judges’ picks >> dana lytle
2. SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS
When judge Dana Lytle of Madison’s Planet Propaganda claimed the
2004 SVA Senior Library as his judge’s pick, a glint of the green-eyed
monster flashed in the eyes of several jury members. Weeks later, Lytle
still jealously guards his copy. “I’ve been stingy with it,” he says. “I don’t
think I’ve lent it out to a single person.”
For Lytle, the five cloth-bound books—nestled in a white, vinyl
slipcase—inspire respect for the institution that cultivates the talent
featured therein. He particularly admires the fact that the
Library—designed by SVA portfolio class instructor Carin Goldberg
—moves well beyond the formula of an annual to open up a
broader exploration of design itself.
As Goldberg sees it, the design community, whose bookshelves
already bow under the weight of annuals, hardly needs another
tome along those lines. Her obligation was to capture seniors’
voices, which emerge through their work, featured in Books
Two through Five, and words: In Book One, writer Akiko Busch
reports on a student roundtable about design ethics.
So, too, did students’ personalities emerge when Goldberg
requested that they submit drawings of their hands and eyes, as
well as traditional, black silhouettes of their profiles. “To my utter
astonishment,” she says, “it turned out to be a totally eclectic and
personal collection. I was blown away by their diverse interpretations,
even within the context of this simple assignment.”
The silhouettes—with which Goldberg created collages, single
images, and patterns throughout Book One—are variously scraggly,
precious, graphic, and in one case, animal. Rendered separately,
students’ eyes look out from the pages—bloodshot or wide,
shifty or long-lashed—moving through a spectrum of moods as
diverse as the student body itself.
“I wanted there to be a joy to the project,” says Goldberg. “The
design department at SVA does not teach one way of working or
seeing. There is no one manifesto. I wanted the book to reflect
the diversity of students and teachers and especially to show the
girth of work that the students produce in a year. I didn’t want it
to feel promotional, but to be a series of beautiful books that you
might want to keep on display with other coveted art books. And I
wanted the books to be relevant beyond 2004.”
Tiffany Meyers
School of Visual Arts
CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Richard Wilde
ART DIRECTOR, DESIGNER: Carin Goldberg
COPYWRITER: Akiko Busch
CONTACT: www.schoolofvisualarts.edu
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