Design

This is a longer version of the interviews with visual arts fellows Dan Byers and Andria Hickey, and design fellows Mylinh Trieu Nguyen and Noa Segal,
from a story in the July/August issue of Walker magazine.

For nearly three decades, the Walker has been recruiting recent graduates and junior professionals to work as fellows in its design and visual arts departments. As full-time, full-fledged staff, fellows experience the entire scope of graphic design and curatorial work in a museum, while bringing with them fresh energy and new ideas. A number of Walker fellows have also gone on to prominent positions at museums and design firms around the world. As their time here draws to a close, the 2008-2009 group talks about what brought them here, what they’ve experienced, and what’s in store as they move on.

= Noa Segal =

Before coming to the Walker… Graphic design seemed to me to be a practice that allows an intellectual engagement with content and form, and yet exists on a very visual and practical level. My educational path went through music and photography, but I felt that my interest in images and text was not coming to its full expression. The Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, where I completed my studies, was a great school that encouraged students to develop an ability to analyze the given or self-initiated content, and from that to bring into their design a full range of interests and sources of inspiration.

Coming here was . . . Almost like starting all over, thinking about and practicing design in ways that I hadn’t before. Working in this kind of a multidisciplinary place really had an affect on me—collaborating with people working in other disciplines made me reconsider and redefine, repeatedly, my profession and my position within it. I realized that it is fascinating looking back on the phases of the different projects i worked on (i.e proofs) at the walker and be able to see the change and the development of my ability to work with images and text, react to the people i collaborate with and design towards shaping each piece to the point where it delivered their content successfully and reflected my ideas about it.
(fig.1 – 7, different stages of work; fig.8.-9, the final piece: working on film flayer for Queer Takes: weekend of screening at the Walker June 23-26)

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Some of my favorite moments were . . . Feeling stuck, tired, uninspired—but being able to leave my desk and go inside the galleries, down to our amazing library, or to the cinema or the theater. Realizing that all of this amazing art is as close to me as my bed is to my shower—and it’s available to me every second of the day! Also, participating in discussions with the design staff that are deeply engaged, hearing how and what this studio would like to do in the future—great inspiring and educational moments that for sure I will try to carry on in my practice.

A belief i’ve developed . . . Is that design means always challenging yourself and trying new things, and that you can’t design without keeping a close relationship to the world surrounding us—culture, politics, nature, and so on.

= Mylinh Trieu Nguyen =

Design first sparked my interest when … I was studying in my dorm at UCLA and heard a student next door animating a cartoon airplane to the words of a John Denver song. It wasn’t what she was making, but more the idea of realizing it that captivated me. She was taking this vague idea in her head and making it into a tangible thing in the world. I wanted that ability.

I wanted to become a walker fellow because … I was questioning the importance of what I was producing. I expanded my practice into the contemporary art world, collaborating with friend and artist David Horvitz as ASDF. This in turn made me more encouraged about my role as a graphic designer, and led me to apply for the fellowship.

My high points and low points here involved … Being assigned my first big project. This daunting feeling overwhelmed me; it was nothing less than that. But through all of the trial and error, working with Andrew Blauvelt and spending countless evenings in the studio (crying), the Walker’s annual report is one of the most gratifying pieces I’ve made. Moving to Minneapolis itself was a test of emotional endurance. The change in geography and social dynamics made it hard at first, and often lonely. But you really develop strong relationships with the other fellows and the people you work with.

Moving on from the walker, i will be … attending Yale’s MFA program in graphic design, developing and expanding my current interests, garnering new ones, and, I hope, cultivating a clear and cohesive methodology. I also want to continue producing work under ASDF, travel, and experience life outside the realm of “work.”

http://www.mylinhtrieu.com/index.php?/ongoing/minnesota-nice

Vance Wellenstein
What would you like to talk about?

Ryan Waller
Slogan t-shirts? Police? In Providence there is a restaurant that has a menu item called “Andre the Giant has an omelette”. The ‘net?

VW
This is the Ryan Waller Show, anything goes. What about that World Trade Center logo?

RW
That ain’t me. Also, in advance, I’ve never watched porn at studio BUT I did catch someone watching it last night. Our lips are sealed.

VW
YIKES.

I remember seeing New College Beat show up at the Walker studio while I was there … what were your motivations behind that project?

RW
It was mostly to pay for school. I had been making smaller ‘zines called The New College Beat Supplements with no real intention to make a non-supplement until I got into Yale. It was a tough decision to say yes, because I was pretty in debt from my undergrad, but the same day I accepted was the day I contacted all my friends to help me with it. They all said yes (except for one NOT SAYING WHO = KEEP IT COOL). So that was the reason it was going to take shape. But it took shape from different places. The Hebrew from Yale heraldry was a place. Speed was another.

VW
And did it pay off? Or, do we need to plug where it can be purchased from?

RW
Well, no, I have some left. The idea was to sell 1,000 of the packs which had a poster and a t-shirt (and assorted vibes) sandwiched in. But I have more Beats than the packs, so there are still opportunities. These are all at the New College Beat site.

VW
And now the Walker Art Center bookshop.

RW
WAH!

VW
How often is the New College Beat published? When’s the next issue due out?

RW
It is pretty irregularly regular. The supplements were coming out at a biannual rate, and then the Beat was made just the once. I have some things I might make with it, but nothing set in motion. I might want to make the New College Beat into a house of publishing, and less about a magazine at some point. Or it may take off. The New College Beat might become a really successful magazine, both intellectually and financially.

VW
Ok, so then in thinking about your time here at Yale as BOOKENDS, what’s on the other side of the shelf?

RW
What a clever title.

VW
Totally stole it.

RW
What part of the shelf? Outside of the bookends?

VW
How about this: if NCB sits somewhere at the beginning of your time here, what would be something that sits closer to you exiting?

And you can’t say thesis.

RW
There are quite a few things whose spines will be the only thing to see the fluorescent light of day — those are book proposals and zines and papers that sit squarely in the center, all made in low quantities as examples and experiments. Hot Gun, a journal I made with Josh Stanley, would be the closest thing to getting picked off. That just came to studio, and it’s the first thing made in quantity to be out there, which we are beginning to figure out where there is. Hot Gun is a poetry journal, mostly criticism, of a contemporary sort. It’s definitely not for the meek.

VW
Can you talk about William Wordsworth and the Hot Gun model?

RW (EDITED ANSWER BY EDITOR/ANSWERER JOSH STANLEY)
Both are the mediations of patriarchy ON whatever is good, and the layering and entwining dialectic creates a simultaneous fix of incomplete realism and momentary certainty in the devastation of patriarchy through antirealism. On the one hand we see-through for a moment, on the other hand mediation is clogged up and analyzed by new mediation, before it restores its hegemony. Obviously what is crucial is that in our capitalist society no good image is possible. This is of course not to claim that ‘the good image’ exists in every other society, or indeed in any society RIGHT NOW. No clothes and shit, so devastation too.

VW
Anything else?

RW
Nope.