The Division of Continuing Education at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) announced Hispanic Professionals in the Arts: Mesa Redonda, the inaugural event in a series of lectures and panel discussions featuring some of New York's most accomplished Latino creative professionals. Moderated by MTV2's Desi Sanchez, the panel will explore some of the visual communication challenges and opportunities in the Hispanic community and how bilingual and bicultural designers and illustrators are responding. Panelists include: Laura Alejo, art director at HUSH; Rafael Esquer, principal at Alfalfa Studio; Mad cartoonist Felipe Galindo (Feggo); Jessica Perilla, creative director at JPD Studio; and Jose Luis Ortiz Tellez, a designer, consultant and educator. Conducted in English, the discussion will take place on May 16, 6:30 - 8pm at the School of Visual Arts, 209 East 23rd Street, 3rd-floor amphitheater, New York City. Admission is free and open to the public. RSVP by Monday, May 9 to pcrousillat at sva.edu.
Born and raised in New York City and educated at SVA, Desi Sanchez is a TV personality, artist and musician with credits in print, broadcast and online media. Best known for her VJ work on MTV2, Sanchez is the former host of the syndicated television program LatiNation, which airs on Fox and MyNetwork. Sanchez also lends her voice to nationwide radio imaging on Sirius XM Radio for stations such as Octane and HairNation.
Award-winning designer, illustrator and artist Laura Alejo is an art director at New York-based design and direction studio HUSH, whose clients include Discovery Channel, Nike, Nokia and Sony Ericsson. She is a contributor to Copyright Magazine and founding member of Studio Copyright, a Barcelona design studio where her clients included MTV Italia, Paramount Comedy and Canal+, among others. She has also exhibited her work in galleries in Brooklyn, Barcelona and Madrid.
Mexican-born Rafael Esquer is principal at Alfalfa Studio, a New York interdisciplinary graphic design studio, and former creative director at at radical.media, where his work earned a 2004 National Design Award from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. His clients have included Bjork, the Houston Rockets, IBM, El Museo del Barrio, Nike, Scholastic, Target and The New York Times Magazine.
Born in Mexico, Felipe Galindo is an artist, illustrator, cartoonist and animator whose drawings have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Newsday, The Wall Street Journal, Reader's Digest, Nickelodeon, Mad magazine and INXart.com. He is the author of Manhatitlan, a book of humorous drawings about the intertwining of Mexican and American cultures in New York. Galindo is currently working on Frida NY, a whimsical animation about the several visits the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo made to New York City in the 1930s.
Founder and creative director at JPD Studio, Jessica Perilla is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, entrepreneur and educator. Through The Mural Project, a community-based arts initiative she started in 2007, she has led volunteers in creating wall murals for the Montefiore Children's Hospital, Mt. Sinai Hospital, and St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx.
Born in Mexico City, Jose Luis Ortiz Tellez studied and trained at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plasticas, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico in art and design, and went on to create the graphic identity for the XIX Olympic Games. His work has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts; AIGA and the Art Directors Club, and is in the collections of the Library of Congress and the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York, among others.