art and knowledge workshop with K.O.S.
• they did works based off of work and literature
• everyone is an artist
• he knew he was going to make art but he felt they were going to make history

1993- just got back from Venice, Emmy and a move and the NY Times

• rick form K.O.S. calls- emergency, St. Valentines Day Massacre 
• Prospect Ave.
• The area was starting to clean up
• chris was killed, he just got accepted to school of art and design
• he flew back to deal with the backlash
• it wasn't sad, but he was still there
• this is why we treat art better then we treat ourselves
• it is a necessary for our lives, and its more of a reason to keep going on

contradiction of graffiti because it is a defacement and a glorification 

Devin Kovach
interested in observation

• the way we see the places we inhabit 
• how we perceive these places
• how we understand that place

How he makes his work

• printmaking is his passion

but photography and instillation is something else that is compelling. different ways of dealing with visual information

The experience of living in the city. Santa Fe, New Mexico. the transition of being in the open. Moved to Scotland.

• the weight to the city the stone, heavy air and complete opposite to where he grew up.

Dealt with the change of atmosphere by drawings, how he showed the intense and chaotic environment and how it was a psychological dealings.  There is a relationship between his drawings and how he moved and saw the city.

• he had to get out of the tight one point perspective.

This work culminated in his thesis exhibition

• map imagery 
• way to keep a connection to that place and maintaining a personal connection

he wanted to change the scale of his work
but also pushing it into the viewers pace

making the formation of a building that is "heavy" and make them light and transform

took a little break before going to grad school

1. expand practice
2. expand the ideas of art that you are making
3. seek out opinions for why to go to grad school
4. choose a program that best fits you not just for the name

Tyler School of art for his MFA

• everything that seemed clear.. it totally changed
• thinking not just making
• expand the ideas that go into your work
• defining conceptual work

constant onslaught of critiques and visits and pieces, shocking of finding that the confidence of making art. so he fell bak on what he knew that he knew well. His solution was to make things more complex.  He came to a new environment but he kept reaching back to undergrad for insperation, something was just off to him.

The use of left overs from old works

• how the paper hung in space and how it made interesting details and perspectives
• depth, perspective, and dynamic space.
• it seemed too easy that it must not be a serious. high lights the importance of play in studio time. Make mistakes 

having a studio to go to all the time

making constructions and instillation sketches

"all the interesting work i have done is against all the ideas I have had.."- william kentradge

-painters tape
-dowel rods
-scrim fabric
>^lines of the scaffolding and the lines of the building that was just a silly sketches and then it became an exercise of a flat space and it started to invade the studio. not just an imaginary place a real place that he had a relationship to. drawing attention to something that may seem mundane and a nuisance. this began to set things in motion and nature and construction was constantly impacting the piece.

Taking pictures of the windows instillation and how these photographs departed from the reality of the space. we are so used to seeing and understanding without really trying and his images make you stop and take a second look. working between photography and the installation.

The experience of travel


Greg Thielker
Sites and non-sites

Lived all over the world. Making work where ever you are.

Read an image, the feeling the story behind the image.

How we process an image

Abstract

• pushed ideas not technique
• after graduation he moved to colorado to paint
• Landscape, physical that is a memory of the place

Portable materials

•  going out and not letting materials stop you

St Louis 

• Grad school

Boston

• Studio group 

Through the Windshield 

• oil painting 
• what you would see as you were driving
• separated from the outside world while totally immersed in it
• a balance of realism and abstraction
• 5-6 years working in this 

Experiences abroad- teaching, volunteering, projects

• "do the marco polo route"
• American Vertigo by Bernard - Henri Levy and Rory Steward
• the double narrative
• Residency in India
• don't come with materials or a plan
• nothing to lose but not knowing how it would work
• temple sites from 1000 ad, describe their journey to the temple. Made an installation next to the temple.
• month long experience
• many different people, musicians writers musicians. Keeping the conversation alive.
• Larger project about India
• there is no single truth
• be a channel about many views for one single place
• from Kolkata to Dehli
• went to paint but he did drawings instead, more flexible
• drawing every 76 km
• made it more democratic 
• small drawings 
• the similarities within the small drawing
• moment between old and new, and did interviews. Reinforcing and learning about the place
• collision of old and new
• Drew the road, no nonsense approach

Interview Quotes

• drivers - "brother this is the oldest one, this shrine is from my grandfathers time, and no one knows hold old this is,... one person makes money and the rest surfers.. "
• the frustration and grim acceptance of reality

Downtown DC

• arrange the millage stops along the road, all done with pencils 
• biggest is 10.5 -11 feet long
• all to fit into the carryon 
• quotes and pictures
• receipt from Calcutta - the journey as much as the stops
• the rose petals 

Afghanistan

• support of funding agencies, but mostly on their own.
• unfiltered access to people and communities
• overlap of history, Quadram, military base is there. 
• Crystal vase
• grave yard of tanks
• THe citadel and covered by an Afghan military base 
• more about history rather then military
• mud compound , it makes people safe, they feel sheltered
• every time he thought he understood something, another thing came up and changed his view
• simply documenting the place
• what can he learn and how can he display that history in an image
• drawing on Afghan newspaper. two flags tied together.
• scarves, the afghan dark striped older generation, young men the pixelated scarf
• air space, and interviews 
• the multiple picture of the space, the snow to spring or rebirth 

