Clare Tassinari and Sarah Smeltzer Wright met a year and a half ago while refining dramatic monologues in a bathroom in Hamilton Hall. This week they return to that spot (the hall, if not the specific bathroom) to deliver their M.F.A. performing arts thesis: a production of the scabrous, sensational Patrick Marber play "Closer."

Tassinari plays Anna, a photographer, and Smeltzer Wright a stripper called Alice. They enter into an insensible, years-long romantic roundelay with two men, Dan (Gaines Semler, B.F.A., performing arts) and Larry (played by William Wright, Sarah's real-life spouse).

Sitting in a sunny café on Broughton Street during the final week of "Closer" rehearsal, Smeltzer Wright and Tassinari spoke with enjambed intensity, not unlike the patter of their characters, Sarah's ebullience complemented by Clare's more composed, gamine grace.

"Clare and I realized through critiquing work in class that we had a compatible approach to acting," Smeltzer Wright said.

"We've both done a lot of script analysis," Tassinari added, "and we have similar taste which can't be accounted for by anything else."

Smeltzer Wright reached for the frayed paperback of "Closer" in front of her: "We'll take a chance on each other's ideas, and if it doesn't work, we'll be willing to go in another direction."

The pair first collaborated in fall quarter 2019, co-directing "Gruesome Playground Injuries" by Rajiv Joseph. Tassinari suggested following up with a production of "Closer." They then considered Chekkov's "Three Sisters." Instinct drew them back to "Closer."

"Marber's writing is incredible," says Smeltzer Wright. "All the mirror points and flashback moments present complex challenges."

The play is not light sledding, as anyone who's seen the acclaimed 2004 film adaptation starring Natalie Portman and Jude Law knows. (Smeltzer Wright: "Never seen it"; Tassinari: "I saw it when I was 15.")

The pair pitched their thesis plan to SCAD performing arts professors Craig Anton, Jay Jaski and Julie Hunicutt. "Our initial concept was acting and directing 'Closer' together," Smelzter Wright recalled. "They said, 'No, focus on the acting and find a director.' So, we approached Owen Engesser to direct."

Engesser, a performing arts undergrad (Clare: "wise beyond his years") who played the male lead in "Gruesome Playground Injuries," accepted.

(Owen Engesser, via email: "'Closer' is a challenging play that I knew would test us all. We've made it a point to make sure choices work for the entire ensemble, and we've never held back during the rehearsal process. With such a strong group of actors, they understand not to push for emotion, but to truly experience the reality of the circumstances within the play.")

"During rehearsal we would do Meisner exercises to try to create that necessary back-and-forth gut reaction," explained Smeltzer Wright. "One of our favorite scenes is when the women talk for the first time, in the museum. You see them going at each other, then come to a resolve and talk about men and everything they expect in a relationship. That conversation really gets both of us every night."

Tassinari: "We worked a lot on moment-to-moment wants in the play, and on finding the moments when those wants shift. When you're in places of chaos and frenetic energy, you can cry on a dime, or start laughing."

Smeltzer Wright laughed. "We're doing our job if we're exhausted by the end."

"Closer" by Patrick Marber, Thursday Feb. 20-Sunday Feb. 23, 7:30 p.m., Hamilton Hall, Studio B, SCAD Savannah. Free admission. First come, first seated.

Alice: Sarah Smeltzer Wright
Dan: Gaines Semler
Larry: William Wright
Anna: Clare Tassinari

Director: Owen Engesser
Stage Manager: Tegan Zoephel

Learn more about SCAD performing arts.

Head coach Adrienne Berkland is building a dynasty. Her three-peat national champion SCAD women's lacrosse team opened their 2020 season with a decisive 23-13 win over Benedictine – the very team the Bees beat in last year's NAIA national championship title game – followed by a 29-0 decimation of conference opponents Columbia.

The winning mindset transcends the field. In 2019, the Intercollegiate Women's Lacrosse Coaches Association (IWLCA) named SCAD a Zag Sports Academic Honor Squad, and the team consistently exemplifies the NAIA Champions of Character initiative.

