Creativity Conference – Day 1

Creativity Conference – Blurring Boundaries

2 Day Virtual Conference (1 PASS): Tuesday, September 29th & Wednesday, September 30th

CES Learning Units: 3LU per day, 6LU total

This is a virtual conference.  Zoom meeting information will be emailed to registrants 24hours before the event.

Committee: Interior Architecture Committee

We will have a no-so-ordinary raffle each day with prizes courtesy of the following sponsors:

+ Pallas Textiles – 2 pillows with choice of upholstery

+ PLP SoCal – Cerno Adesse Table Lamp

+ Haworth – Uma Mini by Pablo Lighting

+ Formica – LA Modern, photographs and texts by Tim Street-Porter

In this world of interdisciplinary dependence, it is nearly impossible to stay siloed in a profession and not acknowledge the impact and influence of other fields, directly or otherwise. Take the simple example of the impact that incorporating technology to create drawings has had on a project’s schedule, budget and even building methods. Or a more complex example from a recent presentation by the executive creative director of Disney Imagineering when he talked about having professionals from every field he could think of to create an experience for their customer. As the world continues to shrink with every passing day, we are being brought closer in ways we didn’t know was even possible, yet much more is still left unexplored and waiting. Who knows where our next inspiration is going to come from! Creativity Conference aims at exploring those fading fringes, those boundaries around disciplines that are diffusing away into each other. As we march into the unknown excitement that awaits us, we invite pioneers from the fields of art, music, movie, and fabric to take us on a journey of creativity, story-telling and stimulation.

Tuesday, September 29th – Creative Presenters & Moderators

Moderator: Craig Hodgetts

With a broad background in theater arts, automotive engineering, and architecture, Craig Hodgetts brings a far-reaching vision to the design of complex, multi-faceted environments. . While best known for the ingenuity he applies to projects requiring a high degree of technical and aesthetic synthesis, he is equally at home in a dynamic collaboration with multiple stakeholders.  His celebrated design for a tensile structure at UCLA with partner Hsinming Fung, was followed by a series of landmark civic and cultural facilities including the Hollywood Bowl and the Egyptian Theater. In the years since, he has been granted patents for a mobile logistics center, a prefabricated classroom, and an evacuated tube structure for the hyperloop transportation system. Always a passionate advocate for technical innovation and its bearing on culture and sustainability, Craig has created innovative projects for the California Institute of the Arts, Art Center College, and the City of Nashville. A prolific writer, he has contributed essays and observations to LOG, the Los Angeles Times and The Architect’s Newsletter, as well as signature books on science-fiction icon Syd Mead and architect James Stirling, and has just published “Swimming to Suburbia” a collection of critical essays he has written on design and urbanism.

Tessa Papas

Over the past forty years Tessa Papas has accumulated a large and cosmopolitan reservoir of knowledge in many aspects of the art and design worlds.  An artist in her own right, she has had a number of one-woman exhibitions in Greece, Switzerland and USA.  She married the prominent political cartoonist, Bill Papas, and up until his death in 2000 handled his career as a well-known watercolorist, illustrator and cartoonist.  She has owned galleries in Greece and in USA and has worked closely with artists of many different nationalities.  She has written several books.  She has lived in many different countries and she speaks good French and Greek.  She has access to and has worked with an extremely talented group of interior & graphic designers, project managers, printers, installers, glaziers, cabinetmakers etc.  This multifaceted life experience, her innate “eye” for art and design and her ability to attain excellent rapport with everyone she works with has made her uniquely qualified to put together meaningful collections of art for any business or individual.

