School of Media : Culture : Design

Jamie Scholnick’s Artwork Commissed for Display at New LA Transit Line 

 Jaime Scholnick, adjunct faculty in Design Foundation, has been profiled in the Los Angeles Times along with several other artists whose work has been commissioned for display in the new Metro Crenshaw/LAX Line. As the article explains, “When the Metro Crenshaw/LAX Line opens next year, the project’s eight stations, spanning 8.5 miles, will come to life with dozens of public art pieces. In 2015, 14 of more than 1,200 applicants were selected to create art for the transit line that will zip through Los Angeles, El Segundo, Inglewood and parts of unincorporated L.A. County. The works, many made with tile, enamel and glass, are intended to capture the spirit of the historically rich neighborhoods the trains will sweep through.” Read the article here: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2019-11-11/metro-lax-crenshaw-public-art-artists

Keith Walsh Exhibits Sculpture and Painting

Keith Walsh, Adjunct Professor in Design Foundation, has recently had two exhibitions of his artwork. During February-March he exhibited a sculptural work, “Revolution,” at the “Artist Couples” group exhibition at Long Beach City College, Long Beach CA. A large sculpture measuring eight feet in diameter by two feet high, and consisting of sixty balanced word couplets, the radial format of the sculpture synthesizes the coherence of the political content with the manner in which a viewer walks around it.

Secondly, Walsh’s painting, “Los Angeles Socialist Network 1950-2019” is currently on exhibition at Parlor Projects in Los Angeles. Based upon extensive research into the historical lineage of socialist entities, revolutionary collectives, and prominent organizers in Los Angeles since 1950, this painting is the first document to ever centralize this dispersed and marginalized history of politics in Los Angeles.

Dr. George Larkin’s Book Published by Routledge

Post-Production and the Invisible Revolution of Filmmaking: From the Silent Era to Synchronized Sound

In this insightful book, associate professor and chair of the Filmmaking program at Woodbury University, Dr. Larkin studies the discourses surrounding post-production, as well as the aesthetic effects of its introduction during the 1920s and 1930s, by exploring the philosophies and issues faced by practitioners during this transitional, transformative period.

The introduction of post-production during the transition from silent cinema to the synchronized sound era in the 1920s American studio system resulted in what has been a previously unheralded and invisible revolution in filmmaking. Thereafter, a film no longer arose from a live and variable combination of audio and visual in the theater, as occurred during the silent film era, where each exhibition was a singular event. The new system of post-production effectively shifted control of a film’s final form from the theater to the editing room. With this new process, filmmakers could obtain and manipulate an array of audio elements and manufacture a permanent soundtrack. This transition made possible a product that could be easily mass-produced, serving both to transform and homogenize film presentation, fundamentally creating a new art form.
With detailed research and analysis and nearly 50 illustrations, this book is the ideal resource for students and researchers of film history and post-production.

Alan Flores Game Selected for IndieCade E3 Showcase

Adjunct professor Alan Flores’s game Drums of War was selected for the IndieCade E3 showcase Expo, June 12-14, at the L.A. Convention Center. Alan, who teaches Game 106: Game Code Fundamentals and Game 240: Networked Game Development, was on the floor with Game student Cameron Williams demoing Drums of War for the full three-day run of the show (To learn more about the game, click or tap here). Each year, IndieCade curates a spectrum of video games, installations, and tabletop games at its E3 booth. The goal is to reflect the breadth of the independent game space. The 2017 E3 drew 68,000 attendees.

Book Dahn Hiuni Selected to Design Posters for the Upcoming Season of Shadowlands Theater in New York

Dahn Hiuni, adjunct professor of Graphic Design, has been selected to design the posters for the entire 2020/2021 season of Shadowlands Theater in New York. Mr. Hiuni will design six new posters for the upcoming six plays, which comprise the season. Mr. Hiuni is particularly delighted with this commission as he is also a playwright himself, and very much enjoys visually interpreting the dramatic works of fellow playwrights.

Professor Cate Roman Completes Collaborative Poetry Book

Call and Response: Poet to Artist is a collaboration between students in the MFA Creative Writing program at Mount Saint Mary’s University and students in the BFA Graphic Design program at Woodbury University.