Alan Brooks
Professor at TCNJ

Brief Bio

• first place in an art contest
• SVA- School of VIsual arts, high school never gave him a lot of direction
• he was at first intimidated, but stuck through and was named best graphic design student
• advertising, not a fan, but he didn't know why.  Then he found graphic design, because it was art and not just business sketches.
• not just creating a concept
• all marker drawn.
• envelopes 

CBS TV

• typographic titles
• age 22 using all different services
• vendors were then catering to his needs. Lots of staff when working for a big company
• Movie ads, only a few hours to complete.
• training to work on your toes, work faster.

SHOWTIME

• literally the art department
• freedom and open to his ideas
• left after a short time, quit

FREELANCE WORK

• networking with other channels and old bosses
• took an office in mid town, with a person from showtime and a person from CBS

BROOKS CHAMPION INC.

• dont have 3 designers start a business, needed more diversity i.e. accounting or business
• computers were beginning to come into play
• Transition to the first macintosh 
• tutortials for his computer to learn how to use software.
• TV shows 

MOVES TO NJ

• Princeton NJ
• Allen Brooks Design
• different cliental 
• Transition to corporate, get in the middle so it looks different and not like ever other pharmaceutical annual report 
• Expand the business- partner who knows marketing and sales
• VERGE180
• every company is on the verge of something, failure, success, change. Help these people see the new marketing and advertising ideas.
• never to specialize in any area of design or any industry- because he never wanted to be pigeonholed.
• Branding Company
• What is a brand identity? Outward impression of the brand

register the brands and logos that we see everyday

When logos change.. the branding changes

CASE STUDY

• Tower Water Management
• new logo
• protects pipes and heating and cooling infrastructure through proper treatment of water
• Cut out management.. first
• every competitor uses blue
• Pipes and water make the best element
• not just the logo, give it an environment 
• 3- 6 logo designs

CREATIVE PROCESS

• Laborers 55
• green materials for old homes
• sketch 
• keep sketching because the ideas come out and just keep going. there is a lot of nothing but the more you work it out the better ideas can come
• look at references
• sketch more
• then hang on a wall and do further development
• you need a sense of where you want to go

DISCOVERY

• Do your research
• the project almost designs itself, so you learn what they like and what they dont want
• MESSAGE?
• BENEFITS?
• AUDIENCE?
• PERSONALITY?

McGraw- HIll Federal Credit Union

• Credit union, like a bank 
• financial services
• most ambitious of their logo

How do you build your cliental?

• word of moth or referrals, weekly networking group. events.
• cold calls- least effective 
• Linkedin- effective but tedious 

How to rework a logo without totally changing it, keep it new but referencing the old?

•  present it in a way that everyone is on the same page, then you expose it to the customers 
• nothing bad happened, its not that things are changed just an upgrade.

Tom Gebauer
Graduate of the Class of 2007 with a BFA in Graphic Design and Visual Communication

Sr. Director of User Experience & Design at Advanced Digital/ Advanced Publication Inc.

• How a person interacts with a given system --> Scientific -->quantitative measurement (User Experience.. Analytical side).
• How Something Looks--> part emotional --> artistic and visual communication (Design)

Making Life style brands, how to use areas of business, art and design, software engineering and cognitive technology. This all adds up to what User Experience is, how people interact and have a "connection" to what they use either digitally and physically.

User Experience is based on measurement 

• tangible business- profit or loss
• design
• bond

Exists Everywhere 

• Human Factors/ Human Computer Interactions (HCI)
• grounding interactions

All of the factors that help create a business to be more customer focused.  How the people or consumers interact with products and the company, making it more user friendly.

Agencies today are both in Traditional and Digital media, there is not limit to who needs help with consumer design and how they interact with the company.

Advanced Publications Inc.

• Largest privately owned company in the world- Owned by S.I Newhouse
• Highly diversified 
• Lots to do and improve on in this sector, because some view the company as "evil" for taking away jobs or limiting services or just having a bad experience with a website or telephone operators.  With the used of new technologies and new design to appease the public and get back on the good side of consumers by offering services that are user friendly.

His more current work has been for the NJ.com website, taking a confusing and poorly designed website and breaking it down to its most simple components.

1. Starting with the original website, heat trackers were focused on what was getting used the most on the site
2. A simple sketch of a new site was drawn up
3. Digital blue print- wire frame design
4. Then a test site is put up for the public to use and interact with
5. Second launchings to fix any bugs or tweaking of buttons.
6. Final website.

Never stop getting inspired, and dont be scared to work in different sectors, the more you learn the more possibilities you have.

Over all I thought the talk was great. Tim started off with telling us who he was and what he likes to do, its a departure from what we normally see and it made it easier to connect with him as he spoke to us.  Digital isn't my discipline but he made it exciting for me to listen to and understand.  He has a wealth of knowledge and highly engaging.