Monday, November 12, 2012

Big City Forum: November Almanac







Big City Forum: The Hub at WUHO presents:

November Almanac: A Book in Space


Juliette Bellocq, Jessica Fleischmann, and River Jukes-Hudson




November 8 through December 16


Exhibition opening and reception


Wednesday, November 14 at 7 p.m.


Big City Forum: The Hub at WUHO is designed as a lab for ideas that encourages cross-disciplinary explorations and exchanges between various creative disciplines. BCF: The Hub presents three separate collaborative presentations focusing on ideas and social narratives around the concept of space and envisioning our relationship to change both at an intimate, personal level and at the urban scale.

Part two presents the work of three graphic designers: Jessica Fleischmann, Juliette Bellocq, and River Jukes-Hudson, with a project that riffs on the City of Los Angeles.

California is a land of plenty. Fall is a time of harvest and change. Los Angeles in November has another kind of sparkle, a silvery light. November Almanac is an installation, a book in space, that looks at harvest and clearing, and planting again, roots and vines, connection and longing, washing the spirit and greater understanding of where and how we are fed by L.A., the city where our food so mysteriously grows.

Sunday, September 30, 2012

Big City Forum: The Hub at WUHO

Woodbury School of Architecture is excited to announce that Big City Forum will be in residency at WUHO Gallery this fall, with events in October, November, and December.

Big City Forum: The Hub at WUHO
Big City Forum: The Hub at WUHO is designed as a lab for ideas that encourages cross-disciplinary explorations and exchangesbetween various creative disciplines. BCF: The Hub presents three separate collaborative presentations focusing on ideas and social narratives around the concept of space and envisioning our relationship to change both at an intimate, personal level and at the urban scale.

 Soo Kim, Siri Kaur, Christina Ondrus
+ evening of readings curated by Les Figues Press
October 6-31
Opening: Thursday, October 11, 7 p.m.
Literary readings: Wednesday, October 24, 6 p.m.

Part one presents the work of three artists who investigate notions around liminal space and the articulation of experiences or insights that defy precise description. In their own specific ways, each ofthese bodies of work deal with issues of absence and presence and the ways in which we experience time and place. The exhibition will be complimented by an evening of literary readings with LA based writers exploring similar themes in their work.

Soo Kim
Christina Ondrus
Siri Kaur
 WUHO Gallery
 6518 Hollywood Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90028
Gallery hours: Thursday 1–8 p.m., Friday-Sunday 1–6 p.m.
wuho.org

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Big City Forum: The Club House




 


Big City Forum: The Club House
A Pop-up at ForYourArt


6020 Wilshire Blvd.


August 4th - 18th


OPENING RECEPTION: Sat., August 4th, 4-8:00 pm

A modular exhibition and lab for ideas that encourage cross-disciplinary explorations and exchanges focused around the idea of maximum change.

At this moment of social and civic transformation in the public space and within a current moment steeped in uncertainty, how do we generate it, ensure it, and give it agency?

CURATORIAL TEAM:

Leonardo Bravo
http://

bigcityforum.blogspot.com/

Edie Kahula Pereira
http://
www.ediekahulapereira.blogspot.com/

Ana Llorente
http://
www.altdesignco.com/

Creative Migration
http://
creativemigration.org/about

John Southern
http://www.urbanops.org/

SPECIAL EVENTS:

Wednesday August 8th @ 8pm
Literary readings curated by Margaret Wappler

Thursday August 9th @ 7 pm
R&Being in the 21st century
An evening of sound collages by Steve De Groodt

Tuesday, August 14th @ 8pm
Literary readings curated by Margaret Wappler

Thursday August 16th @7 pm
Post New Bills
Preview screening presented by Creative Migration

“ForYourArt produces and hosts activities at 6020 Wilshire Blvd. to promote engagement with art, Los Angeles, and the Miracle Mile as part of its broad mission to create content to frame and support the activities of artists, curators, and institutions."

Friday, May 25, 2012

Big City Forum: Image/Space

Alia Malley

 Monica Nouwens

 Peter Holzhauer


Big City Forum: Image/Space
Wed, June 6, 7 - 9 pm 
Armory Center for the Arts 
145 North Raymond Avenue 
Pasadena, CA 91103

This forum will explore how photographers use their practice to inform our way of engaging or viewing public and social space. Part of this will explore how photographers engage the urban landscape of Southern California in both objective and metaphorical ways and how these images inscribe the way we look at Los Angeles, from the larger scope of the urban spread to the in-between, marginal spaces.  

Featuring: 
Peter Holzhauer 
Alia Malley 
Monica Nouwens 

Moderated by: Joshua Machat 
Senior Project Manager, Getty Research Institute 

Peter Holzhauer lives and works in Los Angeles. He studied at Pratt Institute, New York and Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston before receiving his B.F.A. from the Art Institute of Boston, and his M.F.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles. His photographs are in the permanent collections of the Boston Public Library, the Boston Athenaeum, and the George Eastman House, Rochester, New York. Holzhauer is a recipient of D’Arcy Hayman Award, Bill Muster Foundation Award, and Hoyt Scholarship. He is currently an instructor of photography at Cerritos College, Norwalk. His work has been in recent group exhibitions at the New York Photo Festival in Brooklyn; Piero Gallery in Orange, New Jersey; Phantom Gallery in Pasadena, California; and the Portland Museum of Art, in Maine. 

