Art Center College of Design: Materials Lab

I'd heard of the Color, Materials and Trends Exploration Laboratory (CMTEL, site and catalogue currently under construction) at the Materials Library Special Interest Group at the ARLIS/VRA Conference in Minneapolis. Here is the power point from that session… if you'd like a look.



Unfortunately, CMTEL Asscociate Director Marshall Hamaguchi was unavailable the day I could visit the Pasadena campus to meet with the ACCD's James Lemont Fogg Library staff.

Luckily, Library Director Betsy Galloway had time to guide me through the bustling hustle of the Art Center halls and galleries (that were in full Grad show prep-mode) to give me a quick peek at the layout and scope of this fine materials library.

Founded by Karen Hofmann, Department Chair of Product Design and Director CMTEL,  (who has developed materials labs for industry) the collection has a strong focus on sustainable materials and materials with unusual properties such as illumination, translucency and sonics.

The blurb on the Art Centre site:

"In order to provide artists and designers with the resources to become better problem solvers, innovators, storytellers and leaders, Art Center has developed an innovative program to provide expanded resources and expertise in color and materials technologies, as well as understanding global trends. Supported by funding from Nokia and Avery Dennison, CMTEL hosts a variety of events, lectures and courses on topics such as sustainable design, trend forecasting, lighting technologies and more."

VRA/ARLIS Conference: Thursday

There are a couple of interesting events on Thursday I had been really looking forward to.

After a long morning wrestling children I show up in the lobby of hotel as instructed and lo! I had missed the shuttle bus to our offsite location. Nonetheless tickled by the news I would be leaving the hotel, I charged upstairs to change into sensible shoes and grab my coat, and headed out into sunny, snowy Minneapolis. Look at this place!

My destination is the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Here it is, under all that snow.

I'm booked in for the workshop Postcards from the Edge IV: Fashion and Textiles.

While I arrive late and take leave early to make it to another event back at the Hilton, it is still a rewarding session. I sneak out brimming with a fresh brainload of fashion and visual art resources, and some really great ideas on library-faculty collaboration.

The conference theme of collaboration proves to be a truly coherent thread through all sessions I'm to attend this week.

The next event is the Material Libraries Special Interest Group, presented by Mark Pompelia of the Rhode Island School of Design's Fleet Library.

Materials collections are super exciting to me as a lover of things. And in an era when the visual is increasingly digital and non-corporeal, materials are taking on a whole new importance in the field of art and design libraries. The makers of things are lovers of things too!