As the NAIA expands to include 40 colleges and universities, collegiate women's lacrosse continues to evolve. So does Berkland's approach to coaching.

Adrienne Berkland:

When I stared coaching, I was fixated on conditioning and x's and o's. Now that I'm in my sixth year at SCAD, I focus on the relationships I build with my student-athletes, and getting to know them as people. What are they doing off the field, and how does that impact what they do in lacrosse? Being in tune with the players and their academic challenges contributes to team chemistry.

I started taking classes at SCAD in summer 2018, and have continued to take one class a quarter. I took Survey of Computer Art Applications (CMPA 100), then I took Fashion and Accessory Sketching and Illustration (FASH 502), and signed up to earn my digital publishing certificate. Taking classes has helped me better understand the academic workload of the team, and emphasize the fact that academics come first.

At SCAD you have an entire team you can come to for creative advice. There's not one “art kid” – they're all art kids! My own undergraduate experience in art history and art education helps me better engage with my players and guide them throughout their SCAD careers.

I believe there's a connection between being an artist and being an athlete. The artist-athlete has heightened attributes of visual/spatial perception. Field awareness and hand/eye coordination are qualities that go hand-in-hand with being an artist.

There is an incredible range of academic majors on our 30-player roster. We have players majoring in fashion, advertising, illustration, interior design, performing arts, business of beauty and fragrance, visual effects, fashion marketing and management, film and television, industrial design, photography, animation, and user experience design. It's like a mosaic representing the university's diverse degree programs.

When our players graduate, they become successful professionals. Olivia Vieira (B.F.A., industrial design, 2019) was an NAIA Daktronics Scholar-Athlete and a key to our national championship teams as a goalkeeper. She now works as a designer with Newport News Shipbuilding, who design submarines for the U.S. Navy. Liv is just one example of how our players represent our program after graduation.

This year we're in the Appalachian Athletic Conference (AAC). We have a 13-game schedule, our biggest schedule since my first year here, with potentially six more games in our conference tournament and nationals. Our first two games of the season sent a message to the rest of the NAIA: We may have graduated some talent last year, but we aren't missing a beat. Starting with a decisive win against #2 Benedictine and a shutout in our conference opener against Columbia shows we want to go hard and win big.

It all leads to the NAIA National Invitational Championships, which will be hosted by the Savannah Sports Council in conjunction with SCAD at the newly renovated Memorial Stadium here in Savannah, May 6-9. We're looking forward to defending our national title at home.

SCAD women's lacrosse start their home season this weekend with two games at the SCAD Athletics Complex: Sat. Feb. 15, 10 a.m. vs. Ave Maria, and Sun. Feb. 16, 2 p.m. against #4-ranked Keiser.

The momentous exhibition featuring timeless designs by legends of style Azzedine Alaïa and Gilbert Adrian is open: Alaïa-Adrian: Masters of Cut, Feb. 11– Nov. 25, 2020, at the globally renowned SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film in Atlanta.

Masters of Cut brings together sleek designs and impeccably tailored looks by beloved designers Azzedine Alaïa (1935–2017) and Gilbert Adrian (1903–1959). Garments on view display the intricate detailing of Adrian's suits — the mitered stripes, clever seaming, and unexpected appliqués — in dialogue with Alaïa's body-celebrating designs.

Pairing their work, the exhibition reveals the designers' intertwined and enduring legacies. Alaïa was a consummate collector of Adrian's work, reveling in the designer's fit, form, and proportion. The Adrian garments on view, held by the Association Azzedine Alaïa, Paris, are presented in partnership with SCAD FASH. In addition to tailored looks from both designers, Masters of Cut features a selection of Alaïa's career-defining gowns worn by fashion icons including Grace Jones. SCAD FASH is honored to host the designer's first posthumous U.S. museum exhibition, nearly 20 years after his last stateside show.

"Our SCAD FASH exhibition of Alaïa and Adrian conveys the unique energy of a couturier collected by a couturier," said SCAD President and Founder Paula Wallace. "The young Azzedine Alaïa so admired Gilbert Adrian — famous for Dorothy's luminous ruby-red slippers and much more — that he ultimately collected more than 150 of Adrian's original pieces. Using the precision of laser cutting to achieve designs perfectly fitted to the body, Alaïa himself, like Adrian before him, became an exacting master of intricate and elegant couture. Genius knows genius!"

