Alumni

On Friday, October 6, Otis College launched Grid at Otis College, an online publication for Otis’s community of alumnx, students, faculty, staff, and friends. From its location in the heart of Los Angeles—the creative capital of the 21st century—artists and designers have created in a spirit of problem-solving and innovation throughout Otis College’s 102-year history. The purpose of Grid is to illustrate this community’s accomplishments with imaginative, thought-provoking storytelling. 

It was midway through the 1985-86 school year when Dawn Baillie graduated from Otis College with her BFA degree. She had finished all her required credits and couldn’t afford to stay an extra semester to graduate with the rest of her classmates in the Spring (however, she would return for the commencement ceremony).

After finishing her degree at Otis, Lilit Pilikian (’09 BFA Product Design) used the tools she learned in college to pursue a career designing for corporations and, eventually, producing her first documentary film, 100 Years from Home, which was directed by her husband, Jared White. Born in Los Angeles, Pilikian traces her family history back to Armenia, and a search of her great-grandparents’ house there, which is documented in the film.

Halley Sutton (MFA Writing ’17) was about two-thirds of the way through her manuscript when she hit a wall, unable to figure out how to tie together all the threads of her “modern feminist noir.” So she got a giant piece of poster board, covered it with differently colored Post-it notes representing her various plotlines, and lugged it to the office of Peter Gadol, her thesis advisor at the time, and Otis College of Art and Design’s MFA Writing program chair. “I was like, ‘Peter, I don’t know what to do! Help me!’” Sutton says with a laugh.

At 5:14am, on a Friday, I received the exciting news the "We Are Los Angeles" campaign poster I worked on for the Otis College viewbook was shortlisted and selected to be a part of the World Illustration Awards 2019. The World Illustration Awards is an international illustration exhibition hosted by the Association of Illustrators and the Directory of Illustration.

Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art and Design is pleased to present the exhibition Centennial: 100 Years of Otis College Alumni, on view September 7 – December 7, 2019. An opening reception will take place Saturday, September 7, from 5-8pm, open and free to the public.

By Makeda Easter

Artist Juan Capistrán was a teenager on an afternoon bus ride from Venice to his home in South Los Angeles when the 1992 riots began. Even though Capistrán noticed passengers were increasingly upset the further east and south his bus traveled, it wasn’t until he was nearly home that he learned a jury had acquitted four police officers in the beating of Rodney King.

The Los Angeles Public Library on Friday released a new card design: a mythological Japanese child of superhuman strength whose fiery red body is attired in Dodger blue.

The art is the work of Gajin Fujita, a Los Angeles artist known for merging contemporary street art with the centuries-old style of Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints. His card artwork centers on Kintaro, the folklore character also known as Golden Boy, usually depicted wearing a bib with the kanji character for gold. “I gave him a twist,” Fujita said.

Over the weekend, there’s a good chance your social media feeds were flooded with photos and video from Coachella.

Over the past two decades, the music festival has become a kind of unavoidable cultural juggernaut, famously spawning not just scores of imitators, but also an entire season on the fashion calendar.