Randall Lavender

After graduate school, Lavender and his fellow student, sculptor John Frame, joined with architectural designer Eve Steele and artist/building contractor Lynn Roylance to develop a 14,000sf artists-in-residence project in the part of downtown Los Angeles that became known as the "L.A. art colony.

"[8] In 1981, Lavender moved to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he was Assistant Professor and developed the school’s first sculpture curriculum and studio space.

Early works, featured in Newcomers '79 at Los Angeles' Municipal Art Gallery, were painted figurative tableaux blending two-dimensional imagery with three-dimensional form, and including "sculptural objects that combined contrasting materials.

"[9] One critic saw the pieces as "psychological dramas in which … ideas are realized through a variety of media ... [that] allude to the diversity of human nature ...."[13] The work included three series of sculptural and pictorial tableaux: Frames of Mind explored the five stages of grief discussed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.

[14] An unnamed series set the international symbols for Man and Woman in unexpected scenarios.Travel to Italy and study of works by the Old Masters gave Lavender new inspiration, and also raised questions about late Modernism's penchant for throwing out the "old" in favor of the "new.

[8][10] In 1986 Lavender joined with L.A. art dealer Jan Turner,[15] who hosted a solo exhibition of his new paintings as a West Coast counterpart to New York's emerging neoclassicism.

[25] Further research focused on educational psychology and attribution theory, during which Lavender conducted a formal study centered on a cohort of college art and design students.

In March 2019, Lavender was asked by the Otis College's board of trustees to become interim president, following Bruce Willis Ferguson; a role he served in until May 2020.

[1][37][38] He shepherded to completion the school's new five-year college strategic plan;[39][40] its successful WASC[33] and NASAD[41] re-accreditation reviews, and recruitment for a new provost and a CFO.

In early 2020, Lavender led the Otis response to COVID-19 and state-mandated shutdowns, including campus closure,[42] a switch to online education,[43] and conversion of end-of-school-year Annual Exhibition and Commencement ceremonies to virtual form.