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P E R S P E C T I V E | M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 1 7 11 contributors The son of two Abilene Christian University professors of education, NELSON COATES became interested in the arts from a young age, designing costumes and scenery for school and community productions. He learned to create sculptures from natural fibers and began acting in regional theater at the age of six. Coates went on to attend the college where his parents taught, changing his major from pre-med and graduating with a BA in journalism/mass communications. He acted and designed for numerous theaters throughout the United States while in college, and was a part of the acting company of the Dallas Shakespeare Festival. After college, he moved to the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, where he exhibited his sculptures, acted and began his career in theatrical and feature film design. He was nominated for an Emmy ® for the miniseries The Stand and for an ADG Award for Flight. Mr. Coates currently serves as the president of the Art Directors Guild. A native of Chicago and an elated Cubs fan, DAWN FERRY attended California Institute of the Arts where she earned a BFA. While there, she won the American College Theatre Festival's National Design Award and was offered a full scholarship and teaching assistant position at the University of Southern California, where she earned a MFA and began a film career. With a diversified professional history, Dawn is currently an adjunct professor at University of North Carolina School of the Arts and a guest lecturer at Columbia University in Chicago. Although she began in theater, Ms. Ferry has designed for feature films, television, live events, music videos and commercials. Her recent projects include The Crash, Hoovey which received Best Narrative Feature Film at the Sunscreen Film Festival, Field of Lost Shoes which received the Best Dramatic Feature at the GI Film Festival, and Book of Stars which was reviewed as having "...a Production Design that redefines the word lovely." CABOT McMULLEN is a native of Boston, Massachusetts, who started his design career in New York City working for architect/designer Vladimir Kagan. That led to years of paying dues and learning his craft designing theater productions for the New York stage. He got his first break in network television as an Art Director on Saturday Night Live and then as Production Designer of the Michael J. Fox comedy series Spin City. Classically trained with degrees in fine arts and architecture, Mr. McMullen takes a multidisciplinary approach to design. He has been nominated for three Emmy Awards and three Art Directors Guild Awards, and lives in a mid-century post and beam home in the hills of Los Angeles with his wife, television comedy executive Lisa Lang McMullen, and their family of rescue animals. He is based in Los Angeles and is a long-standing member of both the Art Directors Guild and the United Scenic Artists in New York City. MICHAEL GALLENBERG was born in Northern Wisconsin and came to Hollywood in the late 1980s as an architectural model maker, where he was introduced by his now wife Maria Brown, to one of the most prolific television designers in history, ADG Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Roy Christopher. Mr. Christopher gave Mr. Gallenberg an opportunity to work in the Art Department which turned into a six-year mentorship in Set Design and included work on shows such as NewsRadio, Murphy Brown and Just Shoot Me. In the time since, Mr. Gallenberg has himself designed hundreds of television episodes, multiple pilots, commercials and a feature film. His design credits include the feature film Bounty Killer, television series The Office and The Mindy Project, and the upcoming American Woman. He was nominated for an Emmy, along with Mr. Christopher for the 69th Academy Awards, and has been nominated four times for an ADG Award. "Are you from Germany?" is the first question MARCO MIEHE gets when he speaks with his Teutonic accent, and he replies: "I am from Berlin." The second question follows: "Did you grow up in East or West Berlin?" "I grew up as an American citizen in a well-protected sector of West Berlin, and I am an American Berliner living in Los Angeles since 1994." For young Marco, the first exposure to Set Design came at an early age watching set construction for a carnival. Since 1961, the American Freedom Forces created the annual Deutsch-Amerikanisches Volksfest featuring constructed sets representing the United States by place, culture and history. Similar to studio backlots, these cultural sets represent locations from Hawaii to Massachusetts, San Francisco to New York, US history from the Alamo to Native American villages. All this exposure left an impression in Marco's mind, so he moved to Hollywood where he has worked as a Set Designer on series such as Boston Legal, 90210, Revenge and Rosewood. He was nominated for an ADG Award with Production Designer Carlos Barbosa on 24.