“Forth Wall, Starring Barbara Bloemink” by Danielle Julian Norton

CCAD faculty and alumni will exhibit their work at Wehrle Gallery at Ohio Dominican University, March 17–April 12.

This is: on the subject of art was curated by Fine Arts alumna and Assistant Professor Julie Abijanac (CCAD 1992) and features work from 11 CCAD-affiliated artists including Assistant Professor Shannon Benine; visiting faculty Matthew Flegle; adjunct faculty Nicole Gibbs; Director of Exhibitions Michael Goodson; Fine Arts alumna and Assistant Professor Danielle Julian Norton (CCAD 1999); Assistant Professor Kelly Malec-Kosak; adjunct faculty Andrea Myers; Fine Arts alumna and adjunct faculty Susan Li O’Connor (CCAD 1996); Fine Arts alumnus and Associate Professor Tim Rietenbach (CCAD 1977); Fine Arts alumna and adjunct faculty Mariana Smith (CCAD 2002); and adjunct faculty Melissa Vogley-Woods.

“Janette Knowles, the gallery director, asked if I would be interested in curating a show, and I nervously said sure, but I instantly knew I wanted to put a show together focused on the subject of art,” Abijanac said. “My goal was to bring together a strong group of artists who have very strong ideas about their subject matter as well as their approach in visually communicating that information. Along with this, I wanted to have an art historian to align and connect this idea historically, which is done in the foreword for the show.”

The foreword was written by Assistant Professor Carla Cesare, who describes the relationship between the artists, their message and medium, and reality.

There is an opening reception March 17, 1–3 p.m.

Students practice their performance

Where can you find a dragon roaming a mountaintop and a bird learning to sing all in the space of a large table-top? In two CCAD freshman design classes. Adjunct Faculty Nicole Gibbs and Assistant Professor Danielle Julian Norton both recently taught classes where students explored two-dimensional and three-dimensional elements of design by producing puppet shows.

Gibbs’ class performed on May 6 at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, while Julian Norton’s class traveled to the Schoenbaum Family Center on May 8.

This is the second year that Gibbs has orchestrated a puppet show and the first for Julian Norton. The groups created everything including characters, scripts, music, puppets, sets, marketing materials, and a final 8–10 minute performance.

Julian-Norton’s class performs for children

Both classes took a team-oriented approach, ensuring that the students involved worked together to create the final performance. Student roles ranged from project manager to performer.

“Teamwork was an essential element to the project, as it is in the design field,” Gibbs said. “Students had a real experience in how to combine ideas and work together under a deadline and expectations.”

“Students worked to embed positive learning messages for the children in each of the puppet show narratives,” Julian Norton said. “The end result was creative and fun, with a rewarding sense of accomplishment for the students.”

Gibbs will be speaking at the Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC) this October to discuss her use of puppet shows as a vehicle for artmaking through community engagement.

“I hope it will become an idea that other instructors will use with their first-year classes at CCAD and elsewhere,” Gibbs said. “It would be so neat if it could become an annual tradition.”

Gibbs will be in residence for two weeks in May 2012. She will join a playwright, a photographer, and two fiction writers for the program.

Gibbs is a multidisciplinary artist, combining drawing and painting, clay, fibers, and reused materials in her work.

The Anderson Center provides retreats each year to enable artists, writers, and scholars of exceptional promise and demonstrated accomplishment to create, advance, or complete works-in-progress.

Since the Center opened in 1995, more than 700 artists, writers, and scholars from more than 43 states and 35 foreign countries have participated in the program.

Students designing puppets.

Puppets in the Hospital
When one of the nation’s leading pediatric hospitals needs to brighten their patients’ days, who do they call? Lion, Unicorn, Duck, Bunny, Jake the Snake, and Viktor the Rapping Viking—all puppets created and voiced by CCAD students from Adjunct Instructor Nicole Gibbs’s Foundation Studies design class.

During spring semester, Gibbs’s students wrote, created puppets, and built sets for a series of four plays, culminating in performances on Mother’s Day to patients and their families at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

The class is a yearlong, intensive look at all types of design, including 2D, 3D, and time-based. “I was thinking about how we could make the 2D side of the class about performance and group experience,” Gibbs says. “So I thought of puppet shows, because they bring it all together and allow my students to flex their other creative muscles—like writing and rapping.”

“Each team had a playwright, musician, actors, production manager, and character designers,” she says. “Everyone helped with every aspect, but it was the responsibility of the assigned individual to make sure a particular aspect was carried out properly. It was a great lesson in working in groups and managing a team to meet an outside goal.”

“I knew that having it out in the community would push students outside of their comfort zone, because they would be interacting with people who not only don’t have an art background but also are outside [the students’] age range,” Gibbs adds. “The point wasn’t to build sets and make puppets. It was to create a valuable experience for the outside community and to show students that what they are already learning in their first year of college can have a direct impact.”

Fountain in the Scioto Mile.

Video in the Scioto Mile
CCAD Media Studies students and faculty were thrilled to be invited early this year to produce a video for projection on an enormous fountain in the city’s newest park, the Scioto Mile. “Projects like this expand the traditional perceived boundaries of media,” says Dean of Media Arts Ron Saks. “To be able to do something that is public, ongoing, and site specific is a very rare opportunity for students.”

The Scioto Mile is a more-than-$40-million project that has transformed the east bank of the Scioto River in downtown Columbus. Contrary to its name, it actually stretches for 7.3 miles and includes an integrated system of parks, streets, a bikeway, pedestrian paths, fountains, and gardens. The final phase, completed last summer, features a promenade dotted with gardens, colonnades, and pavilions. This summer’s work also overhauled an existing park, adding a band shell, a restaurant, and the 15,000-square-foot interactive fountain that the students’ video projection was intended to complement.