Widely known for his fanciful designs for The Wizard of Oz, Adrian was the head of costume design for MGM during the Golden Age of Hollywood (1928–41). His garments for stars like Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, and Norma Shearer were praised by the fashion press and emulated by stylish moviegoers worldwide. In 1942, Adrian established his own atelier in Beverly Hills, and for the next decade his chic, strong- shouldered, narrow-waisted suits and gowns changed the fashion industry and the lives of women everywhere. Alaïa, who trained as a sculptor, left Tunisia for Paris in the mid-1950s to pursue fashion design.

His gift of construction and his obsession with cut and fit shaped garments that are unrivaled in accentuating the female form. Recognized internationally in the 1980s and early '90s for designs draping iconic supermodels Naomi Campbell, Stephanie Seymour, and Linda Evangelista, Alaïa continued to dominate the world of fashion throughout his celebrated career.

Alaïa-Adrian: Masters of Cut is curated by fashion historian and curator Olivier Saillard and organized for SCAD FASH by Rafael Gomes, director of fashion exhibitions.

www.scadfash.org

"I think about where my furniture will live," says Erin Tutcher (M.F.A., furniture design), gesturing towards the couch, mirror and table of her master's thesis collection, "and how the pieces will live with one another."

"Between 7th and 8th" (named after Manhattan's garment district) is the culmination of a sustained process. From conception and sketching through SolidWorks designs, material sourcing, fabrication and display, the pieces epitomize the depth and quality of Tutcher's SCAD experience.

Before coming to SCAD, Tutcher worked as an interior designer for a staging company in New York, staging furniture in opulent for-sale apartments. "I knew I needed to understand furniture better, so I decided to pursue my master's degree at SCAD."

"Between 7th and 8th" is currently on display at Cedar House Gallery in Savannah. The table and mirror are rich and strange. The fainting couch will take your breath away.

Erin Tutcher:

My thesis project transposes techniques of pleating from haute couture fashion into modern furniture design. I incorporated the idea of pleats into elements of each piece. My work tends to have angles and repeated forms. It's a combo of Art Deco and Hollywood Regency, and the organic lines of Art Nouveau. There's a new term, Neo Deco, that might describe my work too.

In haute couture you see fainting couches in dressing rooms as people are getting dressed. In Victorian England they tied corsets so tight that women fainted. I liked the drama of that, and wanted to create a fainting couch as a statement piece in my collection.

I designed and built the interior frame of the couch, did tab-and-slot construction, and had it CNC'd at SCAD. I brought the upholsterer a legless couch and said, don't upholster over the T-nuts, because that's how it's going to attach. The fabric is performance velvet.

The couch legs started as gnarly chunks of raw steel, 20 pounds each. The legs were also CNC'd, and had to be bolted to the machine leaving bolt holes in them. Instead of covering them with a metal plate, I turned spikes for them on the metal lathe. Once I turned them on the lathe, everyone in the shop got pumped, because I was making sharp, aggressive objects for the couch's feminine form. They're meant to look like studs, inspired by an Alexander McQueen shoe with a similar detail.

After the base was welded together I had it powder-coated. It was a challenge making sure everything fit and that the joints were strong enough. You can't have the welds break when people are sitting on it. Professor George Perez gave me key guidance.

The prongs are 3-D printed nylon that I painted with acrylic. When you sit on the couch with another person, its angles mean you face each other. It's a literal conversation piece.

The mirror frame began as a two-inch chunk of ash, five feet long and 80 pounds. I wanted the wood to have a finish where you could still see the grain of the curly ash. I pickled it with whitewash, then took a steamer and raised the wood grain, rubbed in wood grain filler with a palette knife, hand-rubbed gold pigment into the grain, sanded it, added more, sanded again, and finally, lacquer. It has a pearlescent, iridescent finish.

I designed the mirror so the center matches up directly to where the couch swoops in. The language of the mirror perfectly mimics the couch. It feels like they were meant for one another.

