Burning Settlers Cabin

Posts Tagged ‘1985’

Musings of the Mad

Friday, February 24th, 2012

detail, Sean Visits Georgia O'Keefe, Sean Adams, 1984

I recently found some notebooks from my time in college. It’s nice to think that you’ve changed over time, matured, and found some wisdom. But these notebooks prove two things: I haven’t changed since I was 20 years old, and I was clearly insane. While other students were hastily taking notes about Roland Barthes, I was intently drawing the objects I deemed “mean.” The notebooks reveal a person obsessed with bizarre trivial ideas. Why did I create a narrative where Georgia O’Keefe serves me toast? I catalogued the world around me, which Southern California of the early 80s was new wave Vals (Valley teens), Bevs (Beverly Hills teens), and their shopping habits. I also include a page on semiotics to prove that while I was busy drawing LA Eyeworks sunglasses, I was also trying to understand structuralism.

The sad part of this, or the good part depending on your point of view is that my current notebook is no better. Today I finished a rather intricate drawing of a riverboat during a meeting.

Sean Visits Georgia O'Keefe, Sean Adams, 1984

detail, Sean Visits Georgia O'Keefe, Sean Adams, 1984

Portrait of Post Mods, Sean Adams, 1985

detail, Picture of Post Mods, Sean Adams, 1985

Art Things, Sean Adams, 1984

Nice Things, Sean Adams, 1984

Mean Things, Sean Adams, 1984

Picture of Different Glasses, Sean Adams, 1985

Actual notes, Sean Adams, 1985

Notebook cover, "Save me from the pig" added by me

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Tags:1984, 1985, Georgia O'Keefe, New Wave, Notebook, Roland Barthes, Sean Adams
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A Letter from Tony

Saturday, December 10th, 2011

Tony Palladino, promotion for a packaging designer, 1957

After this year’s Command X at AIGA Pivot, one of the designers, Wendy Hu, sent me a thoughtful thank you note. I didn’t expect it, but I was touched to receive it. The note is still on my desk. It’s a lost art, but a handwritten note is a sign of respect. In my taboret at work, I have two other notes. I have a quickly scribbled note from Tibor Kalman congratulating me on a project. I also have a note from Tony Palladino, complimenting our first UCLA Extension poster. The note from Tony was, for me, the equivalent of an Academy Award. We were getting slammed left and right by the groovy designers as we weren’t layering images on images, mangling type, or making purposely oblique messages. The UCLA poster was a statement about our design philosophy, that old clarity, purity, and resonance. Tony’s note was an affirmation that we might be doing something worthwhile.

I’ve always been interested in inherently American works of art. Tony Palladino’s work is that. He was born in Manhattan in the 1930 and spent his youth in the vibrant and gritty world of New York during the depression. He may adopt some of the principals of Bauhaus Modernism, but it is filtered through a layer of American high energy and spontaneity. Like jazz, Tony’s work is rigidly crafted, but bursting with an energy that does not play politely. His solutions are brave and unapologetic. The SVA poster hand-drawn with markers is a hand-drawn poster made with markers. In the hands of a lesser talent, this would be a sketch, and the final poster would be a polite geometric set of gradations, dull and elegant.

The American identity is complex. It is a mix of Puritanism and extremes. It is pragmatic and didactic. And, it is about optimism. Tony’s humor is clear in all of his solutions. This levity, craft, vitality, and intelligence are a miraculous combination. Add in Tony’s poetic vision, and the results are rare and spectacular.