Designer and artist Rebeca Méndez, professor at UCLA, Design Media Arts, was one of five legends recently inducted into The One Club for Creativity’s Creative Hall of Fame at a black-tie ceremony at the Gotham Hall ballroom in New York. Méndez, the first Latina inducted into the Creative Hall of Fame, is director of the university’s CounterForce Lab, a research and fieldwork studio dedicated to using art and design to develop creative collaborations, new fields of study, and methods to research, create and execute projects around the social and ecological impacts of climate change. Her diverse works – photography, 16mm film, book arts, and architectural scale sound and video installations – have been exhibited widely at significant institutions and biennials worldwide. The other inductees in the 2017 Creative Hall of Fame were Tom Burrell, founder of Burrell Communications; Diane Cook-Tench, founding director of the VCU Brandcenter (Educators Hall of Fame); Susan Hoffman, co-CCO at Wieden+Kennedy; and David Lubars, CCO, BBDO Worldwide, CCO and chairman, BBDO North America.
Photo by Donna Alberico/Margarita Corporan Photography, courtesy of The One Club for Creativity