Alia Malley, born 1973 in La Jolla, California, USA, currently works and lives in Los Angeles. In 2010, she received her MFA in Visual Arts from University of California, Riverside; in 1994, Malley earned her BA in Critical Studies from the School of Cinematic Arts at University of Southern California. Malley’s work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions throughout the country, including the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, and Riverside Art Museum, California. In 2010, Malley was the recipient of the Merck Award at Darmstädter Tage Der Fotografie, Germany. In 2011, Malley won the CENTER Dealer’s Choice Award, at CENTER Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her most recent body of work, A Cavalier in Sight of a Village, was shown as a solo exhibition in 2011 at Sam Lee Gallery, Los Angeles, and included a limited-edition artist’s book. She is currently part of the two-person exhibition, Landscape and Perspective, at the Art Rental & Sales Gallery at LACMA, through July 2012.

Joshua Machat works on special projects for the Getty Research Institute, including Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980 and the upcoming architecture exhibition Overdrive: L.A. Constructs the Future, 1940-1990. From 2005 to 2010 he was a publicist for Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., specializing in titles on architecture, film, and photography. Prior to Rizzoli, Machat was purchaser and web editor for Photo-Eye Books & Prints. He holds a MA in Liberal Arts (Great Books Program) from St. John's College and a BA in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic.

Monica Nouwens completed a postgraduate fellowship in Art Media Studies at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and attended the California Institute of the Arts exchange program for film and photography. Nouwens’ one-person show “ Look at me and tell me .. ‘ will be shown at Photography Museum Amsterdam (FOAM; http://www.foam.org/ 2013) and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and is currently on view at Ron Mandos Amsterdam (http://www.ronmandos.nl/exhibition/show/96/monica_nouwens_-
Nouwens currently collaborates with LA author Claire Phillips, Their project, presented at the Photography Museum Amsterdam (FOAM, 2013), Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam (SMBA) and gallery Ron Mandos Amsterdam (Feb 2012) is a ficto-historical photo essay of post-boom America, a parallax of Hollywood driven cyborg fantasy with the poetic Do It Yourself underground movement of Los Angeles bohemia.  
A long and extensive print photography career plays an important part in the viewer’s experience of Nouwens’ work. Besides working as a regular contributor to publications such as Volume, Icon and Archis, her shots can be found in Domus magazine, Re-Magazine, Blueprint, Architect, Surface and many others.  Nouwens’ work can be found in various collections worldwide, including the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam / Salvatore Ferragamo, Florence / Levi’s, London / Prada - U.S.A Corp, New York / Michael Maltzan Architecture, Los Angeles; Jon Jerde Partnership, Venice; and Bartle Bogle Hegarty, London


Friday, April 13, 2012

Big CIty Forum: DesignThinking

Oscar Reutersvärd

Big City Forum: Design Thinking
Wed, May 2nd, 7 - 9 pm
Armory Center for the Arts
145 North Raymond Avenue
Pasadena, CA 91103



Big City Forum presents the third conversation in the Mapping LA series, a set of four discursive events that features speakers from a similar creative practice sharing a lively discussion around livability, sustainability, community, and the politics of place in Los Angeles.

The forum will explore how design based thinking can be used as creative process that informs our way of engaging with public and social space. A group of design practitioners and educators will explore issues around design as a set of solutions that can be applied towards social innovation, and the argument for and against it. It will also look at design thinking as a pedagogical and cognitive approach to engage with larger issues.

Featuring:
Nik Hafermaas - Chair Graphic Design, Art Center
Marc Mertens - Principal, SESO Design
Kali Nikitas, Chair Communication Arts, OTIS
Joseph Prichard - Principal J Prichard Design and Graphic Designer, Public Affairs, Cal Arts
Moderated by: Rebeca Mendez, faculty UCLA Design/Media Arts


Nikolaus Hafermaas is a designer, artist and the Department Chair of Graphic Design and Dean of Special Programs at Art Center College of Design. His Los Angeles based company UeBERSEE designs and produces data-driven art installations and design exhibitions. As former principal and chief creative officer of Triad Berlin, he and his two partners formed one of Germany's leading design firms. His team created pavilions for the World Expo2000 and for the Swiss Expo02. Prior to joining Art Center, he was a professor of integrated design at the University of Arts Bremen, and co-curator of the Berlin-based network Young Creative Industries. He has recently taught design workshops in France, Latin America and China. Nik is recipient of numerous international design awards and was member of the AIGA National Board of Directors.