Learn more about SCAD furniture design.

Vibrance shines via research and resonance as the globally renowned SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film in Atlanta unveils the new exhibition "Derrick Adams: Patrick Kelly, The Journey," Jan. 14–Jul. 19, 2020.

"Patrick Kelly, The Journey" colorfully re-visits the archive — found at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York — of the late Patrick Kelly, the prolific and groundbreaking Mississippi-born artist, fashion designer, and the first American member of Paris' Chambre Syndicale du Pret-à-Porter, the prestigious governing body of the French ready-to-wear industry.

Derrick Adams is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist working in painting and sculpture as well as performance, video, and sound. His work focuses on the fragmentation and manipulation of structure and surface, exploring the shape-shifting forces of popular culture on self-image. Adams is a close friend of SCAD and was the featured lecturer at deFINE ART 2019. The artist is also a contributor to the upcoming "Jacob Lawrence: Lines of Influence" exhibition catalog, to be published by the university in February 2020.

In his research, Adams discovered a trove of correspondence, sketches, swatches, photographs, and other memorabilia, as well as a proposal for a book about Kelly's life written by his friend, the esteemed poet Maya Angelou. "Patrick Kelly, The Journey" references Kelly's legacy as a formalist who infused social context and humor into his creations. The exhibition presents Adams' abstract collages and sculptural works that incorporate Kelly's vintage clothing patterns, iconic fabrics, bold and colorful geometric forms, and embellishments. Kelly spent several formative years in Atlanta in the 1970s, and the exhibition highlights his connection to the city through a selection of his original, vintage pieces and memorabilia loaned by his friend Carol Martin, an Atlanta resident and former model.

"I admired Patrick's tenacity to get his name out there, back in the day, before clothing lines were even called brands," recalled Martin. "I was mesmerized by how he would make something you thought wouldn't work but it would always work. This exhibit is important because it will help people realize it's okay to think outside of the box. That's what Patrick did."

"Patrick Kelly, The Journey" is curated by Alexandra Sachs, executive director of SCAD FASH and Atlanta Exhibitions. It is presented as part of SCAD deFINE ART 2020, the university's annual program of exhibitions, lectures, and performances held Feb. 18–20 at locations in Atlanta and Savannah, Georgia.

"Patrick Kelly, The Journey" highlights the university's ongoing mission to showcase emerging and established African American artists. In recent years, SCAD FASH and SCAD MOA have exhibited dynamic work by artists including Fred Wilson, Hank Willis Thomas, Carrie Mae Weems, Jacob Lawrence, Lorraine O'Grady, Radcliffe Bailey, Andre 3000, Toyin Ojih Odutola, and Stephen Burrows.

The exhibition exemplifies a significant aspect of SCAD FASH as a teaching museum, and the essential role it plays in helping prepare SCAD students for their creative careers. SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film celebrates fashion as a universal language, garments as important conduits of identity, and film as an immersive and memorable medium. Situated within the SCAD Atlanta location, SCAD FASH focuses on the future of fashion design, connecting conceptual and historical principles of dress. The museum welcomes visitors of all ages to engage with dynamic exhibitions, captivating films, and enriching events.

Visit scadfash.org.

"I'm always thinking about my paintings as 3-dimensional objects," says Adrienne Dixon (B.F.A., painting, 2011). "My intention is to make the materiality of the work as important as its pictorial illusions."

A graduate of Chopticon High School in Morganza, Maryland, Dixon counts Carmen Herrera, Ellsworth Kelly, and Josef and Annie Albers among her art world heroes. Her vibrant, widely-exhibited paintings are in collections including the Kentucky International Convention Center in Lexington, Chateau d'Orquevaux Permanent Collection in Orquevaux, France, and the private collection of Danai Gurira.

This year, Dixon's artistic process of transference has taken on new context. Limited-edition socks (and a complementary water bottle), based on her paintings, are currently for sale exclusively at Tad Café in the SCAD Museum of Art. They are functional and fun. Wear them and become part of the art.