Poets in a long-form poetry course at MSMU produced experimental poetry and the graphic designers at WU selected excerpts from these poems to create visual expressions of the text. The results utilize expressive typography, materiality, and abstraction with the intention of bringing more attention to the nature of poetry by reaching a larger audience.

Funded by MSMU and a Woodbury University ACE (Agency for Civic Engagement) mini-grant and conceived by Cate Roman, this remarkable collaboration was created in support of National Poetry Month marking poetry’s important place in our culture and our lives.

Cate Roman Wins International Coda Merit Award

Walk Watts, a collaborative civic engagement project by Graphic Design professor Cate Roman and Architecture professor Jeanine Centouri, is a merit winner of the 6^thannual international CODA Awards: Collaboration of Design + Art. They were selected from 426 entries for the 2018 CODA awards from 30 countries around the world. The Walk Watts project is anticipated to change the perception and behavior of tourists who visit Watts. Typically, they sojourn to the cultural island of the Towers and adjacent Art Center without exploring anything else in Watts. This community is an unnecessarily forgotten and feared neighborhood. Walk Watts is intended to counter this perception and amplify the many positive histories and contemporary artistic and cultural artifacts in Watts that are worthy of celebration. The artists intend for tourists to learn that Watts is more than riots and towers. See Winners of the sixth annual international CODAawards: Collaboration of Design + Art.

Dr. Kristen Fuhs Scholarship Focuses on Documentary Film

 Dr. Fuhs, Associate Professor of Communication, is co-editing a book series under contract with Routledge based on the website Docalogue, which she co-founded in January 2017. Docalogue is an online publication devoted to contemporary documentary. Each month, the site features one contemporary documentary around which it builds a discussion. Two writers are invited to initiate a conversation around the film, before the site is opened up for comments from the larger community. You can access the website through this link: https://docalogue.com/. Similarly, the book series will turn its focus to contemporary documentary. Each book in the series will focus on a single documentary and will contain five short essays that offer distinct perspectives on the film. By incorporating multiple voices, the book series seeks to generate a complex and cumulative discourse about documentary film’s significance in multiple areas; moreover, by placing these essays about an individual film side by side, the books aim to produce a documentary dialogue (or polylogue); hence, the idea of a “docalogue.” The inaugural volume will focus on Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro (2017) and the second volume will focus on the Turkish film, Kedi (Ceyda Torun, 2017). Both books are scheduled for publication in 2020.

Dr. Kristen Fuhs Publishes Articles Exploring Crime Documentary

Faculty, Dr. Kristen Fuhs has recently published two articles. The first is “‘The dramatic idea of justice’: wrongful conviction, documentary television, and The Court of Last Resort,” in The Historical Journal of Radio, Film, and Television, vol. 38: 1 (2018). The article explores the history of this little-known true crime television program from the late 1950s and argues that it might be read as a theoretical model for later socially conscious documentary media about the pursuit of legal justice. See https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01439685.2016.1258845.The second is a chapter entitled “Crime Documentary’s Confessing Voice” in Vocal Projections: Voices in Documentary, edited by Maria Pramaggiore and Annabelle Honess Roe (New York: Bloomsbury: 2018). This chapter examines the rhetorical power of confession in the contemporary crime documentary by focusing on the extent to which the subject’s voice acts as a marker of authenticity and veracity. The chapter focuses on the recent, popular documentaries Making a Murderer (Moira Demos and Lucia Ricciardi, 2015) and The Jinx (Andrew Jarecki, 2015.) See https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/vocal-projections-9781501331251/.

Dr. Keating presented a paper entitled “Script Girl: A Cultural Analysis of the Marginalization of Script Supervisors and the Emerging Reel Equity Movement” at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in Seattle, Washington in March 2019. Dr. Keating also chaired the Panel, which was entitled Gender in Screen Industries.

Dr. Nicole Keating Works on LIFER Documentary Project

Dr. Nicole Keating was on sabbatical during Academic year 2018/19. One highlight of her sabbatical was working as a documentarian and academic advisor for the documentary theatre project LIFER: Life Stories from the Inside/Out.

