Thursday, June 18, 2015

Read more about Pope's lecture in the Westword here, and in The Denver Post here. 

About the Lecture
In her lecture titled The Physicality of Space, artist and designer Cheryl Pope discussed her work in relation to the body. Pope examined physicality from a variety of interrelated approaches including her experience as a boxer, her studio practice, her community engagement, and her performance work. Offering insights and connections between the body, experience, and exhibition, the artist explored corporal identity at the nexus of art and design.

About the Lecturer
Cheryl Pope is a visual artist working in sculpture, installation, and performance mediums. Her work questions and responds to issues of identity as they relate to both the private and public self. For the past three years, her research has focused on issues of power, inequality, race, gender and segregation in Chicago, IL, where she is originally from and currently based. Pope’s work as an artist guide at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and her twelve years of study under the artist Nick Cave prove to be dominant influences on her practice.

Currently Pope is Assistant Professor in the Fashion Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she also earned her Masters in Design: Fashion, Body, and Garment. The artist exhibits nationally and internationally, and received press from the New York Times and Vanity Fair among others. 

Other Events with Cheryl Pope
On June 19, 2015 the artist participated in the Next Day Q+A Session with the RMCAD community. For more information about this event please click here.

Cheryl also conducted a special workshop for RMCAD students titled Physicality and Language in Studio Practice. For details about this student event, please click here.

Reading List
Suggested materials by Cheryl Pope can be found here.

Tuesday, May 5, 2015 
7:00 pm
Mary Harris Auditorium on the RMCAD campus
Free and open to the public. Please RSVP here.

Watch the movie trailer here.

This “existential comedy” questions the reason for existence and coincidences. “With the help of two Existential Detectives, Bernard and Vivian Jaffe (Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin), Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman) examines his life, his relationships, and his conflict with Brad Stand (Jude Law).”
- Twentieth Centrury Fox

This screening is part of the VASD Program’s Identity Series. The VASD Program is exploring topics of identity in its current yearlong lecture series. Through this series, the Program investigates the ways creative thinkers are presenting, challenging, and manipulating identities in art, design, and in culture.

Image: Twentieth Century Fox

As part of the Identity series, the RMCAD community was invited to join the VASD Program for a special engagement with Creative Director Ellen Bruss, of Ellen Bruss Design (www.ebd.com).

Students had the opportunity to visit the EBD studio where Bruss talked about the firm’s philosophy and her own passion for art and design. 

EBD is a marketing and branding firm dedicated to marketing strategy, advertising, corporate identities, marketing collateral, web sites, environmental design, outdoor and radio. The firm specializes in real estate, mixed use developments, retail shopping center and retail product marketing. EBD’s creative efforts have resulted in awardwinning national and international recognition in hundreds of publications and numerous blogs including Print Magazine, Communication Arts, Graphis, Creative Quarterly, GD USA, HOW International, The DieLine and PaperSpecs. Prior to EBD, Ellen’s branding experience included the music industry, retail and consumer business. Ellen has over 30 years of marketing experience and has branded numerous companies from start-ups to established organizations. Ellen was just featured as Graphic Design USA as a 2014 Person to Watch.

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

About the Lecture
Questions are central to Lynda Barry’s work and her primary inquiry is the profound yet deceitfully simple question, “what is an image?” In her lecture titled What It Is: Manually Shifting the Image, Barry led the audience through a number of complex, interwoven queries essential to creative thinking, making, and living. At the center of all of these questions is ‘an image,’ something that feels alive and is contained and transported by something that is not alive—a book, or a song, or a painting—anything we call an ‘art form.’ Barry’s lecture skillfully waded the audience through an insightful understanding of the creative experience itself—unpacking the identity and function of ‘an image’ and ‘the arts.’  Please note, in addition to being a brilliant thinker and maker, Barry also has a delightfully impish sense of humor about her explorations: there were swear words, party tricks, and jokes about balls.

