Project Brief
As one of the 6 contributing artists' to the project, I was given the follow brief with the knowledge that a chair and film crew were on their way;
Help Adobe celebrate design history . On June 17th, Charles Eames would have turned 106 and Adobe will commemorate his birthday. In Eames’ honor, we will give away a handful of iconic chairs to creatives and ask them to reimagine, remake and reinterpret his work.
Paint it, airbrush it, decorate it, break it & rebuild it-you can alter it anyway you want. The only limitation is your imagination.
Media
Having not worked on this kind of canvas before, I started to play around with different types of media and eventually landed on Acrylic Markers. Montana brand tended to have the better color, feel, and drying speed.
Sketch Play
To get familiar with the media and the style that I was looking for, I started by creating a couple 'paintings' that drew inspiration from the chairs shape and the some of expressive colors that are reflective of the Eames design aesthetics.
Open, Project & Visualize
The Chair had arrived late that afternoon, but I was instructed to wait till the film crew arrived to open it. Eager to get my hands this foreign canvas, I started to visualize what images could look like on it's surface by using a video projector and using some of my existing artwork to get a feel for what could work.
To map out the letters with the least amount of distortion and control over position, I rotated the chair for each letter and lined up each character within the allocated spacing (which is laid out in yellow tape)
Documenting the process of being documented
Outline is complete and now it's time to fill the shapes in.
End of Day One. Happy with the inside graphics (Especially the silver)
Day Two — The Fabric Adventure
The second day started with a greater sense of satisfaction for the accomplishment overcome, but also a hightened pressure from not wanting to mess up the progress of preceeding day. With a good feeling for where the visual aesthetic had come, I was now interested in the tactile attribute I could bring to the chair. Having worked with felts materials in the past, I found myself drawn to the as a means to upolster the chair while still maintaining the scultural appearance of the molded shape.
Not entirely sure where I wanted to take the pallette, I made sure to pick up enough fabric in order to not limit my color choice I had once I got to integrating it.
Once I started to identify the vision I hope to have for the piece, I decided on a weave patter I would integrate to the chair. Weaving the colors together and allowing a bit of random chance prevail since the time to completion prevented me from really test the color theory out too much.
Ultimately I was surprise and impressed by the results that emerged. Had I been too calculated, I might have not ended up with some of the ideocincricies I like about the result chair.
Promotional Video
Individual case studies are still in the works. The following is the promo video that launched on June 17th (106th Birthday of Charles Eames)
