ART 220 · Session 05 of 28 · Part I · Editorial
ART 220 05: Shape Building and Pathfinder
Tuesday, September 8
Today you make pictures without the pen tool. Thirty circles on paper first: one shape, thirty meanings. Then the same idea in Illustrator with twelve given shapes you can move, turn, copy, and cut, but never resize and never redraw. Three pictures, then one pushed further. Work time on your vector drafts after.
0 of 1 read
In class today
In-class exercise · In class. Hand in before you leave
Shape building
- First, on paperThirty circlesTen minutes, with the talk after
- Then, in IllustratorShape buildingIllustrator
Graded 0, 2 or 3 the same day. The term's exercises share one grade, 15% of the course, lowest dropped.
Open the exerciseThe rule, the parts, the scoring, handing in
Artist of the day
Alexander Girard
1907 to 1993
Forty wall panels from circles, bars, and triangles. Eighty suns from one circle. Today's exercise, done by a master.
Architect, textile designer, and collector. Ran the textile division at Herman Miller for twenty years and built a whole career from a few fixed shapes moved, repeated, and cut: the Herman Miller fabrics, the suns of La Fonda del Sol, the Braniff redesign, the Environmental Enrichment Panels, the wooden dolls. Kept ten thousand folk art objects, now the Girard Wing in Santa Fe.
Look at
Environmental Enrichment Panels1972The Henry Ford; Herman Miller
Forty wall panels for the first office cubicles. Eyes, hearts, hands, suns, all from circles, bars, and triangles. Herman Miller reprinted eight as posters.
La Fonda del Sol1960SFMOMA
One restaurant, more than eighty different suns. Same circle, different rays, on matchbooks, menus, and platters.
Textiles for Herman Miller1952 onwardMaharam still weaves several
Small Triangles, Double Triangles, Quatrefoil, Trispot. Tangent shapes where the only variable is which color lands where.
Wooden Dolls1952 onwardVitra
A post, a ball, and a bar, with a face painted on.
Multiple Visions: A Common Bond1982Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe
The ten thousand folk art objects he collected, arranged by him. Where the shapes came from.
Watch later
Alexander Girard: Architect of Modern LivingDress Code, for Herman Miller2019
The five-minute tribute film, made for his AIGA Medal.
Wooden Dolls by Alexander GirardVitra2022
The dolls being turned and hand painted.
Braniff: The End of the Plain PlaneBraniff Airways Foundation1965
The public reveal film. An airline rebuilt from flat color and a few marks.
Alexander Girard's miniature folk art collectionYouTube
A walk through the Girard Wing in Santa Fe.