Inaugural Garofalo Fellow Molly Hunker shows her cards: at UIC with Myth, through May 10; at the Graham in person Monday night with Spiritual Kitsch

Last August, architect and designer was Molly Hunker, co-founder of the Los Angeles design firm SPORTS, was named as the first recipient of the Douglas A. Garofalo Fellowship, established by the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago to honor the talented architect who died far too soon in 2011.

Hunker took up residence at UIC last fall, with the plan of teaching courses, pursuing independent research, and preparing a public exhibition and lecture. That exhibition, Myth, is now up in the South Gallery of the Arts and Architecture Building at UIC, 845 West Harrison, where it runs, 9 a.m. through 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday through May 10th. The exhibition . . . 

. . . focuses specifically on the religious genre of the home shrine, re-envisioning the richly decorative and kitsch assembly through the lens of the architectural installation. . . . Myth re-envisions the home shrine through the lens of the contemporary architectural installation. The project learns from the careful collection and curation of sentimental objects commonly found in home shrines, producing an emotionally resonant experience that recalibrates contemporary notions of atmosphere and engagement.

Myth uses the decorative prayer candle as the primary object through which to explore how home shrines can provoke new understandings of visual and atmospheric opulence in the architectural interior .

The project suspends hundreds of handmade wax container - candles on cotton wicks, creating a semi-enclosed shrine-space by the accumulation of the colorful objects . While the overhead candles are geometrically simple, the candles closer to the ground are increasingly articulated with a grotesque featuring strategy inherent to the transformation of wax from liquid to solid . This articulation technique partners with a gradient of increasing color saturation and shimmering cosmetic in order to engage with a kitsch sensibility that provokes greater emotional resonance with visitors.

Tonight, Monday, April 7th, 6:00 p.m. at the Graham Foundation, 4 West Burton Place, Hunker will deliver a lecture, Spiritual Kitsch.  

The discussion will explore how home shrines and related assemblies can provoke new understandings of visual opulence and lead to the production of emotionally resonant architecture.

 More information and registration here.

Molly Hunker awarded inaugural Doug Garofalo Fellowship, Benefit at the Graham August 27th

It's hard to imagine it's already been two years since we lost Doug Garofalo, one of Chicago's most talented young architects.  For nearly a quarter century, Garofalo taught at the School of Architecture

at UIC, being named a University Scholar in 2009.  After his death, the school established The Douglas A. Garofalo Fellowship “in recognition of his exceptional life and career.”

Doug Garofalo began his teaching career at the UIC School of Architecture in 1987, moving through all faculty ranks from part-time adjunct to tenured full professor, and also serving as Interim Director 2001–2003. In 2009 Doug was named a University Scholar, the first time in twenty-six years that a member of the School of Architecture was so honored. Representing the highest ideal of the academic-practitioner, Doug was a tireless mentor and source of inspiration for the students, junior faculty, and young architects that worked with him.

The Douglas A. Garofalo Fellowship will be established at the UIC School of Architecture in memory of Doug and in recognition of his exceptional life and career. The Fellowship will be an endowed fund dedicated to bringing a young practitioner or recent graduate to teach and conduct independent design research within the School of Architecture. 

UIC's School of Architecture has announced that the inaugural Garofalo Fellow will be Molly Hunker (MArch, UCLA).  Hunker is expected to take up residence at UIC in the Fall, where she will “teach studio and seminar courses, pursue independent design research, and prepared a public lecture and exhbition for Spring 2014.”  Hunker is co-founder, with Greg Corso, of the Los Angeles design firm SPORTS.

Stay Down, Champion, Stay Down, installation at WUHO Gallery, Hollywood, 2010

Next Wednesday, August 27th, there will be a benefit for the Garofalo Fellowship at the Graham Foundation, Champagne

reception at 5:30 p.m., cocktails, heavy hors do'oeuvres and silent auction beginning at 6:30.  Benefit co-chairs are Sarah Herda, Eva Maddox, Joseph Rosa and Stanley Tigerman, with Chris Garofalo as honorary co-chair.  Individual tickets are $250 ($225 tax deductible), with other levels of support also available.  Information and ticket purchase here.

Read More:

MCA Makeover - Doug Garofalo's 2003 plaza installation at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art.

Chicago Loses One of Its Best

Douglas A. Garofalo Fellowship - UIC calls for inaugural year applications.

The extremely talented Chicago-based architect Doug Garofalo died too young at 53, in August of 2011, after a long illness.

To honor his memory, the school where he taught, the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has created the Douglas A. Garofalo Fellowship, and is currently taking applications, through February 28th, from prospective applicants.

. . . this newly established nine-month teaching fellowship provides emerging designers the opportunity to teach studio and seminar courses in the undergraduate and graduate programs and conduct independent design research. The fellowship also includes a public lecture and exhibition in the spring.

You can find full specifications for applying on the fellowship's web page.