Opened to the public in July, the fountain has already become a community favorite. It contains 1,079 ground-level spray nozzles and is topped by 5 stainless-steel halo structures with 1,000 additional nozzles to produce mist from above. The tall, stainless-steel center blossom can shoot water 70 feet into the air.

The finished CCAD video, titled “Trip the Light Fantastic,” now bounces off the fountain’s blossom and mist at night.

“It is really tremendous to have students participating in a project of this magnitude,” says Saks. “All of the constituents were so pleased with the way everything turned out. It was beyond everyone’s expectations.”

CCAD students from all majors have been asked to create another projection during this academic year as part of a competition. Saks is currently working with American Electric Power (the community leader and lead donor for the Scioto Mile) and the design firm MSI (who directed the project) to bring software to campus that will allow students to design a light show and fountain program in addition to the video projection. The winning projection is slated to launch in early spring.

Sustainability in Regional Planning
Students from numerous CCAD classes teamed up last spring to create the Sustainability Art Exhibition and Contest for the headquarters of the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC)—ground zero for issues of sustainability in the greater Columbus community. The students submitted diverse work related to one of the six programs of MORPC’s Center for Energy and Environment: energy efficiency, air quality, greenways and water quality, sustainable growth, agriculture and food systems, and materials management.

Contest winners had their work displayed again at MORPC’s Summit on Sustainability and the Environment in October.

“Not only did it get the students creating work and exhibiting it to an outside audience, but it also  introduced them to the important efforts of MORPC,” says Fine Arts Professor John Kortlander.

“I believe we are now entering the era of redesign,” he adds. “Much of what was designed in the past century was done without sustainability in mind. It is up to our students to take their degrees and create sustainable designs and works of art that improve the world. It’s a big responsibility—and projects like this are what get them thinking about it.”

work by Mylesant Carreno

An exhibition that centers on the unique approach to art making through the collaboration and mixing of media will feature 15 artists affiliated with Columbus College of Art & Design.

Alumni, faculty, and staff are all involved in Crossroads, an invitational exhibition at the Schumacher Gallery at Capital University.

Casey Bradley (CCAD 2001), a Fine Arts alumnus and Lab manager at CCAD, developed the exhibition.

“Crossroads is an exhibition devoted to the enduring spirit of the artist as a creative seeker,” Bradley said.

Bradley invited 20 artists to participate in the show. He went through a jurying process with the Schumacher Gallery director and the director’s assistant to choose the work.

“All of the artists were selected based upon the ability of their work to push the boundaries of the materials and the processes that they are working with,” he said.

The final show comprises of 55 pieces with mediums including watercolors, glass, ceramics, printmaking, found objects, and more.

“It is the orchestration methods and interactions with each artist’s materials that allow a sense of discovery to translate to the experience of the viewer,” Bradley said.

CCAD artists involved in the exhibition include Bradley, and Carol Boram-Hays (adjunct faculty),  Steven Bush (1994 Fine Arts alumnus), Mylesant Carreno (SMAC instructor and 2005 Fine Arts alumna), Elizabeth Fergus-Jean (adjunct faculty), Nicole Gibbs (adjunct faculty), Michael Goodson (Exhibitions Director), Hiroshi Hayakawa (associate professor and 1995 Photography alumnus), Kelly Malec-Kosak (assistant professor),  Tina Matthews (2003 Fine Arts alumna), Lauren Mudd (2004 Fine Arts alumna),  Brandon Noblet (adjunct faculty  and 2005 Fine Arts alumnus), Mariana Smith (adjunct faculty and 2002 Fine Arts alumna),  Nicki Strouss (SMAC instructor and 2008 Fine Arts alumna), and Christopher Yates (associate professor and 1987 Fine Arts alumnus).

For more information and the full list of participating artists click here.

The exhibition will be at the Schumacher Gallery at Capital University through Dec. 9, 2011 with a reception on Friday, Nov. 11 5–7 p.m.

Rapping Vikings.

Nicole Gibbs had two criteria for her Foundation Studies design class’s final project: she wanted it to involve a performance, and she wanted it to engage her students in the community beyond the CCAD campus.

The result?  A Mother’s Day puppet show performed at Nationwide Children’s Hospital (NCH) on Sunday, May 8 at 2:30 p.m.

Bryston Walters, a Fashion Design Sophomore who worked as an oncology lab technician at NCH, is a member of Gibbs’ class. He suggested performing the show at the hospital and put Gibbs in contact with the Family and Volunteer Services department at NCH.

“When I proposed the puppet show performance to Donna Trentl (at Nationwide Children’s Hospital), she was very receptive to the idea,” said Gibbs. “The staff made it very easy for us to collaborate on this project.”

The students created every aspect of the performances, from storyline to character design and set construction to marketing.  The 4-act puppet show includes a slew of characters including rapping Vikings, fluffy sea monsters, know-it-all owls, mischievous unicorns, wish-granting stars, gregarious mice, and two chatty mermaids from Jersey.

“We decided to do the performance on Mother’s Day to be a treat for families who are spending the day with loved ones who are in the hospital,” Gibbs said.

The class chronicled the entire process of the project on a blog. You can check it out at http://ccadpuppetshow.wordpress.com. Video from the performance is at http://www.youtube.com/user/CCADpuppetshow2011.