Barcelona born and Brooklyn-based graphic designer, Alex Trochut, presented a vigorous lecture on Saturday to the Cooper Union Pre-college Arts Program. Taking the students back to his roots in Spain and his family's printing and typeset business, Trochut shared insights into his personal and artistic development, describing his rapid path toward becoming a world-renowned graphic designer and typographer.

Step by step, Trochut took the audience through each stage of creation and development for the Rolling Stones album cover “Rolled Gold,” and for his ads for Adidas, Arcade Fire, and Nike. He dazzled the audience with the rich elegance of his imaginative designs, while pointing out the extent of his overall control of execution.

In his talk, Trochut invoked figures from Bruce Lee, “Don’t’ think, feel!” to Carl Jung, “The creation of something new is not copied by the intellect, but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity”, he asserted that the creative process is a battle between the rational and emotional.

Trochut encouraged the students to experiment in their own work, employing his philosophy of mixing, remixing, stealing, and ultimately creating in one’s own unique way.  He mentioned invaluable sources for inspiration including “Steal Like an Artist” by Austin Kleon, and Kirby Ferguson’s, “Everything is a Remix”.

Overall, the talk gave a singularly inspiring impression of a designer and artist’s career that embraces five very challenging, but constructive creative steps: in which working through one’s comfort zone leads to first imitation, then doubt, then failure, but ultimately satisfaction.

The afternoon topped off with a lively Q & A with the students inquiring on how he sees balancing the worlds of art and commerce and how he addresses the challenges of the demands of his clients.

His final words of advice: don’t let frustration get in the way of your dreams and goals.

How was this program different from previous art classes you have had?

"This program is not just art. This program is "thought". This program gives you freedom in structure with guidance. It is far superior to all other high school/precollege programs I have attended." - Caroline Sulzer

"This Program was extremely different from anything I had ever experienced before. I had taken other photography and drawings classes before, but none of the teachers had ever shown as much interest in making sure I learned the skills as well as the ones at Copper Union have. They never made me want to be in the class every minute of my day either. It has been a struggle for me to pull myself away from Cooper every Saturday. I have also learned that I have so much more to learn after this, which is not something the professors from other art courses impressed upon
me." - Natalia Oliveri (Fall 2013)

"[It was] less EXACT and stressful. I felt more free to work and less afraid to explore different ideas. I could do anything and not be judged if its not agreeable to everyone." - Terri Minogue (summer 2012)

How did the Art Issues seminar affect your writing skills and verbal expression?

“The writing/art issues class exposed me to poetry as an effective and also beautiful form of communication, that I now truly appreciate and use often to express myself.” - Alexandra Ruiz.

“Yes! (and I never use exclamation marks) I’ve now successfully explored different mediums and ways to represent myself and I think much more deeply about connecting the subtleties in my writing.” - Alexander Diekmann.

“ It made me think more openly and set my standards for myself higher. My high
school classes never have much verbal expression.” - Collin Deloach.

How would you describe your teachers and teaching assistants? Please list their names.

"I loved Rune (drawing) as a teacher. He gave plenty of constructive advice and was very expressive, helped loosen up the quiet Monday Mornings" - Alvin Sumigcay - summer 2012.

Brian (photo) - "He was full of so much info. I feel like I've walked away really learning something after having class with him. I think it would take a VERY long time just to hear, never mind comprehend, all he could say to us about photography." - Devan-Ashley Lawrence.

"John, to be VERY HONEST, intimidates many of the students but he is wonderful and funny and a great teacher that inspires and pushes me." - Collin Deloach.

How has the program improved your self-­‐confidence?

" I feel much more confident in my drawing and photography, especially, in believing that I am capable of creating amazing things." - Natalia Oliveri (Fall 2013)

"The program has helped with my confidence a lot, I could not speak in front of a group before, but now I feel it is a lot easier than before." - Devan-Ashley Lawrence (Fall 2013)

"I have always been a very shy person and hated public speaking because I was afraid of what might happen. The writing program and art critiques at Cooper helped me realize that I cannot control what will happen, or what people will think, but that shouldn't stop me from sharing my thoughts and engaging with others" - Alexandra Ruiz

Do you think that this program has made you better prepared for college?