LIFER is a documentary theatre venture of TheatreWorkers Project, in association with Ensemble Studio Theatre/LA and in collaboration with The Francisco Homes (transitional housing for men on parole from life sentences). For these LIFER projects, formerly incarcerated men participated in a series of creative workshops in performance and dramatic writing. This work culminated in a staged reading of life stories, written and performed by the formerly incarcerated men themselves as they engaged in reentry and rehabilitation. LIFER was conceived and produced by Susie Tanner, and directed by James Macdonald. Keating became involved in the project through her previous affiliation with Susie Tanner on theatre for social justice projects.

Keating worked on two performances emerging from the LIFER project: Found Suitable in the fall of 2017 (featuring four participants) and On the Brink in the fall of 2018 (featuring seven participants). Keating documented the workshops and performances through videography (edited into highlight reels and full recordings) and still photography. This documentation was required by the funding organizations (California Humanities, a partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the California Arts Council through a Reentry through the Arts grant), but it also became part of the creative process as participants were able to view their performances through photos and video documentation. The documentation was also essential for archival and promotional purposes. As an academic advisor, Keating also provided background research as needed and contributed to project development. Through this work, Keating became a part of the documentary theatre troupe and was fully integrated into this dynamic community of artists and healers. These performances (Found Suitable and On the Brink) demonstrated the transformative power of dramatic performance. In the words of one audience member: “It was seven stories, it was one story, it was my story, it was our story.”

Additionally, on the Found Suitable performance, Keating collaborated with Brandon Muse, Woodbury’s IT Distance Education Specialist, collecting and editing a significant amount of footage that is intended to be used for a documentary on the LIFER project; this documentary remains a work in progress.

Performances of Found Suitable:
Ensemble Studio Theatre (August 2017)
Freedom Festival at Los Angeles City College (September 2017)
Francisco Homes (September 2017)
Loyola Marymount University (October 2017)

Performances of On the Brink:
LA Trade Tech (November 2018)
|Cal State LA (November 2018)
University of Southern California (November 2018)
Ensemble Studio Theatre (November 2018)

For more information on the LIFER project, see https://calhum.org/lifers-stories-from-the-inside-out-project-director-interview/

Dr. Nicole Keating Produces Documentary on Civic Engagement Project

Faculty, Dr. Nicole Keating co-produced a documentary called We Can Build on This: Architecture and Civic Engagement, along with architecture faculty member Jeanine Centuori, and directed by Woodbury alumnus Justin Mickens. The documentary presents the Outdoor Classroom at John Muir Middle School which was selected as a finalist in the “Learn by Design” competition at SXSW EDU 2018. Dr. Keating presented the film at SXSW EDU 2018 in Austin, TX, along with Greg Miller, Principal of John Muir Middle School, Burbank.  We Can Build on This was also screened at the AMPS Conference (Architecture, Media, Politics and Society) at the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ and the Summit on Women and Wellbeing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. https://www.sxswedu.com/news/2018/announcing-competition-finalists/.

Dr. Jennifer Peterson Co-Curates Program of Short Experimental Films about Nature and the Environment 

Dr. Peterson co-curated a program of short experimental films about nature and the environment for the Flaherty NYC in October 2019. The program, entitled “The Face of the Planet,” explored cinema’s rendering of nature in different historical moments, and its relationship to cultural assumptions about gender, race, and environmental degradation. In the screening, Peterson performed a live lecture accompanied by live music by Jerome Ellis. See the writeup here: https://theflaherty.org/news/flaherty-nyc-dispatch-the-face-of-the-planet

Dr. Jennifer Peterson Publishes Dossier Entitled Film and Media Studies in the Anthropocene

Dr. Jennifer Peterson has published an “In Focus” dossier in the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies on “Film and Media Studies in the Anthropocene.” Peterson co-edited the entire dossier and co-wrote the Introduction with Professor Graig Uhlin of Oklahoma State University. In addition, Peterson wrote one of the 6 articles in the dossier entitled, “Ecodiegesis: The Scenography of Nature on Screen.” The entire “In Focus” can be downloaded here: https://www.cmstudies.org/general/custom.asp?page=CJ_in_focus

