About Us
New Design Center was founded in November of 2005. Since then we have served over 100 individuals, small businesses, non-profits, and corporations in our community and region by offering professional development in the areas that intersect between creativity and technology.
Here is a list of our objectives and purposes.
We are happy that you have found us and look forward to meeting you!
The People
Sonia Gutiérrez : Sam King : (Many others to come)
Sonia Gutiérrez
Sonia
Gutiérrez is a co-founder and the president of the New Design School and the New Design Center. She is applying her 15 years of experience,
knowledge, and appreciation for design and technology on these nonprofit
entities providing design research and education opportunities in Northwest
Arkansas.
Ms. Gutiérrez graduated from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville with a bachelor of science in microbiology in 1996, and a bachelor of art in art in 1998. Gutiérrez was awarded a Rotary Ambassadorial Academic scholarship to Spain. There she attended the International House in Madrid for one month, studying the Castilian dialect of Spanish, and then moved northwest to attend the Universidad de Salamanca for the academic year. While in Salamanca, Gutiérrez was dually enrolled in the art history and the graphic design programs.
In 2002, she obtained a master of fine art in design and technology from Parsons School of Design at the New School University in New York, New York.
She is currently a member of the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce, American Institute for Graphic Artists, the Northwest Arkansas Art Directors’ Club, and is a board member of the Northwest Arkansas Advertising Federation.
She recently accepted a Silver Buddha Award in the 2006 Northwest Arkansas Art Directors’ Club Kumate Awards. The award-winning project was a collaborative project she directed in her Fall 2005 Color Studies course at the Northwest Arkansas Community College.
Sam King
Sam
King has been drawing since he could hold a pencil. He completed undergraduate
study at the University of Tulsa: entering for a degree in graphic design,
but exiting with a BFA in painting and printmaking. Following this, Sam enrolled
at Indiana University, and in 2005 received his MFA in painting.
Originally a native of Fort Smith, Sam considers his connection to Northwest Arkansas an early and significant influence on his creative activity. Many of his paintings reference the landscape and cityscape of this area.
His
primary medium is oil paint. He also works in graphite, ink, acrylic paint,
charcoal, and Photoshop, and makes etchings and monotypes.
He has been the recipient of several academic scholarships and other distinctions,
as well as university-awarded grants in aid of artistic activity.
Regarding
his most recent work, he has written: A painting is a physical thing. In a
painting, even the most fleeting, ethereal visual experiences have been made
permanent: light passing through a network of tree branches; wind sweeping
a field; a familiar form just emerging in dense fog. Context informs our perception,
and we draw conclusions: blue over green becomes sky over land; a massing
of staccato lines becomes branches or grass.
In
my paintings, I am seeking perceptual hinges: places where a piece of sky
mingles with the ground; where a swatch of grass lifts from its hill; where
the horizon is consumed by the landscape.
Awards mentioned above:
Presidential Merit Scholarship / Tulsa Undergraduate Research Challenge /
Honors diploma / Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi honors societies / TU School
of Art Outstanding Senior Award / First Place, Undergraduate, 35th annual
Gussman Student Exhibition / Two Indiana University Grants-in-aid of research
/ Teaching fellowship, 2004-5, IU
