Founders' Ball

Each year, the CalArts Alumni Association convenes alumni, faculty, staff and friends to pay tribute to indivduals who have made a difference in the lives of CalArts alumni.  Three awards are presented at this event:

The Lulu Award

The Lulu Award is named for Lulu May Von Hagen, one of the founders of CalArts, and is awarded to a member of the CalArts community who embodies the founding spirit of CalArts.  Previous Lulu Award recipients have included Glenna Avila, Director of CalArts’ CAP Program and John Bache, CalArts Associate Provost. 

The Nellie Award

The Nellie Award is named for Nelbert Chouinard, founder of the Chouinard Institute, and is awarded to CalArts alumni who have made a significant personal and creative contribution to the Institute and the art world.  Previous Nellie Award recipients have included Karen Atkinson (MFA Art ’84), School of Art faculty; Alice Davis (Chouinard ’50), former Disney costume designer; John Lasseter (BFA Film and Video ’79), chief creative officer of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios and principal creative advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering; and Stephen “Lucky” Mosko (MFA Music ’72), School of Music faculty. 

Honorary Membership in the CalArts Alumni Association

Honorary alumni membership is extended to those individuals who hold a special place in the hearts of CalArts’ alumni and who have contributed significantly to the well-being of students and alumni. Previous honorary members of CalArts' Alumni Association have included Jules Engel, founder of Cal Arts Experimental Animation program; Roy E. Disney, former senior executive of the Walt Disney Company and CalArts trustee;  and Harrison “Buzz” Price, former Chairman of Planning Research Corporation and CalArts trustee.

2007 Awardees

To view photos of the 2007 Founders' Ball, click the link: http://www.photo.calarts.edu/2007/20070929-foundersball

Brian Bailey – 2007 Lulu Award Recipient

A native of Pasadena, CA, Brian Bailey developed an early interest in photography and worked as a staff photographer for the yearbook and student newspaper at John Muir High School. After graduation, he studied art and photography at Pasadena City College for two years and matriculated to CalArts’ School of Critical Studies in 1971, then known as the School for Interdisciplinary Studies. During his first full year at the new Valencia campus, Bailey studied photography, film and video, and transferred to the School of Design in his last year as a BFA student. Bailey returned to CalArts for his M.F.A. in Design, completing his degree in 1975.Bailey was hired by the Institute in 1976 as the film cage manager, and later became the production manager for the Film School.  In 1984, he became a member of the School’s technical faculty. Four years later, Bailey left CalArts to work as a post-production video engineer in Los Angeles and he is currently the Chief of Video Engineering at Westwind Media.

Bailey’s interest in photographing and filming motor sports has produced a new body of work; he has covered more than 100 auto, motorcycle, airplane and hydroplane races. He has done film work in music videos, documentaries, and dramatic films, including the short film Natalia, co-produced with his wife, Pola Shreiber (M.F.A. Film 84). Bailey has begun working with 3-D photography and archiving the films and videos from his 17 years at CalArts.

Lou Florimonte – 2007 Nellie Award Recipient

Lou Florimonte has worn many hats during his academic and professional careers.  Originally from the coal-mining town of Old Forge, PA, Florimonte worked as a news boy, grocery clerk, assistant for a beer distributor (with whom he also shot craps), missile guidance system instructor in the Air Force, short-order cook, pizza maker, bartender, house painter, factory worker, gardener, designer, photographer, and pony baseball league coach (taking two teams to the play-offs).  In addition, he describes himself as an “excellent cook, average poker player, and crappy golfer—but getting better.”

Florimonte stayed in Pennsylvania for his first two degrees, earning a B.A. in Journalism and a M.A. in Theater at Penn State, prior to receiving his M.F.A. in Theater Directing at CalArts in 1978. At Penn State, Florimonte wrote, directed and produced plays.  He later wrote and produced for WPSX, becoming its executive producer for Educational Programming.

Florimonte’s work brought him to Lindenwood College, where he was the chairman of the Communication Arts Department, director of Drama and where he built the theater program.  He prepared Lindenwood for the establishment of a professional repertory company, directed plays, and taught theater, film, and still photography. 

At CalArts, Florimonte served as Assistant Dean, Associate Dean and Interim Dean of the School of Theater until his retirement in 2005, and created and led the Film Directing Program (formerly DTVC) with Gill Dennis and Sandy MacKendrick. He established the New Plays Festival (now the New Works Festival) at CalArts in 1998, and directed many plays and film projects. He co-directed the feature film, Where the Elephant Sits, which won the Crystal Bear at the 1998 Berlin Film Festival.

Florimonte recently arranged a production of works by William Saroyan for the Germinal Stage Denver and has also recently completed a full-length play titled A Private Chaos, and a feature film script, Dancing With the Dolly.

In recognition of his many accomplishments, Florimonte has received the Schubert Playwriting Fellowship from Penn State, the Samuel French Playwriting Award for his full-length play Into the Rose Garden, and the 2005 IFFF-City of Santa Clarita Film Excellence Award.

Helen Richards – 2007 Honorary Alumni Association Member

After graduating from college, Helen Richards pursued a career in social work for many years. Once she married and started a family, Richards began a new life as a corporate wife and volunteer for the American Field Service (AFS), an organization established by field ambulance drivers during WWI to promote peace and understanding through international student exchanges. For several years, she served as chairperson of AFS’ home-finding and student relations committees.

In the 1960s, Richards and her family lived in the small community of El Alto, Peru, where she taught English. She and her family relocated to Valencia in the 1970s, and in 1978 she began volunteering in the Registrar’s Office at CalArts. The institute, recognizing the need to locate alumni from the early Valencia years as well as from Chouinard and the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music, hired Richards as an Alumni Coordinator.  In her new position, Richards successfully established contact with current students, located “lost” alumni, and began to form a cohesive alumni group by publishing alumni newsletters and directories, organizing meetings and staging art shows and reunions on both coasts.

Since retiring in 1995, Richards has pursued her passion for travel, visiting France, Spain, Guatemala, and many sites in colonial Mexico.  She credits climbing all those stairs at CalArts for making it possible to experience the view from atop temple ruins for so many years.

Wilhelmine Schaefer – 2007 Honorary Alumni Association Member

Wilhelmine Schaefer was born in Bad Godefberg, Germany. She was aware of the arts at very young age and they became a major interest in her life.  After World War II, Schaefer worked in Belgium at the Atomic Energy Commission and later served with the American Department of Defense in Africa, where she met her husband, then serving in the U.S. Air Force. Richards and her husband settled in California and raised two children in Canyon Country.

Schaefer was first hired as a secretary in CalArts’ Student Affairs Office.  After a-month-and-a-half, she was asked to fill three positions vacated by former employees. Schaefer loved working at CalArts because of her lifelong interest in the arts, and she worked at the Institute for more than 15 years. She enjoyed helping students succeed as professional artists and says she would have remained at the Institute another 15 years if her health allowed.  “It was not enough to have a job that I could just support myself with,” she once shared, “but I wanted to have one that I lived for and was part of my life.”  Happily for her, and fortunately for the hundreds of students she helped, Schaefer found that joy at CalArts.