Mayssa Karaa

With her captivating multi-octave voice and persuasive cross-cultural message, vocalist and songwriter MAYSSA KARAA defines a new era of musical inclusion. Her songs tell of a journey connecting her origins in the ancient land of Lebanon to her adopted home of Los Angeles, California.  Cinema audiences might identify the classically trained singer’s voice from the hit film American Hustle, where her Arabic version of the Sixties classic “White Rabbit” was a standout track on the Grammy-nominated soundtrack album; She’s also recently had a song (featured in one of the biggest movies in India) produced by Oscar winner Indian megastar AR Rahman which has rapidly climbed up the charts in various countries and hit No. 1 on Apple Music India. Television audiences might recognize her from the popular PBS Special, “Enrico Caruso: His Life, His Music, His Cities” featuring Placido Domingo in Naples, Italy. International families might identify her as the ambassador of Sesame Street (Middle East edition: “Iftah Ya Simsim”) through “The Arabic Alphabet Song” that generated over 29 million YouTube views so far. MAYSSA  has recently been appointed Artistic Director at Berklee College of Music’s new campus in Abu Dhabi”.

Wednesday September 30th – Creative Presenters & Moderators

Moderators: Nancy Keatinge and Stanley Felderman

Stanley Felderman and Nancy Keatinge of Felderman Keatinge + Associates have an award-winning international design career spanning three decades of innovation and a catalog of honors deeming the husband and wife duo industry pioneers, and future forward leaders.  In 2018 IIDA honored them with the Circle of Excellence Award for their Innovation in Design and in 2016 they were honored in New York as the 37th Annual Interiors Awards’ Design Visionaries. Their work has been exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum.  Clients include MTV Networks, Disney, Universal, Creative Artists Agency, PDiddy, Their work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Forbes, Fast Company, and People Magazine. Their product design clients include Haworth, Herman Miller, Steelcase, Momentum, Venini, Sasaki and Eileen Fisher.  They developed the office of the future initiative for Steelcase. Stanley is also respected for his art which has been featured in projects worldwide.

Sarah Wertzberger

Sarah Wertzberger is a multidisciplinary artist, designer and maker with a primary studio focus in textiles. Her weaving practice explores ideas of pattern, play and color interaction at the intersection of art, design, craft and technology. Wertzberger received her MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design and her BFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has exhibited at Vacation NYC (New York, NY), The Oregon College of Art and Craft (Portland, OR), The Design Center (New York, NY), and has been a resident at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts (Deer Isle, ME), The Weaving Mill (Chicago, IL), and AZ WEST – Encampment Residency (Joshua Tree, CA). Wertzberger lives and works in Portland, OR. Playful and electric colors, intricate optical patterns, and a soft touch are just some of the elements that make Sarah Wertzberger’s textiles so appealing to the senses. Her work is complex, existing at the intersections of handweaving, industrial processes, and painting. Wertzberger’s signature approach to textiles is apparent in her collection of handwoven blankets for a 2018 pop-up at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.

Skinner Myers

Skinner Myers is an award-winning filmmaker, a novelist, and a LMU film professor who currently resides in Los Angeles, California. Skinner made his documentary feature film debut as the writer and director of Drinking From The Well, which can be found on Amazon Prime. Skinner wrote and directed four short films: Chimera, The Last Supper, Obscured, and Nigger, while studying film at USC School of Cinematic Arts. His sixth film, La Tierra Del Exodo, played in over 90 festivals worldwide and garnered a ton of awards and Best Screenplay, and Best Short Film. His seventh film, Frank Embree, took home the Grand Jury Award at the 2018 Hollyshorts Film Festival. His eighth film, Nightmares by the Sea, premiered at the Art Film Festival in Cannes. His ninth film, Things of Beauty Burn premiered at the deadCenter Film Festival, and his narrative feature debut, The Sleeping Negro, is set to be released in 2021. He is represented for TV/Film by The Gersh Agency.

Learning Objectives:

+ Understand various perspectives and approaches to the concept of creativity through professionals with little or no overlap with the field of interior architecture

+ Explore in depth the value of understanding ‘how’ and ‘why’ from other fields in this rapidly inter-dependent world where no field can work in isolation

+ Understand and draw inspiration for the field of architecture and interior design from various other fields about approaching space as an element and manipulating it as part of the narrative and experience.

+ Identify various forms of story-telling, its central role in being creative and persuasive and the plethora of tools used.

Thank you to our generous sponsors:

Participating Sponsor

Kick Start