George McCain Leads IDSA
George McCain (BFA 1969) is an Affiliate Assistant Professor in the Design Division and the Principal at McCainDesign. He is currently serving as the President of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA). McCain has been a long-time supporter of the Industrial Design Program at the School of Art.
Faculty News: Estelle Lingo
Art History Associate Professor Estelle Lingo has been awarded a Senior Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, for the 2011-2012 academic year. This will allow her to work on her book project about the seventeenth-century sculptor Francesco Mochi. Lingo has been chair of the Division of Art History’s search for a Medievalist. She will be co-leading the Art History Seminar in Rome during Spring Quarter 2011 with her husband, Associate Professor Stuart Lingo.
What is Innovation in the Arts?
In December 2010, the Henry Art Gallery hosted a panel discussion titled “What is Innovation in the Arts.” It was moderated by KUOW’s Marcie Sillman, and the auditorium was packed. Two School of Art alumni were on the panel: Leo Berk (MFA 1999) and Margie Livingston (MFA 1999). Seattle Channel filmed the event and has made the video available online.
Faculty News: Lou Cabeen
Art Division Professor Lou Cabeen successfully co-led a new Exploration Seminar with Judi Clark, Director of Academic Advising and Student Services, during August/September 2010. The seminar, titled “London and the Arts of Pilgrimage” will again be taught in 2011. Cabeen has work in a show titled Traces: Mapping a Journey in Textiles, which opened in January and runs through 14 May 2011. The exhibit is at Gregg Museum of Art & Design at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. All the artists will be participating in the Trace Evidence Symposium in late March, and a catalog is being produced based on the exhibit.
Alumni News: John Szostak
John Szostak (MA 1996, PhD 2005) is an Assistant Professor of Japanese Art History in the Department of Art & Art History at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. During this academic year, he is a Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Fellow at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Art, which is part of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, England.
Faculty News: Axel Roesler
Interaction Design Assistant Professor Axel Roesler has been successfully pursuing grants during the past year. He won a Boeing grant of $150,000 for developing “new design concepts for the physical layout of the commercial flight deck, spatial flight data organization, and interaction design to support flight operations.” The grant was just renewed for an additional $120,000. This supports research by him, graduate students Nate Landes and Stephen Minarsch, and other students.
Roesler received a $56,000 subcontract for a research project with the Institute for Simulation and Interprofessional Studies (ISIS) at the UW School of Medicine. His project involves interaction design and interface development for a Medical Emergency Black Box Information System (MEBBIS), an iPad-based realtime documentation application that assists during the documentation of medical emergencies. He also received $28,000 as part of a SHARP grant for work on patient-centered cognitive support. The UW portion of the grant is led by the Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering; this is part of a larger grant through the University of Texas, Houston. The research for this grant will explore how a work-centered design process can improve the work of healthcare professionals with health information technology.
Under Roesler’s direction, a group of students (Andrew Battenburg, Minnie Bredow, Tim Damon, Sophie Milliotte, Jon Sandler, and Tanya Test) participated in the Microsoft Design Expo 2010. Their project was titled “Open Door.” In October 2010, “Open Door” was featured at the Service Design Network Conference in a presentation by Shelley Evenson of Microsoft. A video demonstrates “Open Door.” Roesler currently has several teams of students working on projects for the Microsoft Design Expo 2011.
Intel Labs in Seattle awarded Roesler a $20,000 research grant for “Design of New Interaction Methods and User Interfaces for the Home of the Future”, which last year supported graduate student Nate Landes as the first design research associate at Intel. While there, Landes worked on project OASIS. His work was successfully demonstrated last summer and received press in WIRED magazine and MIT’s Technology Review. Shweta Grampurohit, another Design MFA student, has more recently worked at Intel with OASIS; her project involves Legos. It came in second at the Intel Sandy Bridge Challenge and was chosen for demonstration at the 2011 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which took place in January. Intel has a webpage that describes the OASIS research with which both Landes and Grampurohit were involved, and it includes links to videos and a research paper.
In early December 2010, Roesler presented a paper at The Image Conference 2010. His presentation was titled “A New Model for Perspective: Patterns of Perspective Change and the Ecology of Point of View and Resulting Image.”
Student News: Victoria Wilmes
Art History MA student Victoria Wilmes presented at the California State University, Los Angeles, graduate student symposium titled “The Role and Practice of Artists in Society” held on 22 January 2011. Her paper was titled “Giuseppe Valeriano: Experimental Spirituality and the Decline of Artistic Divinity.”
Faculty News: Philip Govedare
Painting + Drawing Professor Philip Govedare will have an essay published in mid-April. “Altered Landscapes,” illustrated with one of his paintings, will be in the “Visual Geographies” section of a book titled GeoHumanities: Art, History, Text at the Edge of Place. Two days after that book is scheduled for release, Govedare will be speaking at the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting here in Seattle. His presentation is titled “Art and the Politics of Landscape,” and it is part of a session titled “Landscape and Creative Expression.” He will have a solo show at Francine Seders Gallery in Seattle from 06 May through 05 June 2011.
Alumni @ MoNA
The Museum of Northwest Art in La Conner currently has three shows that include School of Art alumni. Wild/Life, organized by Curator of Exhibitions and former School of Art staff member Kathleen Moles, has work by Claire Cowie (MFA 1999), Sherry Markovitz (MFA 1975), Saya Moriyasu (BA/BFA 1991), and several other artists. Mindful Waters: Life in the Salish Sea features the glass work of Theodora Jonsson (BA/BFA 2003). Together, selections from the permanent collection, includes Philip McCracken (BFA 1954) and Dale Chihuly (BFA 1965). All three shows remain open until 02 March 2011.
Faculty News: Karen Cheng
Design Associate Professor Karen Cheng has been nominated for a Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award in the Communication Design category. Award candidates are nominated by a national committee of more than 2,500 design professionals, educators, critics, and patrons. She is currently a Co-Principal Investigator for a National Science Foundation grant titled “Contextual Research-Empirical: Improving Visual Communication in Nanotechnology.” A new video produced by Design student Jeremy Juel features the projects that Cheng and Assistant Professor Kristine Matthews created for PACCAR Hall on the UW Seattle campus. One of these is the Foster Exchange, which we wrote about earlier. Cheng recently received funding from the UW Simpson Center for the Humanities to support a project titled “Letters from France: Jean François Porchez on Culture and Identity in Type Design,” which will bring well-known type designer Porchez to Seattle to give lectures and work with UW students.