"Yes, I am now able to articulate clearer and in the process have completed two pieces that will be included in my portfolio. Also, I discovered a passion for printmaking." - Alexander Diekmann

"I am more focused on being loose, creative, and less uptight about "technical skill." I feel that I can progress more as an artist after this experience" - Terri Minogue (summer 2012.

"Because of this program, I feel that I could go to college today, I found that I never want to leave Cooper Union when the day is over, which I take as a good sign." - Natalia Oliveri (Fall 2013)

As a high school student in Queens in the late nineties, I was very lucky to have an art teacher who helped me to put a portfolio together and who pointed the way to The Cooper Union pre-college program. At the time, I didn’t know that it was such a famous institution, or that it was a truly special place to learn about art. My family and I had just come from Cuba three years before. I was just getting a full grasp of the language and my life in New York was limited to the commute from Jackson Heights to Long Island City. To my great surprise, I was accepted to the spring program--but there were more and deeper surprises to come, primarily about art making itself.

On the first day of our drawing course, our teacher introduced the class by telling us not only that he could not teach us how to draw, but that no one else could, either. That no one could teach another person to draw--to see--this was a revelation to me. It meant that I was in charge of my own work. But in spite of his bold statement, he in fact taught us a great deal: his remarks introduced me to abstract thinking, which for me, was like finding the other half of the world.

Before that moment, I had only silent glimpses of the concepts being discussed in class. I was excited to have found the place where I could explore ideas about abstract thinking, and engage others in what used to be for me a private conversation with the paper and pencil. I found a community that shared my passion, where I could expand that private conversation and make it public. I was on my way to learning how to think objectively, and how to reach for universal ideas.

Later, as a freshman at Cooper Union, I read a very short essay titled “Search for the Real,” written in 1941 by the abstract painter Hans Hoffman. The essay made me understand that this same conversation has been happening all along. Some of the ideas explored by Hoffman--from formal relationships of color and line, to the initiations of vision--had been a part of the teacher’s concerns throughout that class. Both this essay and that teacher have become a great part of my formation as a painter and drawing teacher.

Pablo Diaz is the Assistant Director of the Summer Art Intensive.

When I was an eager young college student in the early 2000s, I was lucky enough to take a Modern Art class from the illustrious art historian Thomas Crow, a leading critic and thinker especially on art after 1945. In his class, we covered all the heavy-hitters of the so-called New York School, painters like Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Jackson Pollock. Crow was such a fantastic teacher, that unlike most of the “learning” I was exposed to in college, all of these paintings and people remain burned into my cerebral lobes. Coming to New York and visiting the MoMA for the first time wouldn’t have had its religious impact if I hadn’t been already so wonderfully indoctrinated to Newmann’s Vir Heroicus Sublimis.

But Crow saved the best for last. Quickly putting the machismo of those abstract expressionists aside, we left Pollock and the rest of the 1950s in peace, moving on to a young woman artist: Eva Hesse. Though she started her career as a painter, she began incorporating bits of string and metal into her “two” dimensional works, and would eventually become famous for her wildly innovative sculptures made from resin, rubber and other exotic so-called “soft” industrial materials. 

Lucy Lippard wrote the seminal biography on Hesse in 1976. And apart from weaving a beautiful and tragic tale about Hesse’s short life (she died from a brain tumor in 1970 at the young age of 34), the book is chock full of stunning black and white photographs. We see an incredible life in pictures: Hesse as a student with Josef Albers at Cooper Union, at her openings at the Heller Gallery, in her studio loft on the Bowery and fantastic documentation of many of her sculptures. The book was republished in 1991, and is an essential read for any aspiring art student living and studying in New York City.  If you’re lucky enough to stumble across one in a thrift store or at the strand, pick up a copy!