Keen as folk: BWP
What do students do after graduation? An MFA in Design is not just an accolade—it is the foundation of how we work and connect in the world.
In spring 2024, I spoke with alum Kate Greenberg (BFA Furniture 2020), who reminded me that while we often seek out community, it's just as important to build it ourselves. This idea came to life in conversations with three collaborative design studios formed during the MFA Design program at CCA—groups that found each other through shared values, creative energy, and a love of making. Their stories, often rooted in mutual support and long hours of joyful work, frequently mention faculty member Luca Antonucci, whose course on hybrid business practices has inspired many students to forge their own paths through publishing, residencies, teaching, and beyond.
Troy Taylor (2021), Negash Asegde (2020), and Juan Pablo Rahal Soto (2020) together are But Whole Press, a group of designers with independent practices as well as collective work.
Negash works with artistic integration of computer vision, Troy is a graphic designer and teaches Book Space in MFA Design, Juan Pablo is doing graphic design and art direction at Apple, and also teaching Hybrid Business Models in MFA Design, a course he took with Luca when he was a student. Together, they make work that grows directly from the consciously experimental and curious stance that drew them together as students. “We were always the last people in the studio. Supporting each other, we bonded creatively, but also out of necessity,” says Troy. For them, school was “not just stress, but fun.” They all gravitated to the program’s Risograph (a rapid printing process somewhere between photocopying and screen printing). “The Riso was magical for me,” says Negash, ‘It felt like a democratization of both art production and collecting, suddenly I can mail my mom some new work.”
Juan Pablo, Troy, and Negash at the Windows into Other Worlds exhibit, 2024
Troy adds that, “Seeing that through Negash’s experience was magical for us too. The importance of the Riso being free at CCA can’t be overstated. The physicality and immediacy create a special flow. The quirks of the machine, like misregistration and off-prints, leave room for surprise and an element of automatic transformation.” The connection came out of sharing space, using the Riso together, and being committed. “We found each other because we were as into it [the work] as each other,” says Negash. “It was a natural way to be together, this companionship in work.”
Juan Pablo and Negash moving the Risograph machine
Their first public moment was at the CCA Crafts Fair in 2019. “In grad school, so much of the energy was looking to the future, and we wanted to do something right now,” says Juan Pablo. They pitched an exhibit for the PLAySPACE gallery in the CCA Nave called Too Tote with the layering of printed tote bags, “They were everywhere! Too many! It was between graphic and industrial design, and it was accepted!” shares Juan Pablo with a laugh. “It was crystallizing [to have the show and a deadline], it made us serious, but it’s always lived as a proposal because lockdown cancelled all programming,” says Negash. “We got our first Riso, and we have this picture of us wheeling it into the studio, and the next day, lockdown! So we have another picture of us rolling it right back out. The loss of the physical space, the community—it made a vacuum, and working together was part of how we filled it.”
They had all taken Luca’s class, and Troy recalls, “he told us, ‘don’t wait for after graduation, this is your practice. Honor it, and the relationships in it.’” Luca taught them that having a group is powerful, it legitimizes the work. “He is sort of the Godfather of BWP!” Negash laughs. But seriously, “He told us ‘don’t wait for permission, for the right time, for an institution to legitimize you. Call yourself something, do something, create your own institution.’” Juan Pablo remembers the most important thing he learned from Luca was agency, “how your effort transforms into official work.”
BWP posters
Catalog for UCLA New Wight Biennial, designed by But Whole Press, printed by Colpa Press, 2020
When the UCLA New Wight Biennial (an exhibit curated by UCLA MFA students featuring global graduate student work) put out a call for proposals for their 2020 show, BWP applied and was chosen to design both the web exhibit and the printed catalog for Once More, With Feeling. BWP came up with spatial terms for collections within the exhibit with correlated colors, allowing navigation to overlap across the printed catalog and the digital exhibit. “This helped us find our way to working and thinking about the tension between digital and print,” explains Negash. They printed the catalog at Colpa Press with Luca. “It feels like he gets joy from seeing his students do real things,” says Negash of Luca.
In 2024, BWP made the evolving exhibit Windows to Otherworlds with themes of layering and live collaboration. Now they are working on the catalog for it along with various publications, they will exhibit at the fair this summer. “Each project is revealing of us, not just us of it,” says Juan Pablo. The members all still have jobs and clients, but with BWP it’s more free. “The experimental work we make here is an important part of our portfolio,” says Troy. “But we see a distinction between the work we do for money and the work we do for BWP. We enjoy it, we choose our partners and projects, we don’t let it be our second stressful job. Both are essential to the whole.”
— Saraleah Fordyce, professor of Critical Studies and MFA Design
May 01, 2025
