FIT Institutional Repository

In recognition of FIT's commitment to creating a civil, inclusive campus for all, the annual faculty and staff exhibition will include student work for the first time.

New Views 2018 is the fourth large-scale faculty exhibition at FIT in the John E. Reeves Great Hall. The School of Art and Design consists of 17 departments teaching separate creative disciplines that define the vitality of the college. Approximately 70 faculty members have submitted their work for this non-juried exhibition.

New Views 2017 marks the third large-scale faculty exhibition at FIT in the John E. Reeves Great Hall. The School of Art and Design consists of 17 departments teaching separate creative disciplines that define the vitality of the college. Approximately 70 faculty members have submitted their work for this non-juried exhibition.

New Views: FIT Art and Design Faculty Exhibition, on display from Saturday, March 5 through Sunday, March 20 in the Great Hall, showcases the full and diverse range of mediums in which faculty from the college's School of Art and Design work. With a particular emphasis on pieces that reflect each artist's current point of view, the more than 90 works include photography, collage, painting, sculpture, illustration, video, interactive media, installation, textiles, animation, apparel, and jewelry.

"The work in this exhibition is expressive of the art and design endeavors of our faculty that serve to enhance their abilities in their roles as educators," said Karen Middleton, assistant professor, Fashion Design, and curator of New Views. "The exhibition presents a broader picture of the creative and artistic accomplishments of the faculty. Most importantly, our goal is to provide inspiration and motivation to our students."

FIT's School of Art and Design comprises 17 programs — Accessories Design, Advertising Design, Communication Design, Computer Animation and Interactive Media, Fabric Styling, Fashion Design, Fine Arts, Graphic Design, Illustration, Interior Design, Jewelry Design, Menswear, Packaging Design, Photography, Textile/Surface Design, Toy Design, and Visual Presentation and Exhibition Design.

"The teaching and learning environment in the School of Art and Design is collaborative and interdisciplinary," said Joanne Arbuckle, dean, School of Art and Design. "New Views shows the FIT community and the general public just how much talent there is among the faculty, and that talent gets passed on to the students."

The Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) presents New Views: FIT Art and Design Faculty Exhibition, which opened Saturday, March 7, and features more than 90 works—from intimate to large-scale installations—including masks, photography, collage, painting, sculpture, illustration, video, interactive media, installation, textiles, apparel, and jewelry.

"Communication is supposed to be easy," Pansum Cheng, sculpture technologist, Fine Arts, said while watching people connect with his new site-specific sculptural installation, Miss Communication, outside of the Pomerantz Center. "It's the most direct way to interact with someone."
But this assemblage of 2,400 empty cans attached to two walls with a grid system and connected with fishing wire—at once simple and enigmatic—gives the viewer no instructions on how to use it. "That never even occurred to me," Cheng said. "Because communication is a very personal experience, allowing people to figure out what to do with it is in and of itself a form of communication."

Each can is attached to the one directly across from it on the opposite wall by the fishing wire, creating a familiar communication mechanism: a telephone device like the ones children make. "Before technology, communication is play," Cheng said. "It's childlike innocence.

Cheng also enjoys watching the juxtaposition of people using mobile phones near his installation, dealing with the distractions of city life, while others are trying to figure out the intricacies of the sculpture. "I see people play with it but also get frustrated with it."

But there is another way to look at Miss Communication, which came out of a proposal Cheng, who is from Mainland China, submitted to the FIT Diversity Council. It can be viewed as a means to examine the experience of being an outsider in an ever-changing subculture, which can be arduous when trying to identify both with peers and strangers. Through the various experiences that people have with the installation, the aim is to challenge them to explore different mindsets of a multicultural society.

"It was born out of the experience of people not being able to align with each other in a common experience," said Cheng. "Age, sex, background, and every experience can change the way you look at things. The project is a very simple idea, but every idea that's simple is never really that simple when you elaborate on it. I was looking for something everyone could relate to. I read a lot of philosophy, but I don't have big ideas for my art. I only have personal ideas that people can connect with."

The Diversity Council chose the project, in part, because it speaks to the issues of difference in culture and because it serves as a platform for communication.

The installation, which took nearly five months to install, will be on view through February.

--from Press Release on December 18, 2014

The first of the School of Art and Design Faculty annual exhibition

My study investigates how luxury brand employed innovative technologies to transform their go-to-market strategy targeting Chinese luxury consumers –and the extent to which these new technologies can support luxury brands in further strengthening their brand values.

Exhibition title and theme:
"Sanctuary", Dawn Dinh, ITDP

The work of FIT alumni and faculty takes center stage in the exhibition Crafting Change. Organized by the Textile/Surface Design Department in conjunction with New York Textile Month, the works featured in Crafting Change use long-established techniques in a modern context to highlight the potential for promoting connection, community, and wellbeing through creating textiles. These works explore the potential for art to promote connection with ourselves and others and how the tactility of textiles can provide balance to time spent in the digital realm.

Curated by FIT Associate Professor of Fine Arts Julia Jacquette, this exhibition at the Fashion Institute of Technology features work that utilizes and explores all aspects of repetition and pattern.
Pattern is often thought of in terms of art and design: the repetition of shape in surface design. But the definition of pattern can be even more expansive: It’s a regularity or repetition in the world in general. It includes the repetition of abstract ideas as well as form.
Pattern, the Grid, and Other Systems will include two-dimensional, three-dimensional, and time-based artwork from FIT faculty, students, and distinguished alumni, as well as from guest artists. In addition, panel discussions and talks by participating artists and guest lecturers will take place during the run of the exhibition.

The work of FIT students and faculty took center stage in the Gallery FIT exhibition Crafting Change. Organized by the Textile/Surface Design Department in conjunction with New York Textile Month, the works featured in Crafting Change used long-established techniques in a modern context to explore the shifting boundaries between art, design, and technology. Combining hand-crafting techniques with digital processes preserves tradition while pushing textiles into the future. Projects bridging science and textiles have the potential to revolutionize the fashion and textile industries, leading us to a more sustainable world. These works were promising examples of how FIT is successfully encouraging interdisciplinary mergers of craft, technology, and sustainability in order to usher textile arts into the 21st century.

The work of FIT students and faculty took center stage in the Gallery FIT exhibition Crafting Change. Organized by the textile/surface design department in conjunction with New York Textile Month, the works featured in Crafting Change used long-established techniques in a modern context to explore the shifting boundaries between art, design, and technology. Projects bridging science and textiles have the potential to revolutionize the fashion and textile industries, leading us to a more sustainable future. These works were promising examples of how FIT is successfully encouraging interdisciplinary mergers between craft, technology, and sustainability to usher textile arts into the 21st century.

An exhibition as a part of an ongoing visual ethnographic research on the impact of migration and globalization on the nomadic communities, documenting the daily lives of nomadic people and weavers and putting a face to this (in)visible community and their vanishing culture.