just like my box of inspiring printed pieces housing direct mail pieces, brochures and ads as well as my browser's bookmark folder stuffed with cool web sites, i tap into these inspiring archives when i get into a rut. i have an oversized folder with articles that i've collected from the Times, online, or Xeroxs from books and other pubs that i resort to when i seek inspiration.
i have a meeting with some gallery directors next week to discuss a show i planned on exhibiting at the end of this semester. it was for the last project in my Special Studies class in which i withdrew after 85% completion. the space wasn't available any how, but is open for the beginning of fall. my biggest dilemma is if i should still exhibit my intended show — my decades book – progress shown at the end of this blog)? or do i come completely off the wall and make a show from something unrelated?
this is why i began the search in my article archives. i have plenty ideas for an exhibit, just none have ever been flushed out... and the meeting is next week. and now after re-discovering this article, i can't help but to believe that i'm merely a "capitalist tool," as steven heller put so in-my-face-ly. but it's true. i have a knack for pleasing clients, presenting a clear message, and selling the goods. but, is my lack of formal training holding me from finding my purpose in the MFA program? am i really a graphic designer? or just a creative person with the ability to juggle administration...
i should have been accepted into this program based on a social issue/graphic design problem that i wanted to confront over the next 3 years. instead, i was accepted based upon my "corporate" portfolio. perhaps my experience proved that i could think for myself with hopes that something would surface. well, after a year and a half, nothing has surfaced and i find myself completely alone. no comradery. no direction. no push. just a demand to create my own curriculum and plan to present to a committee. the news flash is loud and clear: i just don't have it.
read heller's article published in eye magazine summer '05 issue 56: "Me feral designer" and you will see where i'm coming from.
as for the exhibit in the fall, i'm still going to attempt it. i can't give up that easily. below is where my book was going. the plan was to extract the spreads and blow them up to present in a gallery setting... now, i thinking i'll do something much more interesting. as for the book, i was exercising a flow as the reader flipped through the decades of commercial art in america starting in the 50's. a rhythm would maintain with the chorus of vellum spreads showing a graphic transition of each of the decade "circles" as they separate the decade spreads.
cover:
50s:
60s:
70s:
80s:
90s:
and the NOW is even more incomplete than the 80s and 90s... i didn't have time to massage anything and before i knew it the semester was over. as i've taken the W's this semester, i've also taken a lesson. i know who i am and i will never stop learning, i just don't have control of the time line.
finally, just for fun, even as i discovered that the decades mesh together with fuzzy borders, i wanted to explore type treatments that represent each in a poster:
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