Filmmaker and freelance illustrator CHARLIE GRIAK created the dynamic retro-style art for our oral history on John Wooden’s 10th and final championship winning season. A former college baseball player and avid sports fan, Griak was excited to dive into researching the Bruins’ 1974–75 campaign to uncover “details that bring the images to life.” Over his more than two-decade career, Griak has created commissioned works for such clients as Microsoft, Target, American Express and National Geographic. His fourth and most recent film, End of the Rope, tells the true story of a 1931 murder investigation in North Dakota.
“The UCLA experience is something memorable enough to carry with you throughout your lifetime.” That’s the lesson photographer MICHELLE GROSKOPF learned while shooting our feature story on the Bruin faithful whose devotion runs so deep they decided to display their pride with UCLA-themed tattoos. Groskopf’s work has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine and Wired, among other publications, while her corporate clients include TikTok, Meta and Nike. She is currently working on a book with Los Angeles–based independent publisher and coffee roaster Deadbeat Club.
ALEXIS HUNLEY is a photographer, director and archivist whose art centers on the intersectional experiences of underrepresented communities, so it’s no surprise she found meaning in capturing the inspiring work of UCLA’s Prison Education Program. “Witnessing faculty, students and currently incarcerated individuals learn alongside and from each other reaffirmed for me the power of collective care and action,” she says. Hunley’s work has appeared in TIME, Essence, The New Republic and Rolling Stone, and she has worked with the National Center for Civil and Human Rights and the WACO Theater Center. Her lifelong goal: to create work that celebrates the beauty and complexity of the human experience.
“I gained a new appreciation for the double-edged nature of fame — the quirks of the ‘Be careful what you wish for’ department,” says JESSE KATZ, who in this issue profiles UCLA associate professor of English and acclaimed novelist Justin Torres. “I’d assumed that winning the National Book Award would be every writer’s dream, and it may yet be his. But I was not expecting his frank description of how exposed the prize made him feel, how antithetical it was to the solitary experience of writing.” A veteran magazine writer, Katz has reported on everything from music and food to baseball and literature for GQ, New York, Rolling Stone and The New York Times Magazine, among others. His latest book, published in July, is a true-crime narrative about Southland gang warfare titled The Rent Collectors: Exploitation, Murder, and Redemption in Immigrant L.A.
A writer and artist whose work has been featured in Cultured, Photograph and Art Basel magazines, DIANA McCLURE was an ideal choice to pen this issue’s valentine to legendary artist and UCLA treasure Betye Saar ’49, the current subject of a retrospective at the Huntington. “I was reminded of how Saar’s underlying interests in metaphysics and mysticism are ever-present in her process, despite her use of very tactile materials,” McClure says, adding that it was also a “delight to discover that Betye Saar’s parents fell in love at UCLA, where they were students in the 1920s.”
“I’ve had the great fortune to learn about hitting from future Hall of Famer Joey Votto and men’s room crooning from Bono,” says SRIDHAR PAPPU, who reported our oral history celebrating the 50th anniversary of John Wooden’s last NCAA championship. “Now I know how to tie my laces and put on my socks the Wooden way.” The author of The Year of the Pitcher: Bob Gibson, Denny McLain and the End of Baseball’s Golden Age, Pappu is a former columnist for The New York Times, correspondent for The Atlantic and staff writer for The Washington Post and Sports Illustrated. “The story revealed how really great the game was in that era,” he says of retelling the tale of UCLA’s 1974–75 season. “It also taught me how much went into playing for Coach Wooden. This went beyond learning set plays or getting the right haircut. It was about belief — in him, in your teammates, in yourself.
Read more from UCLA Magazine’s Fall 2024 issue.