Dr. Jennifer Peterson Publishes Book Chapters and Delivers Keynote Address

Faculty, Dr. Jennifer Peterson has recently published two chapters in edited book collections. These are: “Rough Seas: The Blue Waters of Early Nonfiction Film,” in The Colour Fantastic, ed. Giovanna Fossati and Joshua Yumibe (Amsterdam University Press, 2018), pp. 75-91 (see https://www.amazon.com/Colour-Fantastic-Chromatic-Worlds-Framing/dp/9462983011); and “Technologies of Place in the Early Sound Newsreel: The Aerial View,” in Rediscovering U.S. Newsfilm: Cinema, Television, and the Archive, ed. Mark Garrett Cooper, Sara Beth Levavy, Ross Melnick, and Mark Williams (Columbia University Press, 2018), pp. 155-172 (see https://www.amazon.com/Rediscovering-U-S-Newsfilm-Television-Archive/dp/1138699454). In addition, Peterson gave the keynote address at the 11^thOrphan Film Symposium at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York on April 12, 2018. Description and images here: https://wp.nyu.edu/orphanfilm/2018/02/02/1055/; you can listen to audio of the talk here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fUXmE9pNOumvoEarQRNeGjFgLdUhplGf/view.

Stephanie Thomas Advocates for People with Disabilities

Stephanie Thomas, a fashion stylist and advocate for people with disabilities, has been featured in stories for the popular news website Vox. The written story can be seen here: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/10/16/17978360/disability-inclusive-clothing-adaptive-stylist-stephanie-thomas and the video story (taped on the Woodbury campus) can be viewed here: https://www.facebook.com/consideritshow/videos/375968996557339/. Thomas teaches courses as an adjunct instructor in the Communication program, and records a weekly podcast on WU Radio, “Twenty-Six and Counting.”

Risa Williams earns Dora Kirby Award

Risa Williams was awarded the Dora Kirby Award for Extraordinary Commitment to the Woodbury University Community, presented by President Steele on Dec. 12, 2018. Her work on campus includes managing the Healthy Living Program in Student Affairs and managing the student run magazine, 7500 Magazine, as adjunct faculty in the Communication department. In May 2018, Risa was also awarded the Outstanding Service Award conveyed by the Faculty Development Committee.

Dr. Christensen Keynote Speaker at Head Start California Annual Parent Engagement Conference

Dr. Christensen presented as a keynote speaker at the 2019 Head Start California Annual Parent Engagement Conference in Riverside, CA. Her presentation “Traumatic Stress, Early Brain Development, and Positive Relationships: From Surviving to Thriving” was warmly received by over 500 parents and Head Start home visitors from all over California.

Dr. Christensen Wins First Place in “Fast-Pitch” Competition

 In December 2018, Jacquelyn Christensen, PhD, Adjunct Faculty in Psychology and Woodbury University alumna (’03), won first place in a shark-tank style, research “fast-pitch” competition hosted by Los Angeles Department of Health Services and the Community Clinic Association. Her five-minute pitch showcased NRF Institute’s innovative phone app aimed at tracking stress of children in foster care.

Dr. Joye Swan Keynote Speaker at LGBTQI Psychotherapy Conference 

Dr. Joye Swan will be the co-Keynote speaker, with Shani Habibi, at the 23^rdannual LGBTQI Psychotherapy Conference on November 11, 2018 at Antioch University. (See brochure at https://lagpa.org/conference/2018/0-Brochure.pdf.) Dr. Swan and Habibi are the co-editors of Bisexuality: Theories, Research, and Recommendations for the Invisible Sexuality (Springer, 2018). Written by some of the most renowned researchers in bisexuality studies, this groundbreaking volume brings together a diverse body of sexual, behavioral, and social science research on bisexuality. To learn more about the book, visit https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319715346.

Dr. Joye Swan Becomes Wikipedia Fellow

Dr. Swan has also recently become a Wikipedia Fellow, joining a team of interdisciplinary scholars bringing their expertise to the ubiquitous online encyclopedia. The interdisciplinary Wikipedia Fellows program leverages the subject-matter expertise of scholars to substantially improve Wikipedia articles.

Participants are encouraged to collaborate both as learners and contributors, sharing insights from their backgrounds and perspectives. Dr. Swan is one of 11 experts in the psychology section, which has drawn scholars from such institutions as the City University of New York, the University of Nevada and the University of California, Santa Cruz, as well as Woodbury. Dr. Swan will contribute to articles about basic psychological principles and theories.

