Is Design an expression of Art?

 Fortuitous Novelties take inspiration from Donald Judd’s practice that encompasses art, furniture and architecture. Whilst retaining their distinctions Judd allowed them to inform one another, sharing a sensibility of material and form. Judd’s output of deceptively simple objects provide a formal purity despite complexity of their construction, that stand as a testament to his mastery of fabrication and understanding of structure with respect to materials.

Building Buckyballs!

I’m quite fascinated by Charles and Ray Eames approach to design and their “good life” concept of celebrating the beauty of everyday objects as well as precious ones. Their House of Cards features images taken from the Eames own collection of what they called the “good stuff”, that celebrate “familiar and nostalgic objects from the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms”. I believe that these cards show that good design embraces both beauty and utility.

From Chaos into Composition

A legacy of the Eames’ that is influential on the ways that I work is an elegant and playful design language, influenced by modern art and architecture and equally by Victorian clutter, folk art, and natural science. I find this aesthetic is compelling because it is inclusive and generous, finding beauty and intelligence in a broad mix of periods and cultures.

‘Select and Arrange’ is the phrase that best describes the key method in the work of the Eames’, recognizable in the development of many of their furniture designs, architecture, exhibitions and films. They understood their own Pacific Palisades home as a work in progress, a field of experimentation, with the interior comprised of a diverse collage of hand made objects and industrial products. The combination of the old and new, simple and complex, decorative and practical, natural and artificial embodied both art and technology.