“With much regret, I have decided to cancel this year’s event in New York City,” says Steve Woods, professor of lighting design at Southern Methodist University (SMU), one of the Lumen Brothers (Light Talk podcast), and the organizer of Design Showcase East, for which the 19th annual showcase has now moved to the virtual world for students from the member schools who will present their portfolios online. The event will be held on ZOOM on Monday, May 11, from 1 p.m. – 9 p.m.
Guests can now visit Design Showcase East online, and get all the current information on the presenting students. Woods adds that his buddies at Light Talk have stepped up with a new daily posting of students’ work called “Designer du Jour” found at the Light Talk Facebook page.
“I will be updating the DSE site daily until Monday, May 11. We will have 45 MFA and BFA/BA portfolios of exciting work from around the country to share,” adds Woods. “I encourage all of us to reach out to these young men and women. Take a little time out of your day now to email them, set up a phone call or ZOOM interview, and discuss their portfolios. A phone call is the least we can do to help celebrate their graduation and entry into the profession.”
In the meantime, SMU in Dallas, TX, has moved to online teaching like most universities at this point. “Our program consists only of graduate designers, so number management has been easy,” explains Woods. “We are not facing the large numbers of undergraduate designers or technical students. Our design faculty of seven moved quickly into the world of ZOOM. But prior to that several of our faculty were proactive before our campus was shut down. For example, our Draping class sent ½-scale dress forms and portable sewing machines and fabric home with our grads,” he notes.
“Over the years, our work with High End Systems has paid off with a litter of Hedge Hogs from Hog Factor. So programming class is taking place online with consoles sitting in grad students’ living rooms and on dining tables. Our Wacom Tablet drawing class and Photoshop classes lend themselves to the new world of social distancing. Our traditional Scenery, Costume, and Lighting design classes have merged into one section of 12 students who are now designing all aspects on an opera. We are joined by the director of the Opera Program at SMU who will direct this project and add feedback regarding long distance designing.
It is not how we wanted to end the semester, but it is working. Our weekly design faculty meeting continues with ZOOM and ever-changing exotic green screen backgrounds,” Woods concludes.