Animation Student Films Selected for Screenings at International Film Festivals

Brandon Swofford | Happy the Angry Polar Bear
Gold Winner – Best Short Animation, Queens Palm International Film Festival

Wes Taimuty| Iron Sails
Award of Merit – Documentary Short, Impact Docs Documentary Film Festival

Chris Castillo | Vigilante
Palm Springs International Film Festivaland Comic-Con 2018 San Diego

Tucker Joneson and Andrew Hill | Hero
Palm Springs International Film Festivaland Comic-Con 2018 San Diego

Dani Bowman| The Audition
Palm Springs International Film Festivaland Comic-Con 2018 San Diego

Madison Shafer| Sasquatch Out!
Palm Springs International Film Festivaland Comic-Con 2018 San Diego

Sean Casey| Fly!
Palm Springs International Film Festivaland Comic-Con 2018 San Diego

Fashion Design Student Wins California Fashion Foundation Scholarship

Fashion Design student Yvan Tran has been chosen as the winner of the 2018 California Fashion Foundation Scholarship Award. Administered by the California Fashion Association (CFA) and sponsored by the YMA National Fashion Scholarship Fund, the program is intended to provide information for expansion and growth to the apparel and textile industry of California, and honors future fashion design innovators with scholarship awards.

Filmmaking Student Wins Best Student Film at International Film Festival

Alumnus Miguel Chavez’s film won the award for Best Student Film at the Pasadena International Film Festival. Entitled The Voices They Hear, the crime film tells the story of a young man escaping from a murderer. Miguel has already landed his first job at Paramount. Congratulations Miguel!

Game Art Student “Models a Job”

Rich Deione is a Game Art & Design senior, specializing in 3D character design. He created this Gunslinger model in his “spare time” last summer, and was recently hired by 3D art studio Sinful Monarchy https://www.sinfulmonarchy.com/. Congratulations Rich!

Graphic Design Student Portfolio to be Published in Communication Arts Magazine

Graphic Design student, Tuan Le has been selected to have his work published in the prestigious Communication Arts Magazine Student Showcase. This is the second time in five years that a Woodbury student has been accepted for the Student Showcase. It is a worldwide competition in which students are selected from over 200 finalist’s portfolios. Students are chosen by the editors for the quality of their conceptual thinking and the meticulous execution of their craft. Since 1959, Communication Arts has published the best in visual communications from around the world.

Graphic Design Students Win National Design Awards 

In fall 2019, three Woodbury students won American Graphic Design Awards from GDUSA Magazine, bringing the total award count to 119 in the last decade. Nya Walker, Alexia Cortez, and Sam Peralta each won national honors for identity design, poster design, and app design developed in the classes of faculty Behnoush McKay, Rebekah Albrecht, and Rolando Borjorquez. More than 10,000 entries were submitted with a highly selective 10% chosen.

Graphic Design Students Named as 2019 “Students to Watch” by GDUSA Magazine.

Graphic Design USA, the industry’s leading publication, has released its annual roster of next-gen talent — as the publication says, “top students ready to burst on to the design scene.”

Gracing the latest “Students To Watch” feature are Woodbury seniors Ashley McFadden and Ibrahim Alfaraidy. “’Students to Watch’ has become a tradition that resonates and renews,” said Gordon Kaye, GDUSA Editor. “Rising talent gets recognized and the professional creative community gets refreshed.”  The February, 2019 edition of GDUSA Magazine  showcases the institutions that nurture these students along with the 78 students themselves.

Ibrahim Alfairady                     Ashely McFadden

Graphic Design Students Express Poetry Through Typography

Call and Response is a collaboration between BFA Graphic Design students at Woodbury University and MFA Creative Writing students at Mount Saint Mary’s University. Poets in Professor Johnny Payne’s long-form poetry/virtual reality course produced experimental poetry in the Fall of 2017. In the Spring of 2018, Professor Cate Roman’s Typography 3 course seized on excerpts from those poems to create visual experiences that illuminate each poem. With support from both MSMU and Woodbury’s Agency for Civic Engagement (ACE), Cate is creating a limited edition printed book of all the poems and images. The project will continue on with a reading/exhibition at MSMU and there are two more planned readings/exhibitions at Sacred Heart Church, Altadena and Harvard Westlake Middle School, Los Angeles.