Adrienne Dixon:

SCAD is a great place for thinking about design holistically. SCAD students work in interdisciplinary ways. In the SCAD painting program we were encouraged to contact professional artists to interview them about their studio practices, professional practices, and how they navigate their careers. I reached out to Monica Cook (B.F.A., painting, 1996) and we corresponded. Her work is so luscious, with an astonishing amount of detail. There are a lot of Monica's paintings on display in SCAD buildings. She's a total rock star.

Another illustrious graduate of the SCAD painting program, Michael Scoggins (M.F.A., painting, 2006) said, "If you have to have a day job, have a day job that does not deplete you. Work somewhere that fuels your practice, teaches you a skill, or inspires you."

Currently I'm the events director for a non-profit gallery and event space called Lexington Art League in Lexington, Kentucky. We're in the gothic revival Loudon House with 11,000 feet of gallery space. We hold an event called Woodland Art Fair where we bring in 60-70,000 people every August. My day job is a lot of work but I love it and it is rewarding.

The design for the socks and water bottle originated with a series of paintings I created called "Area/Matter." The patterns in "Area/Matter" came out of spaces I've encountered: a median strip, the ceiling of the D.C. Metro. A lot of my work is influenced by architecture. There was an interesting pitch in a room of a townhouse I was living in, so I made an observational drawing and thought about how I could play with the color palette, flipping it compositionally in different orientations.

The commission came from Alan Slattery (B.F.A., accessory design, 2016), who took my work and formatted the designs onto functional objects, a water bottle and a pair of socks. He sent the mock-ups to me, said what do you think, and I said, of course!

It's exciting to see the project come to fruition and the items be for sale at SCAD MOA. I want what I purchase to have a special place in either my wardrobe or my house. You cherish something more when you're in love with the color, or if it's a conversation piece. Who wants bland socks?

Adrienne Dixon photo: Dana Rogers

Banner image: Adrienne Dixon, "Don’t Do It VI" (detail), acrylic, glitter, and resin on panel, 2018.

Learn more about SCAD painting and visit SCAD MOA!

Lina Deeb Forrester (B.F.A., interior design) is standing beside "The Tree of Life" in Pepe Hall. The block-printed English pattern, drawn from Indian and Chinese motifs, is currently printed in Thailand by Kravet, the trade home furnishings industry leader with whom Deeb Forrester interned in 2019.

A linguist who speaks Indonesian, Arabic and Malaysian, Deeb Forrester served in the military before coming to SCAD: "I was thinking about going back to school, and learned that SCAD is ranked #1 for interior design. I came to Savannah, took my first tour and said, ‘Let's start this now!'"

Lina's international experience, collector's mentality, and fibers minor all informed her extraordinary selections from the Kravet archive, currently on display in Pepe Hall.

Lina Deeb Forrester:

Last year, Kravet Chief Creative Director Scott Kravet came to SCAD to lecture on the textiles from around the world that are in the Kravet archive. I was fascinated. Afterwards I introduced myself, and later emailed a follow-up. There was no actual archive internship position at the time. I was persistent. Eventually Kravet created the position to accommodate me!

I interned in the climate-controlled Kravet archive at their corporate office in Bethpage, Long Island for two and a half months. I was in frequent contact with the Kravet design studios including Lee Jofa, Kravet Couture, and Brunschwig and Fils. If they were looking for a piece with say, a specific bird, I'd look it up in the database of almost 40,000 items, find it, package it and send it to them so they could physically use the archival piece as inspiration for the creation of new designs.

As part of my internship last summer with Kravet, I helped curate an exhibition in New York called "Pattern & Process." I examined the boxes and drawers in the Kravet archive to select the best pieces. One of the oldest items in the archives is a Coptic weaving from Egypt from 200 B.C. To be able to touch it was mind-blowing. As a student, to do something I'd never done before and be given a leadership role really fulfilled my soul.

The items from the Kravet archive I selected to display here in Pepe Hall are glimpses into the depth and diversity of the Kravet holdings. Block printing is one of the oldest ways of creating images on fabric. "The Tree of Life" uses 365 different blocks interlocked like a puzzle to create one three-yard repeat pattern. When you look at the back you can see the variation in the pressure each artist applied to their blocks. There are obis from Japan, alongside shuttles from the 19th century that use silk and metallic threads. There are point papers from Orinoka Mills, originally one of the largest mills in the Philadelphia area. On the back each artist wrote the sizes and colors for the swatches, and how long it took them to work on a piece.

