THE WILDE YEARS AT THE VISUAL ART GALLERY
10-20-09 POST KEYWORDS: richard wilde, the wilde years, meiling chen, mtv popcorn, piven, the troggs, wild thing, shepard fairey, school of visual arts, sva, visual arts gallery, jayson atienza, timothy o'malley, gail anderson, frank anselmo, vagina monologues, drew hodges, cojo art juggernaut, artsucks.com, cojo
What a great night to honor 40 Year SVA AD / GRAPHIC DESIGN chair Richard Wilde. Every SVA alum who's been in the Graphic Design or Advertising undergrad program has taken Richard Wilde's Visual Literacy class, and had to fight each week to have their solutions chosen to be projected on the screens.
The class was the biggest of the major and was taught in the amphitheater. Every student would be given the same assignment with an infinite number of possible creative solutions. The following week the homework was handed in and the best solutions would be photographed into slides and turned into a slide show of the best work from the previous week. I remember the delight I felt upon seeing my solutions on the screens. It all really got the competitive blood flowing, and for an artist, that's vital.
Richard was introduced to the crowd and was received by a packed audience in the main room of the gallery. He spoke eloquently, humbly, and with good humor about his 40 years at SVA and about all the great work the alumni under his one time tutelage have produced over the years.
Chaos after the speech. The Troggs "Wild Thing" played on a loop in the main room.
The event was really classy, in SVA's new beautiful Chelsea gallery (Visual Arts Gallery). The whole place was laid out with alumni work. I would have liked to have put some stuff on these walls if I knew it was an option.
I ran into Gail Anderson, who is one of my favorite designers in the world. Click to see Gail Anderson's work appearing in the show.
I only found about five or six people from my graduating year at the party.
Friend and fellow alum Meiling Chen poses next to some of her fashions on the wall. She's a fashion designer now, I attended one of her runway shows during fashion week back in 2007. Great stuff.
Fellow alum Frank Anselmo poses with some of his work wrapped around a pole.
Fellow alum Jayson Atienza and photographer Timothy Brennan O'Malley.
Below, Jayson poses with his Barack portrait.
There were TV's built into the installations all over the gallery.
Massive dial TV projecting work from alumni in a slideshow.
I didn't know that SVA alums designed the Mtv popcorn.
I always loved this poster. I used to live on 43rd street and passed it every day on the outside of theatre it was playing in. Didn't realize it was designed by SVA alum Drew Hodges.
A bunch of Piven portraits, the green one is Richard Wilde.
They have a life size profile of a city bus.
So many great pieces by SVA alums. Some really monumental and iconic ad campaigns we all have seen. It was like looking at an exhibit of the one show.
This gallery is on the 15th floor all the way on the west side of the island on 26th street. What a crazy balcony.
Here is the view over the balcony. Why didn't SVA own this gallery while I was a student?!
When the show ended as I walked home I noticed an opening at a gallery for Dennis Hopper's work. I went in only to find that it had just ended. That would have been a trip, always wanted to meet Dennis Hopper.
I saw this two floor Shepard Fairey piece in a gallery window.
After having some interesting conversations earlier in the night about that story that just broke about Shepard Fairey admitting to lying and destroying old files on the Obama Hope portrait and his legal counsel quitting. Curious times. It will be interesting to see how that all plays out.