Rebeca Méndez
was born in Mexico City and received her MFA from Art Center College of Design. She is currently a professor in the department of Design | Media Arts at UCLA. She has shown her work at ARCO Madrid 29th International Art Fair; X Biennial, Cuenca, Ecuador; the National Design Triennial; the Beall Center for Art and Technology, University of California, Irvine; the Alyce Williamson Gallery, Pasadena; the Broad Art Center, UCLA; Museum of Contemporary Art in Oaxaca; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris. In addition, her work has been exhibited at, and is represented in collections of, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, New York; the Denver Art Museum; the Freitag Historical Museum, Hannover; and Museo José Luís Cuevas, Mexico City.

Méndez lectures internationally, including a TEDx Talk in 2011, and reviews of her work have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Eye Magazine, Metropolis, and I.D. Magazine, among others. Méndez has received extensive international recognition, including artist residencies at the Gunnar Gunnarson Institute in Iceland, at The Arctic Circle, and at HIAP at the world heritage site of the historical fortress island of Suomenlinna, Helsinki, Finland. Méndez is recipient of a 2010 California Community Foundation Mid Career Fellowship for Visual Artist and was selected for the Artist Pension Trust, México City.

Marc Mertens
founded the experience design firm Seso to help organizations solve some of the world's largest challenges by creating engaging digital stories and experiences that move people. Seso has been engaged by organization such as TED, Nasa, The Smithsonian and the XPrize Foundation.

Marc currently serves on the council for the iSlate initiative, an ultra-low-cost, solar-powered learning tablet developed in a partnership with Rice University and NTU Singapore to foster rural education in developing nations. He also teaches User Experience Design at UCLA Extension and serves as the Director of Marketing & Partnerships at Glow, an all-night cultural experience on Santa Monica Beach that fosters human interaction through participatory, temporary art. The inaugural Glow featured over 20 commissioned art works and attracted more than 200,000 visitors.

Kali Nikitas
is principal of Graphic Design for Love (+$) based in Los Angeles. She is Chair of the Communication Arts Department and founding Chair of the MFA Graphic Design program at Otis College of Art and Design. She has been recognized by Type Director’s Club, ACD, AIGA, Graphis; published internationally; lectured and given workshops throughout the United States and in Europe. She is co-editor and collaborator of :OUTPUT, the international student competition. Kali’s website hosts a daily document entitled: “FASHION FOR LOVE (+$)” and she encourages global submissions.

Joseph Prichard is a Los Angeles–based graphic designer, specializing in work for the nonprofit and arts sectors. He holds an MFA in Graphic Design from the California Institute of the Arts and a BFA in film from the University of Southern California. He has collaborated with a number of leading Los Angeles’ design firms including, AdamsMorioka, Distinc, Muñiz/McNeil, Louise Sandhaus Design and Durfee|Regn Architects. He has created work for a diverse assortment of local and national clients including, United States Artists, CICLAVIA, TOMS Shoes, The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Stones Throw Records and the Autry National Center for the American West. Joseph’s work has been featured in publications such as Monocle, Fast Company, Pasadena Weekly and the Montreal Gazette and was included in the 2010 California Design Biennial.
He currently works as a Graphic Designer in the Public Affairs office of the California Institute of the Arts.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Big City Forum at Armory Center for the Arts


Armory Center for the Arts is pleased to welcome Big City Forum in residence starting immediately and extending through June 2012. During its residency at Armory, Big City Forum will present Mapping LA, a series of four discursive events that will feature speakers from a similar creative practice. Each event will feature a panel of speakers who share a specific creative practice, which will provide the framework for a lively discussion around livability, sustainability, community, and the politics of place in Los Angeles.

Fast Forward: Los Angeles on the Verge
Wednesday, March 7, 2012, 7pm

145 North Raymond Avenue
Pasadena, CA 91103

This panel explores new directions for urban planning and architecture with the following Los Angeles-based architects, theorists, and planners:

Dana Cuff, Director of cityLAB, a think tank within UCLA’s Department of Architecture and Urban Design.

Roger Sherman, Co-Director, cityLAB; principal, Roger Sherman Architecture and Urban Design.

Jessica Varner, Co-Editor, No More Play (Hatje Cantz, pub.); founder, SmallerLarge, a publications studio focused on ideas about architecture, urban studies, art, and culture.

Edward Soja, postmodern political geographer and urban planner; Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning, UCLA; Visiting Professor, London School of Economics.

Linda Taalman, Principal, TaalmanKoch Architecture; Assistant Professor of Architecture, Woodbury University.

Ava Bromberg (Moderator), Project Director, Atwater Crossing (ATX); Doctoral Candidate, School of Urban Planning, UCLA.

The Armory Center for the Arts, in Pasadena, California, believes that an understanding and appreciation of the arts is essential for a well-rounded human experience and a healthy civic community. Founded in 1989, the Armory builds on the power of art to transform lives and communities through presenting, creating, teaching, and discussing contemporary visual art. The organization’s department of exhibitions mounts over 25 visual arts exhibitions each year at its main facility and in locations throughout the City of Pasadena. In addition, the Armory offers studio art classes and a variety of educational outreach programs to more than fifty schools and community sites.