Five Reasons All Artists Should Vote

Marshall Ayers Beyond, Career Advice, College, Getting Started, High School, Opportunities, Sponsors, Student Resources

Screen Shot 2016-03-31 at 2.23.15 PMAre you an artist, performer or part of the creative work force? Do you vote? Election season is here and unfortunately you may hear artist friends saying, “I don’t vote. What difference does it make?” Or maybe you’ve found yourself wondering if your voice matters, if your vote matters. I believe every single voice matters and it’s up to us to use that voice to create the society we want to see. I’m Cristina Pacheco, the Director of Programs at Arts for LA where I train community arts advocates in areas of policy, leadership, coalition building, and communication. I’m also a musician and creative and I vote. I believe especially as artists we have a platform to use our platform to inspire others to action.

Arts for LA is launching our ArtsVote 2016 campaign. If you want some ideas on how to activate your voice, here is list from Arts for LA about why it’s not only important, but critical for all artists to get out there and exercise our civic duty!

1. Voting is a Freedom of Expression.

Like creative expression, voting is your choice, your decision, and your voice. Write a song. Paint a picture. Vote for your future. By voting, you are choosing a vision of the future. By voting, you also insure that the right to freedom of expression remains protected.

2. Voting is community.

By voting, individuals find themselves within a community of like-minded, engaged individuals. Not everyone agrees on everything, but voting unifies people around common goals & dreams. You may be an artist, but never forget you are a citizen too and part of a larger community that needs to hear your particular concerns and perspective. Talk to your friends and neighbors about the issues that matter to you. Civic engagement means you care about where you live and work.
Read More

Easy Ways to Be Creative

Samantha Jacobs Beyond, Career Advice, Creative Writing, Tips

Life can be pretty fast-paced sometimes. Juggling work, school, extracurricular activities and just general life errands can oftentimes not leave much room for hobbies and creative outlets. If you are a writer, artist, musician or in any type of creative field keeping creativity central to your life and work is essential. However, you don’t necessarily need hours at a time or the skill of Picasso in order to let your creativity flourish. Here are some ideas to help keep your creative spark alive and active.

Adult Coloring Book

Read More

A Career in the Arts is a Tapestry – Choreographer Kate Hutter

Laura Young Artist Profiles, Career Advice, Dance, Dance, Getting Started, Performing Arts

428875_10151123843478708_51486480_nKate Hutter is co-founder of the L.A. Contemporary Dance Company (LACDC) and was Artistic Director from 2005 – 2015. She holds a BFA in Theatrical Design from University of Southern California and an MFA in Dance/Choreography from Purchase College, SUNY and has presented her choreography at prestigious venues throughout L.A. including the Broad Stage, Celebrate Dance at the Alex Theater, Ford Amphitheatre, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, L.A. Theatre Center, Diavolo Dance Space and Highways Performance Space. Hutter has been a visiting artist, instructor, and/or lecturer at USC, UCLA, California State U. Long Beach, Loyola Marymount University, Santa Monica College, Scripps College, Chapman University, Ohio State University and Wayne State University where she has taught and/or set new work. She continues to create dance experiences for LACDC, choreograph for theater and commercial productions, and teach at the Brockus Project Space in downtown L.A.  (LACDA company photo by Christopher Malcolm)

12039609_10156110391930287_7429707119192007081_n

“Into the Fray” (2014) Photo by Taso Papadakis.

Where did you grow up? What is your educational background?
I grew up in Carson City, Nevada. My parents work in aerospace engineering. I started dance classes at age 3 taking ballet and tap, and performed regularly up through my teen years. For high school I attended Walnut Hill School for the Arts, which is a boarding school in Boston, and then came back West to study Theatrical Design at USC. For graduate school I attended SUNY Purchase for an MFA in Dance/Choreography.
Read More

CSSSA College Connection Visits Cornish College of the Arts

Marshall Ayers Acting, College, Conservatory, Performing Arts, Performing Arts, Student Resources

Pablo Lopez has found his college fit at Cornish.

Life is very rarely a straight line from point A to point B, but more often a zig-zag path that weaves in and out of one’s sight-line. Nothing could be truer than for Pablo Lopez, currently attending Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, WA. After attending University of California Davis for a year, Pablo knew he needed to be somewhere else. He was inspired by the theatre activism he found at California State Summer School for the Arts (CSSSA) and wanted a college with that kind of community, but he didn’t know how to find it.

Pablo withdrew from UC Davis and took a year off to explore his options.

“I want to redefine it (theatre) for my own practice, for my own career…so part of the college search was looking for colleges that embraced that kind of thinking.”

In a classic example of synchronicity, Pablo discovered Cornish College of the Arts quite by mistake while working as an intern for the CSSSA Foundation. After doing some more research, he decided to apply and audition.

After a very long 24 hour Greyhound bus ride to Seattle, Pablo had a transformative audition experience with Cornish faculty, Sheila Daniels, “it was really in the moment, back and forth, and I was excited about having a teacher like that.”Read More

Take the Stress Out of Your Visual Art College Search

Elaine Pelz Getting Into College, High School, Student Resources, Visual Arts

Sometimes the college search process can feel like you are lost in a giant maze.

