AIGA Student Chapter

West Liberty has a very active student chapter of the AIGA – the American Institute for Graphic Arts. This is the leading design organization in America. Our group is affiliated with the Pittsburgh AIGA and frequently takes field trips to Pittsburgh to visit design studios, exhibitions, movies, and social activities.

FIELD TRIP TO COMMONWEALTH PRESS

Click here to see some photos from a recent visit to Commonwealth Press on Pittsburgh’s South Side.

A shirt is born!

FIELD TRIP TO TOONSEUM

Photo Op in front of the Toonseum.

PITTSBURGH – West Liberty’s AIGA student group recently took a field trip to downtown Pittsburgh to visit Toonseum, SPACE Gallery, Wood Street Galleries, and the Contemporary Craft Society. Toonseum is one of three museums of cartooning in the United States. The students were given a tour of the history of cartooning and saw several examples of early animation. Creighton Hill, Graphic Design senior and AIGA president, was overheard saying that this was his favorite place to visit of all of his previous AIGA field trips. (And he has been on a lot of trips).

Watching an early animated film at the Toonseum.

The next stop was the SPACE Gallery, which was hosting “Paper Politics”, a traveling print exhibition of 180 artists ranting against America and anything to do with conservative politics. Where is the outrage over the present administration’s bumbling financial incompetence I say? But I digress. Some of the prints showed some artistic merit.

Leftist rants at the SPACE Gallery

From SPACE we walked to the Wood Street Galleries where we experienced some unique sound installations, including a darkened room with motion sensitive microphones. Everytime you moved you triggered bizarre noises. It was fun!

Long Player - 1,000 year Composition at the Wood Street Galleries

Then it was off to the Strip District where Professor Kang devoured a fish sandwich the size of her head!

Is Prof Kang eating the fish sandwich, or is the sandwich eating her?

Finally we ended up at the Do It Yourself Exhibition at the Society for Contemporary Craft. Mr. Padgett got in touch with his inner hippie in the yarn womb.

Man... this is what the 60

And then the pretty little yarn fairies came and led all of the children to a better place.

Flashbacks Man! Flashbacks! We had to pull Mr. P from this room!

September 22 at noon – Our next meeting. We will discuss membership, tshirt design contest, and upcoming events.

September 29 – 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM – Nuttting Gallery opening – “The Quilted Fringe” works by Shawn Quinlan

September 29 – 7:30 PM- 9:00 PM – We will show the film “Handmade Nation” in the Boyle Conference Room. Free for members. $2.00 for non-members.

October 6 – 12:00 meeting in the graphics lab. Tshirt designs are due. Bring a copy of your design for the group to vote on.

October 7 – 8:30 AM – 3:00 PM – Pittsburgh Zany Design Tour – Skip classes for the day and head for Pittsburgh’s Strip District to tour the DIY show at the Society for Contemporary Craft, Printmaking Exhibit at Space Gallery, and Wall to Wall Design Studio – http://www.walltowall.com (The hippest design studio in Pittsburgh) and/or a visit to Pittsburgh’s ToonSeum cartoon museum: http://www.toonseum.org/

October 27 – 7:30 PM- 9:00 PM – We will show the film “Objectified” in the Boyle Conference Room. Free for members. $2.00 for non-members.

Objectified is a feature-length documentary about our complex relationship with manufactured objects and, by extension, the people who design them.

November 11 – XPOSED TOUR – Pittsburgh studio crawl – meeting professional designers and exploring their workspaces.

Here are some photographs from recent trips to Artist Image Resources, the Shepard Fairey exhibit at the Andy Warhol Museum, and an Xposed studio tour.