Social concious art hits the RCVA

Photo courtesy of the Richmond Center for Visual Arts

By Alexandra Batson
Western Herald

Photo courtesy of the Richmond Center for Visual Arts

Art installation The Graphic Imperative: International Posters for Peace, Social Justice and the Environment, 1965-2005 opens today in the Richmond Center for Visual Arts (RCVA).

The exhibition will be on view in the Albertine Monroe-Brown Gallery through Feb. 19.

The organizers of the exhibition are Elizabeth Resnick, associate professor and chair of Communication Design at the Massachusetts College of Art & Design; Chaz Maviyane-Davies, associate professor of Communication Design, Massachusetts College of Art & Design; and Frank Baseman, associate professor of Graphic Design Communication, Philadelphia University in Philadelphia.

This exhibition has been traveling throughout the United States since 2006.

Movement for social change in the past 100 years has often begun with the arts, from theatre to poetry to music to posters.

Political and social posters are reminders of struggles for peace and justice. Whether they’re meant to communicate, exhort, persuade, instruct, celebrate or warn, these posters push people to action through their bold messages and striking iconography.

The Graphic Imperative was started in 2005 and has made two stops so far in Michigan before Kalamazoo. The exhibition is a collection of 120 posters celebrating the environment, promoting peace and anti-smoking.

The posters are considered “groundbreaking” and “extremely effective,” according to Mindi Bagnall, the exhibition’s registrar at the RCVA.

The posters featured in the exhibition give a voice of ideals, hopes and dreams of millions who have dared to raise protest and concern. They have helped empower and propel important movements for social change. Some have become icons that have changed the way we view our institutions, our world and ourselves.

Because graphic designers need to express their individual views about a cause or issue, their posters are a form of personal expression in a field that often prefers the bland.

The main goal of the organization is to celebrate graphic design and push commentary and political movements through posters from the past and present.

Resnick has a B.F.A. and an M.F.A. in graphic design from the Rhode Island School of Design. She also served on the Board of Directors AIGA Boston Chapter from 1989-2005 where she also organized graphic design lectures and events.

Resnick also published two books: “Design for Communication: Conceptual Graphic Design Basics,” and “Graphic Basics: A Problem Solving Approach to Visual Communication.”

Maviyane-Davies has studied and worked in Britain, Japan, Malaysia, Zimbabwe, and the United States. He has been published in many books, international magazines and newspapers, and his work has been featured in many permanent collections and various galleries.

Baseman is the principal of Baseman Design Associates, an award-winning graphic design firm that gives communication visually to many corporations and institutions. He is an associate professor in the Graphic Design Communication program at Philadelphia University.

Baseman is also on the AIGA national board of directors and is a chair of the Steering Committee for the AIGA Design Education Community of Interest. He was the author of The Tolerance Project, which is a student poster design competition and exhibition. He has been working in the graphic design department for more than 20 years and has gotten recognition from many national and international communication organizations.

As far as importance to the town of Kalamazoo goes, this exhibit, which took 18 months of planning, has had an effect on many people, including Bagnall.

“This exhibit reaches beyond art; it represents all the changes in the world and everything happening in our lives right now. It’s not just for people who really enjoy art, it really can relate to anyone,” she said.

“There is one poster of just a woman’s mouth with burnt cigarette butts in place of her teeth and it is just really powerful and there are many more that are just as effective.”

The Graphic Imperative could be the first poster exhibition that offers the public a chance to delight in and compare a large body of powerful messages, a seamless blend of texts and images.

In addition to the exhibit, starting Jan. 14 and continuing through Feb. 19 at the Albertine Monroe-Brown Gallery, Resnick will be giving a public lecture at the RCVA in room 2008 today, Jan. 14, at 5:30 p.m.

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Posted by HeraldAdmin on Jan 13 2010. Filed under A & E. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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