How do you stay focused and know which path to take when you can’t get a birds eye view of all the possibilities? The word disconcerting comes to mind. Finding a good college match requires studying numerous options, answering countless questions, and making thoughtful choices.

Consider this: visual artists go through the same search and application process as other college applicants, yet yours requires more; more decisions to make and more colleges to choose from. Ugh! An early investment of your time and effort will save heartache and frustration later on.

The best way to get started with your search is to know what you’re looking for, research what’s offered, consider your options, and then prioritize. Here are four tips to get you started.

Read More

Ten Ways to Know a Quality Teen Arts Program

Marshall Ayers High School, Parent/Educator, Performing Arts, Student Resources, Summer Program, Visual Arts

How do you gauge the quality of a teen arts program?

Glenna Avila2Teen arts programs seem to be everywhere these days from your local community center to after school camps, but how do you know which programs will be the best for you? What questions should you ask before signing up? I’m Glenna Avila, Wallis Annenberg Director of Youth Programs and the Artistic Director of the Community Arts Partnership (CAP) program at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). For 26 years, CAP has been dedicated to providing arts programs for thousands of teenagers throughout Los Angeles County so we know what to look for in quality programming.

12694533_10154056254525757_5139178134895603874_o

If you are a high school arts student, teacher or parent, here are our top ten questions to ask before you take or recommend a class:

#1 Who is teaching the class?

Teachers are the key to high quality arts programs for teenagers. A great teacher can make all the difference and serve to change lives. Who are the faculty and how are they trained? Do they have track records of participating in professional exhibitions or performances? How does the organization train its instructors? Do they have a Teaching Philosophy and will they share it with you? Are the instructors diverse and do they represent the diversity of the students in the program? Does the instruction include collaborative group projects (for team-building and cooperation skills) as well as individual works? Is there time for one-on-one mentorship? 
Read More

CSSSA College Connection Visits New York University

Marshall Ayers Acting, Performing Arts, Playwriting, Student Resources

 Meet Chelsea Barker

10391976_10204322732463444_6894128099392667525_nChelsea’s career in theatre started in 7th grade when she volunteered to be a stage manager. In high school, she also “played boys” because that’s what you do when you go to an all girls Catholic School. She even played a lobster in Alice In Wonderland and “yes, there were no actual lobsters written for the original piece.” It was this diverse experience the helped nurture Chelsea’s love for theatre, which led her to apply to the California State Summer School for the Arts (CSSSA) in 2013. It was there that she learned how to go beyond just playing roles to being, “an actor, an artists, and a citizen.” Chelsea says she was “able to get deep” into her art at CSSSA. Now she finds herself immersed in learning her craft at New York University Tisch School of the Arts.

” CSSSA tripled, if not quadrupled my confidence level and made me appreciate what I had and who I was surrounded by.”

Read More

Brandon Wen:
Seeking Global Inspiration
In Fashion Design

Samantha Jacobs Artist Profiles, Career Advice, Design, Design, Visual Arts

Fashion design is Brandon Wen’s passion and pursuing his education and career is taking him around the world.

Remember the name Brandon Wen. Any day now, you will be seeing him and his fashion designs on the cover of Vogue and on the runway at Paris Fashion Week. A recent graduate from the well regarded fashion program at Cornell University, Brandon is now pursuing advanced studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium. He is gaining an international perspective while developing his craft, and the possibilities for his future are endless. Brandon has been my friend since high school, and I had the honor of interviewing him about his creative universe and his fashion design inspiration.

dfa413_56e3df4261e946169c943b795b40cf00

Samantha Jacobs: When did you first know you wanted to be in the fashion realm?

Brandon Wen: As lame as it sounds, when I was in middle school, I watched an episode of Project Runway by accident and I fell completely in love. It was the episode from season three I think, where they get sent to Paris to create couture gowns, and I remember feeling so excited about the creativity and intensity of everything they were doing. After that I convinced my parents to buy me a sewing machine and I helped out making costumes for our middle school play. It’s funny that it happened because I had no idea how to sew, but it gave me the confidence to keep on working and get really involved in sewing and fashion.

10649768_2859464125693_1299807991301933044_n
Read More

Artist Lily Simonson Explores Deep Sea

Marshall Ayers Art, Artist Profiles, Career Advice, Drawing & Painting, Tips, Visual Arts

 

10. Spectralscape triptych, 2015, Oil, acrylic, and ultraviolet pigment on canvas, 48x62 inches each

Lily Simonson, Spectralscape 2-4 (triptych), 2014, Oil, acrylic, and ultraviolet pigment on canvas, 60 x 48 inches each. Installation view courtesy CB1 Gallery and Jay Oligny.

Lily Simonson’s large-scale paintings and drawings of obscure organisms and newly-explored environments immerse viewers in uncanny scenes that are at once naturalistic and otherworldly. She frequently embeds in scientific expeditions to explore and paint her subjects in situ. Simonson spent three months SCUBA diving and camping in Antarctica as the 2014-15 National Science Foundation Antarctic Artists and Writers Awardee. She has also served as the resident artist aboard the Exploration Vessel Nautilus and the Research Vessel Melville painting organisms collected from the deep sea. Her works have been exhibited across the US and Europe. Simonson’s upcoming solo exhibition at CB1 Gallery in Los Angeles will be on view from April 16-May 28, 2016.
Read More