About the Lecturer
Lynda Barry is a cartoonist, writer, illustrator, and teacher. She is the inimitable creator of the seminal comic strip syndicated across North American alternative weeklies for two decades, Ernie Pook’s Comeek featuring the incomparable Marlys and Freddy. Barry is currently Assistant Professor in Interdisciplinary Creativity at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she teaches writing and picture making and runs the Image Lab at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery. Her bestselling and acclaimed graphic novel, What It Is, won the Eisner Award for Best Reality Based Graphic Novel and the R.R. Donnelly Award for highest literary achievement by a Wisconsin author. Other accolades include 2013 Lifetime Visual Arts Award, MOWA, a second William Eisner award, The American Library Association’s Alex Award, and the Washington State Governor’s Award, among many others. 

While at RMCAD Lynda Barry also participated in the Program's Next Day Q+A Session and taught a group of very lucky students in special workshop. Information about these events can be found here. 

For even more information, please read Lynda Barry's interview in Westword here. 

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Sexual Politics and the Logistical Business Strategies in Independent Music presented an autobiographical narrative highlighting the artist’s business savvy and artistic journey to his current position in independent music. The lecture also addressed the politics of sexuality and gender within the music and entertainment industry. With brazen and unapologetic passion, Blanco confronts conventional presentations and assumptions about rap, gender, sexuality, and artistic categorization. This lecture examined a diverse path to a creative life, one of risk and bold, independent action. In our current environment of self-defined and self-constructed identity, Blanco publicly critiques and engages sociopolitical issues through his own sexuality, physicality, performance, and voice.

Read Mykki Blanco's Westword interview with about his lecture here.

Design: MATTER

This is a private event for the RMCAD community. 

Thursday, January 29, 2015 

The VASD Program presented RMCAD students with a special opportunity during its yearlong Identity series by attending An Evening with Neil deGrasse Tyson, the award-winning astrophysicist, author, and host of FOX's Cosmos, at Denver's Buell Theater. This event added a vital perspective to the VASD Program’s series on identity by considering our position in, and relationship to, the world and the universe. 

The VASD Program teamed up with the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver in order to offer RMCAD students with a series of special opportunities and events in conjunction with the MCA Denver exhibition Mark Mothersbaugh: Myopia. Events included a screening of The Royal Tenenbaums, a private tour by MCA Denver Director and Chief Animator, Adam Lerner, and a lecture by Mr. Lerner in the MCA Denver's Who Made the 80’s lecture series. In these special engagements with the exhibition, Adam Lerner gave students behind-the-scenes insight into Mark Mothersbaugh, his work, and the creation of the retrospective exhibition. 

Thursday, October 16, 2014

In celebration of her 75th birthday and in concurrence with the exhibition Surveying Judy Chicago: 1970-2014 at RedLine, Denver, Judy Chicago presented an overview of her exceptional career in a lecture titled Judy Chicago: Five Decades. Chicago’s lecture was a vital addition to the VASD Program’s series exploring identity and reviewed her contribution to contemporary discourse as an impassioned artist, author, feminist, educator, and intellectual. Chicago’s work has taken many forms throughout her career. What remains unfaltering is the artist’s continuous championship for women’s right to free expression, her advocacy for an expanded notion of the artist’s role in society, and an unabashed emphasis on women’s contribution to art, culture, and history.

This lecture was made possible through a partnership with RedLine, Denver.

Design: MATTER

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Hasan Elahi’s lecture discussed his ongoing creative explorations into the consequences of living under constant surveillance. In 2002, the FBI suspected the artist of posing a national security risk. This erroneous supposition of his character led to intensive investigations and months of interrogation. Through this harrowing experience, Elahi created of an extensive online database, primarily made up of camera phone images called “Tracking Transience,” which publicly displays a thorough, yet intentionally selective, depiction of almost every aspect of his life. Twelve years later, the voluntary and involuntary contribution to a massive public database of personally identifying information has become a norm of contemporary life. In an overview of Elahi’s work, the artist will explore the creative choices he made to both subvert and engage big data. 

Design: MATTER

Wednesday, September 3, 2014 

In celebration of RMCAD’s Welcome Week and the launch of the VASD Program’s lecture series, Identity, the VASD Program hosted a screening of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Enveloping topics of gender and sexuality, artistic and political freedom, and the human search for loving partnership, Hedwig and the Angry Inch presents a cinematic vision of identity through animation, music, and costume.

This screening was presented in collaboration with Student Life, the VASD Program, and the RMCAD Foundations Department.

Image: New Line Cinema