I had an incredible experience at Kravet, and I'm really happy that I'm able to translate the experience to this exhibition at Pepe Hall. It emphasizes how connected the world is via the art of textiles. An archive is a living thing.

Special thanks to Kravet Executive VP and co-owner Ellen Kravet, Kravet special projects manager Karen Lerman, and the entire Kravet team.

Learn more about SCAD fibers and SCAD interior design degree programs.

No dream home is complete without a Bert John painting or four. Featured in HGTV Dream Home 2020, the paintings of John (M.F.A., interior design, 2006) represent his lifelong affinity for coastal life, connecting habitant to habitat. With Savannah-developed design sensibilities applied to the home on Hilton Head Island, Bert delivers Lowcountry life in high style.

Bert John:

I went to medical school for two years, studying pharmacology, while getting up early to help my cousin renovate a house. When I decided to go for it and pursue my masters in interior design, I looked for a university where all the students get hired after they graduate. One of my dad's businesses in Jacksonville was an antique shop, so we'd been coming up to Savannah since I was a kid – that's how I knew about SCAD.

At SCAD, I took elective painting and drawing classes with the late professor Jorge Alvarez, including Oil-based Techniques and Exploration [PNTG 203]. Gold leaf is the signature in all Alvarez' paintings. In Granite Hall, the alligator and snake painting with gold leaf, that's his. I sometimes use gold leaf on the side or face of my paintings because Alvarez always used gold leaf. I thought I'd carry it forward.

I paint more like a watercolorist with my oil paints, with how I layer and the looseness of the paint versus thick impasto painting. I developed my technique over time, including my color block approach for small paintings. If I add gray to my paints it makes them more chameleon-like. When I paint the marsh, I let nature create the perspective and then I do the underpainting in orangey red. Alvarez always talked about letting the process show through. The old masters used sanguine pencils, and if you look at their underpaintings sometimes you can see red marks from sanguine pencils. I'm doing it intentionally.

Producer and interior designer Brian Patrick Flynn at HGTV Dream Home likes to feature local artists and designers as much as he can. With HGTV Dream Home, I'm given the palette and approximately how many pieces he might need. I look at the palette and what my goal is: Is the painting going to be completely abstract, an abstract marsh scene, photo-realistic, or color block? Then I paint. With my color block paintings, I can use radical colors like coral and pink and fuchsia. The painting in the master bathroom of HGTV Dream Home 2020 is tailored towards the shower tile and the blush color, from the Sherwin-Williams for HGTV color palette of the year.

My work has strong horizontal lines. I use a tape measure as a scribe and charcoal to get that perfect horizontal line. Funny thing – the same box of line charcoal that I had when I graduated SCAD, I still use! There's four full pieces and a few nibs in there left. So I'm still using the supplies, inspiration and connections I made while at SCAD.

See more at Bert's official site and visit him on Instagram.

SCAD AT MIAMI, a wondrous celebration of contemporary art and creative education at Design Miami/ during Miami Art Week, took place December 4-8, 2019. Artists and experts conversed in a state-of-the-art media suite, and experienced dynamic new work by SCAD alumni. Current M.F.A. candidate Justin Armstrong (B.F.A., painting, 2016) discussed the inspiration and process behind his sensational bespoke work.

Justin Armstrong:

SCAD reached out to me with a proposal for working on the official SCAD AT MIAMI space, commissioning a large-scale painting covering the entire interior and exterior walls of the booth. Of course, I said yes.

The SCAD booth that I helped design is a large-scale painting split with vertical lines with primary colors and holographic light. The second you come around the corner you see this all-over explosion of eye-catching color and light. I wanted people to have an aesthetic experience and absorb the moment.

