Hasta La Ideas

(Logo: Young Guns 6 winner Craig Ward of Words Are Pictures)

We’re not sure where April went either, but we know that it means time is a-wasting to enter the Art Directors Club’s Young Guns competition, which spotted Stefan Sagmeister, James Victore, and Chris Rubino when they were but wee design/art powerhouses in-the making. Now in its seventh go-round, the cross-disciplinary, portfolio-based competition is open to those aged 30 or under that are doing great things in graphic design, photography, illustration, advertising and art direction, environmental design, film, animation, video, interactive design, object design, and/or typography. After last month’s triumphant ping pong-themed launch party, Young Guns 7 is now accepting entries from far and wide (last year’s saw entrants from 38 countries) through May 13. A jury of 29 past ADC Young Guns including Christoph Niemann, Graeme Hall, and Jennifer Lew will select the 50 winners. In addition to taking home a coveted Young Guns cube, winners will compete for ADC Young Guns-Moleskine grants and the opportunity to create original artwork for New York’s new Ace Hotel (née Hotel Breslin).

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(Photos: Romance Was Born)

Keep your eye on Romance Was Born. The Australian fashion label launched in 2005 by Anna Plunkett and Luke Sales first caught our eye with glow-in-the-dark costumes for the band Architecture in Helsinki (a staple on the UnBeige jukebox), and now the designing duo has won the 2009 L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival Designer Award presented by Woolmark and supported by Vogue Australia. Romance Was Born bested finalists Ant!podium, Gary Bigeni, Ellery, Konstantina Mittas, and Therese Rawsthorne to win the award, which is akin to the stateside CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund prize and includes $10,000 in cash (approximately $7,000 in U.S. dollars) as well as a trip to either the Pitti Filati fashion fair in Florence or the Premiere Vision trade event in Paris. Plunkett and Sales received the award at a ceremony last month in Melbourne.

At once lavish and cheeky, streetwise and avant-garde, slick and hand-detailed, Romance Was Born garments are produced entirely in Australia. Plunkett and Sales, who famously turned down internships with John Galliano to start their own label, are fueled by “a love of kitsch Australiana, crafty construction, and fine tailoring” that has translated to such memorable creations as a tiered patchwork dress limned in pom poms, their most recent “Yeti Magic” line-up of otherworldly wool looks, and a red tulle and lace halter top awash in Muppets-inspred googly eyes (and worn by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs). They describe their “irreverent and fun loving” collections as brimming with “playful outfits where sparkle, texture, and bold prints jostle together in a harmonious jamboree of style.”

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Today Columbia University announced the winners of the 2009 Pulitzer Prizes. The chosen ones will pick up their Daniel Chester French-designed medals at a luncheon at Columbia on May 28. In the always intriguing criticism category, Holland Cotter of The New York Times got the nod for his “wide ranging reviews of art…marked by acute observation, luminous writing, and dramatic storytelling.” We were also pleased to see The Philadelphia Inquirer‘s Inga Saffron once again nominated as a finalist “for her fascinating and convincing architectural critiques that boldly confront important topics, from urban planning issues to the newest skyscraper.” Taking home the prize in the editorial cartooning category was Steve Breen of The San Diego Union-Tribune, who bested finalists Mike Thompson (The Detroit Free Press) and Matt Wuerker (Politico).

As for photography, Patrick Farrell of The Miami Herald won in the breaking news photography category “for his provocative, impeccably composed images of despair after Hurricane Ike,” while Damon Winter of the The New York Times won the feature photography prize “for his memorable array of pictures deftly capturing multiple facets of Barack Obama‘s presidential campaign.” Among Winter’s iconic shots? The one that makes Obama look like he’s starring in a Matrix-esque action film.

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Robert Adams is the winner of the 29th Hasselblad Foundation Award in Photography, an international prize that recognizes major achievements in photography. Adams was presented with a gold medal and a check for 500,000 Swedish kroner (approximately $60,000) at a ceremony at the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco on Tuesday. Past winners of the Hasselblad photography award include Nan Goldin, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Malick Sidibé, Irving Penn, and Ansel Adams.

Known for his black-and-white images that capture the evolving American West, Oregon-based Adams, 72, has an extraordinary range: think Timothy O’Sullivan meets Lee Friedlander. Rare is the photographer who can manage to inject a tilt-a-wheel with the majesty of an ancient sitka spruce. “Precise and undramatic, Adams’ accumulative vision of the West now stands as a formidable document, reflecting broader, global concerns about the environment, while consistently recognizing signs of human aspiration and elements of hope across a particular changing landscape,” noted the Hasselblad Foundation in its award citation. An exhibition of his work will open at the Göteborg Art Museum’s Hasselblad Center on November 6. In the meantime, Adams is keeping busy. “We’re working on a little book called Sea Stories,” he said at a press conference held yesterday morning. “The pictures are of nature—the forest and migrating shore birds.”

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The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has announced its 2009 list of Guggenheim fellows in the United States and Canada, a diverse bunch of 180 scholars, artists, writers, and scientists in fields ranging from American literature to video and audio. Chosen from approximately 3,000 applicants, the fellows will receive grants (which in 2008 averaged $43,200 each) that are intended to provide them with blocks of time in which they can work with as much creative freedom as possible.

Among those who made the cut are artists Walid Raad, Tom Burckhardt, and Paul Laffoley. Urbanist and historian Thomas Campanella will use his grant period to work on two books: The Last Utopia, which will chronicle the rise and fall of the planned “new town” of Soul City, North Carolina, and Designing the American Century, an examination of the careers of landscape architects Gilmore D. Clarke and Michael Rapuano. Among our other 2009 Guggenheim fellow favorites that can be expecting congratulatory UnBeige cupcakes: writers Ken Kalfus and John Haskell, photographer Anna Shteynshleyger, historian Peter Galison, and architect/sociologist Alfonso Valenzuela-Aguilera, who will be researching and writing about spaces of trust in Latino communities during his fellowship term.

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