Judith Russi Kirshner resigns as Dean of UIC College of Architecture and the Arts

UPDATE: [January 15, 2012]

From today's press release:

The Art Institute of Chicago is pleased to announce the appointment of Judith Russi Kirshner as the museum's new Deputy Director for Education and Woman's Board Endowed Chair following a national search. In this newly created position, Kirshner will evaluate all of the museum's educational efforts, collaborations, and partnership programs, and work across the museum and the city to shape a future-oriented and holistic approach to education, outreach, programs, and audiences. Kirshner's appointment reflects a renewed and systematic effort on the part of the Art Institute to expand the museum's audience, enrich the experience of all visitors, and improve access to the museum's renowned collections and exhibitions. She will assume her new position at the Art Institute on March 1, 2013. 

Original post [11/26/2012] In a press release issued late this afternoon, UIC announced that Judith Russi Kirshner is resigning as dean of the College of Architecture and the Arts as of December 31st.  Kirshner has been in the post since 1998, following a year serving as interim dean. It was under Kirshner  that Robert Somol was named Director of the School of Architecture in 2007. Kirshner will remain a member of the faculty.  Full text of the press release after the break.

FIELD UIC faculty exhibition, opens Tonight

 There's an opening reception tonight, Wednesday, November 14th for FIELD . . .

The UIC School of Architecture is pleased to present FIELD, the first in a series of semiannual collaborative faculty exhibitions. This iteration cuts through the concept of “field” within architecture in two ways: one half of the show re-frames six recent faculty projects with the the term “field” in mind, and the second half presents a temporary installation on the School’s Bridge conceived, designed, and executed by this same group of faculty. The resulting strains of dialogue—at times subtle, at others overt—re-invigorate the term, and in doing so, make new claims on its productive architectural capacities.

Participants include Kelly Bair, David Brown, Stewart Hicks and Allison Newmeyer, Clare Lyster. Andrew Moddrell, and Xavier Vendrell.  The reception begins at 6:00 p.m. and the exhibition runs through December 14th in the Second Flood Ribbon Gallery, in the UIC Arts and Architecture Building, 845 West Harrison.  The school is also sponsoring lectures by Ciro Najle of General Design Bureau on Friday the 16th and An Te Liu of the University of Toronto, Monday, November 19.

Three from UIC

click images for larger view

 

Visionary Chicago: 140 years, 100 broken dreams, brought into the 21st Century via UIC exhibition

Everyone knows about the Burnham Plan.  How about Marion Mahoney Griffin's master plan for post World War II Chicago?  Many remember Richard J. Daley's 1960's proposal to build a third Chicago airport in Lake Michigan, but in 1945, long before O'Hare, Andrew Rebori was proposing a new harbor airport north of Navy Pier on a mass of landfill that would have put Northerly Island to shame.

These were just two of nearly 100 unrealized Chicago projects, from the 1870's on,  that UIC School of Architecture professor Alexander Eisenschmidt presented to his graduate History and Theory students, who chose 22 as "Architectural Visions of the City", to research, analyze, and place in a contemporary understanding.  Frank Lloyd Wright's unrealized skyscraper for National Life Insurance, Stanley Tigerman's Urban Matrix and Adolf Loos entry to the Tribune Tower competition, and Ludwig Hilberseimer's 1940 Plan for Chicago were among the other subjects in the mix.

Through September 2nd, the results of all that work are on display at UIC's Art & Architecture Building.  As described by this review by Phillip Berger in the Architect's Newspaper, don't expect the show, Visionary Chicago,  to be entirely easy to take in - boards rise as much as 12 feet above the viewer's head. 

There's also a catalogue, which Eisenschmidt describes as . . .

. . . the beginning of a research project to collect, record, compare, analyze, and extrapolate these architectural dreams . . . All of the projects were reconstructed through drawings from a limited set of information (sometimes only a single sketch), bringing the ingenuity of the student researcher in proximity with the project they analyzed. Some schemes are well known but not well documented, while others had disappeared from the architectural consciousness and are here reintroduced into the discourse through drawings, programmatic analysis, and historical and contemporary references. Therefore, the catalog functions simultaneously as a collection and invention of evidences – a constructive and opportunistic re-inhabitation of these visions. Ultimately, the catalog is a directory of ideas, ideas of how to engage the city.

Remove the word "young", and the epigraph, a quote from Louis Sullivan's Kindergarten Chats,  could be describing the city today.

“Chicago is young, clumsy, foolish, its architectural sins are unstable, captious and fleeting; it can pull itself down and rebuild itself in a generation … it has done and can do great things when the mood is on … One must indeed be incurably optimistic even momentarily to dream such a dream.”

 click images for larger view

Again, the show runs through September 2nd in the Ramp Gallery of UIC's Art & Architecture Building, 845 West Harrison, Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m., to 5:00 p.m.  It's been described to me as being "kind of tucked away" at the back the building, but it looks like something well worth checking out, and I'm told signs have been posted to help you find it.  Info here.