I look at my work, at its core, as a conflict of visual interest. I create repetitive line paintings that cause optical vibrations in the vein of Bridget Riley and Carlos Cruz Diaz. I work with paint but I also work with holographic vinyl. Holographic vinyl is an amazing material that refracts light across the entire color spectrum. Then I create vertical lines of paint to divide that holographic space. Working in repetitive lines can look mechanical, but I'm not a machine. If people see a curved line, that's a component of the work.

Even though my work works well on social media, I use the holographic component because I want people to actually come see the work in person. It's a different experience when you see it with your eyes instead of your iPhone.

The install process started with a digital mockup file to give a general idea. From there, we had the holographic vinyl installed, then lay vertical lines of tape from top to bottom. We lay the one-inch wide tape, because we want one-inch negative space. It's repetitive so there's no focal point except for the whole. After we lay the tape, I paint the entire space with red, teal and yellow while the tape is up. Then we peel the tape when it's done. When the tape is up, it's strictly a painting, because you can't see the holographic vinyl, but when I peel the tape I'm technically removing half the painting. As I like to say, half my painting has to die for the other half to live.

See more at justinarmstrong.net.

Muchas felicidades and sumptuous congratulations to Nicolás Ramírez (M.F.A., sound design, 2018) for his extraordinary achievement: Nico is a Latin Grammy winner as inginerio de sonido on 2019 Latin Grammy Song of the Year, "Mi Persona Favorita" by Alejandro Sanz & Camila Cabello.

"Mi Persona Favorita" was recorded at Art House, the Miami studio and record label of Julio Reyes Copello. As recording engineer at Art House, Ramírez has worked on sessions with superstars including Will Smith, Jennifer Lopez, Residente, Shakira, and Bad Bunny, as well as developing artists like Colombian compatriot Paula Arena and Argentinian prodigy Nahuel Pannisi.

One of Ramírez's great skills is creating emotional intimacy through sound. As Nico says: "It doesn't matter if a song is in Spanish or English, if it gets into your skin, that's the incredible thing." Now he has a Latin Grammy to show for it.

Nicolás Ramírez:

When I graduated from SCAD I had the option to intern in Miami at Art House. I knew how internships are: connecting cables, making coffee. But at the same time, I'd be at Julio's studio, where I knew they were making great records with incredible artists.

When I arrived, they were working on Alejandro Sanz's album, #ELDISCO. One day Julio told me: "We need to record some drums, do you know how to do it?" Alejandro wanted Larnell Lewis, an incredible drummer from the band Snarky Puppy, to play on "Mi Persona Favorita." Of course I knew how to record drums. The equal question was: "Can you handle the pressure?" Technology can fail and you have to solve it right away, because recording is all about flow and energy. Julio saw I knew both the technical side and how to be a professional.

The Latin Grammys were an incredible experience, because it was the first Latin Grammy award for my sister Natalia too. She did the vocal post-production for Alejandro's album, including "Mi Persona Favorita." When we got back from Las Vegas to Miami, Alejandro invited the whole team to his house and made us a paella. Paella says it all.

Of course my SCAD experience was key. I came to U.S. from Colombia to study for my masters degree, which was a huge jump for me. SCAD sound design professors David Stone, Mitch Gettleman, and Matthew Akers were essential to my development in different ways. David emphasized that working is not only about the technical aspect, it's about bonding with the people you're working with. From Mitch, I learned how to working quickly and efficiently. With Matthew Akers, I learned about synthesizers, the art of sound, and creating outside the box.

My experience as part of the SCAD cycling team was important too. When you're doing workouts, you're suffering but you get stronger. Mentally, you know can do it. Now, when I'm in a situation in the studio where I need to push to the end of the session, I know I can do it. Another way cycling is like recording: the best way going forward is as a team.

Working at Art House, I go to sleep thinking, is this really happening? The Latin Grammy is my highest professional highlight so far. I'm going to squeeze all the juice of enjoyment from this, while looking forward to what's next.

Nicolas y su novia Amalia Restrepo (M.F.A., illustration, 2018) at the 20th Latin Grammy Awards.

Visit Nico at niccolasramirez.com.

Banner photo: Manolo Alzamora.

And stay tuned: Alejandro Sanz's #ELDISCO is nominated for Best Latin Pop Album at the Grammy Awards, Jan. 26, 2020!