|
Emmy Winner to Speak at Ferrum College
Emmy winner and former NBC News Art Director
Ray East will discuss “How the Visual Arts Enhance News Programming”
on Wed., April 18, at 11 a.m., as featured speaker during Ferrum College’s
weekly Community Hour. He will be speaking in the Panther’s Den,
Lower
Franklin Hall.
For 15 years, East served as art director
for the Washington, DC bureau of NBC News. He won an Emmy for his work
in 1985, the first awarded to an artist in the Washington market.
East studied fine arts at American University
and graphic art and design at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington,
DC. In 1964, when the Huntley-Brinkley news program expanded to 30 minutes,
East was hired by NBC as a graphic artist. During his 35 years at NBC,
East designed graphics for the "Today" show, "NBC Nightly
News," and numerous television specials. His job, East says, was
“to figure out how to use graphics to help tell the story.”
One story East helped to tell is Watergate. In the early 1970s, East
did courtroom sketchings of the Watergate trial when the practice was
relatively new.
East grew up in Pulaski, Va. After his
high school graduation, he bound for Washington, D.C. with $50 he had
earned painting signs. He loaded planes for American Airlines at night
and attended classes during the day, beginning his college career at
George Mason College (then affiliated with the University of Virginia).
He transferred to American University and later the Corcoran School.
In the early 1980s, he returned to American University to study photography.
East now makes his home in Charlottesville. His appearance at Ferrum
College is sponsored by The Iron Blade, the College’s student newspaper.
For more information, contact Dr. Lana Whited, faculty advisor for The
Iron Blade, at (540) 365-4334.
Ferrum College’s Community Hour
is part of the College’s distinctive academic program to educate
students in the disciplines of higher learning and to help them be thoughtful
and perceptive, to be articulate and professionally capable, and to
be caring and concerned citizens of their community, nation and world.
# # #
|
