Students display artwork at Nobo Gallery
Huan Nguyen had not slept in two days, spending every available moment putting the finishing touches on his artwork. Time was short and the end of his college career near.
The PRIME design show would be the punctuation mark on his four years at Cal State Long Beach and he, like his teammates, wanted the show to be perfect.
“It’s been stressful with classes and getting everything down there,” Nguyen said of transporting his and the rest of the art work to a gallery. “It’s been hard.”
PRIME is a collaboration of 23 students from the Graphic Design class of fall 2016. Generally, there are either 24 or 22 students involved in the semester-ending project, but this time there was an odd number. Hence, the name of the show that will be on display Friday and Saturday at Nobo Gallery in Los Angeles.
Nguyen said that the odd, or prime, number gave the group a “unique distinction” and set it apart from the previous projects.
“Prime can mean a number of things depending on the context,” said Michell McCool, another of the participants. “For us, it is the number of designers and friends that have grown together for the past two years, it is also an adjective that means primary or of first importance, and it is a noun that is defined as a state or time of greatest strength in a person’s life.
“So, for our final show, it gives 23 designers a chance to showcase the skills we’ve cultivated under the CSULB BFA program but it isn’t the end. It is a jumping off point for us to continue to grow and create.”
The creative process began two years ago, starting with a concept and concluding with the two-day showing.
“The message we have to share is that during these past two years, we’ve grown as a family and as designers in a way that no other experience could have made possible and we want to share that growth with the world,” McCool said. “And what we’ve created here is only the beginning, following the end of our journey at CSULB, we will still remain a part of each other as Prime.”
