SUBSTACK: The Museum of Drawers: famous artists collaborating in miniature
Creativity blooms best when it's shared with your friends.
SUBSTACK: Calder's "Spirale" sculpture and its best friend, the Eiffel Tower
Imagining 1958 at the Palais de l'UNESCO in Paris, and I'm selling a vintage photograph of it!
SUBSTACK: I have a crush on Abstract Expressionist artist Arshile Gorky.
Arshile Gorky: The modern painter who I would have been following around with puppy-dog eyes in the 1930s.
SUBSTACK: Elaine de Kooning Paints a Picture
The selected writings of a cherished Abstract Expressionist painter made a firm mark on the history of art. Sharing excerpts from The Spirit of Abstract Expressionism, featuring Josef Albers, Buckminster Fuller, Jackson Pollock, Hans Hofmann, and more.
SUBSTACK: YSL's 1965 Autumn/Winter Couture Mondrian Collection
On how the prolific artist's visual cadre became a cultural staple of fashion and design. Merci, Yves Saint Laurent !
SUBSTACK: The singular book on Hans Hofmann's School of Fine Arts supply list
Modern painter and educator Hans Hofmann prescribed one book to his students on an introductory syllabus for his art school, the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts in Provincetown, Massachusetts: Expressionism in Art.
H is for Historic House
An assignment in looking deeply at historic house museums. Give yourself this opportunity to learn about a new (to you) place, discover the identities of the people associated with it, and feel like you are contributing to the longevity of its history.
In a Circus Ring with Saul Steinberg
A glimpse of the friendship between Charles and Ray Eames, Saul Steinberg, and Hedda Sterne while revealing that some of their inspiration was derived from the attitudes of the circus.
Gio Ponti’s “Graceful Butterfly" — Villa Planchart
Gio Ponti designed and constructed Villa Planchart between 1953 and 1957 for husband-and-wife Armando and Anala Planchart, avid readers of Ponti’s Domus magazine.
The Seattle World’s Fair, in Six Parts
Explore the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair in six parts, including its modern architecture, entertainment, technology, and furniture. Written for Memo, a Seattle-based furniture company.
Charles and Ray Eames Biography
Immediately following their marriage in June of 1941, Charles and Ray optimistically moved to Los Angeles, bursting with exuberance for one another and their potential future in the arts and design.
Eames Office Archives
Charles and Ray Eames, alongside the Eames Office staff, photographed and developed hundreds of thousands of images over a period of decades. The Eameses used photography to document and reconfigure a project as it progressed or to formulate and express ideas. Today, we extend the Eames legacy by carefully archiving and digitizing these historic photographs.
The Eames Office Design Process
For decades within the Eames Office, knowledge and experience continuously built upon previous projects, materials were seen for their inherent worth, and iteration honed all ideas into practical forms. “901,” the Eames Office’s workspace, further enabled the iterative, hands-on design process of Charles, Ray, and their staff.
Black Sun: How Capitol Hill Became Home to Isamu Noguchi’s 12-Ton Sculpture
Sculptor Isamu Noguchi carved a 12-ton black granite sculpture, Black Sun, for Capitol Hill’s Volunteer Park in Seattle.
Benjamin McAdoo: A Modernist Architect of Merit
Washington state’s first licensed Black architect fabricated solutions for early modernist low-cost and modular housing, all while fighting for racial equality.
Eames Archives: Interwoven Lives
Eames Archives: An Image as an Idea is a blog series written with the intention of sharing rarely-viewed images from the Eames Office archive and narratives attached to them.
Exploring Seattle Modernism
Modernist architecture is spread out all over the Seattle area in a variety of styles. Some sites are obvious staples of our skyline and others are tucked away in the trees. Zack Bolotin and Kelsey Rose Williams compiled a list of mostly lesser-known sites in a few different pockets of the city that are still accessible in some capacity. Blog written for Fruit Super.
Neutra’s Lion
In this part of the globe, it feels as though the sun exists purely to remind you of the mechanics of the human body. It’s July in Palm Springs, CA, and the skin perceives it acutely.
The Materials of the Eames House
Charles and Ray Eames set out to design and build the Eames House by utilizing materials in an “honest” manner. Here is a list of the most vital Eames House parts, including their original war-time intent and why Charles and Ray wanted the house to be respectful and representative of the innate qualities of its materials.
“Life in a Chinese Kite”
We’re reaching for the September 1950 issue of Architectural Forum, The Magazine of Building to uncover why a life spent at the Eames House was described as living "in a Chinese kite.”