Monica Obniski – författare

A lively exploration of eclecticism, playfulness, and whimsy in American postwar design, including architecture, graphic design, and product design This spirited volume shows how postwar designers embraced whimsy and eclecticism in their work, exploring playfulness as an essential construct of modernity. Following World War II, Americans began accumulating more and more goods, spurring a transformation in the field of interior decoration. Storage walls became ubiquitous, often serving as a home’s centerpiece. Designers such as Alexander Girard encouraged homeowners to populate their new shelving units with folk art, as well as unconventional and modern objects, to produce innovative and unexpected juxtapositions within modern architectural settings. Playfulness can be seen in the colorful, child-sized furniture by Charles and Ray Eames, who also produced toys. And in the postwar corporate world, the concept of play is manifested in the influential advertising work of Paul Rand. Set against the backdrop of a society that was experiencing rapid change and high anxiety, Serious Play takes a revelatory look at how many of the country’s leading designers connected with their audience through wit and imagination.Published in association with the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Denver Art MuseumExhibition Schedule:Milwaukee Art Museum (09/28/18–01/06/19)  Denver Art Museum (05/05/19–08/25/19)

A multifaceted look at the work of award-winning American industrial designer Stephen BurksThrough essays, photo-essays, and a conversation between Black designer Stephen Burks (b. 1969) and the late cultural critic bell hooks, this book contextualizes Burks’s wide-ranging work while exploring design’s influence on politics, society, and culture. Burks’s work is underpinned by his belief in a pluralistic vision of design that is inclusive of all cultural perspectives; the award-winning designer has been commissioned by many of the world’s leading design-driven brands to develop collections that engage hand production as a strategy for innovation.The book centers the industrial design and craft collaborations within Burks’s workshop-based design practice and offers an opportunity to reflect on the potential of design at a time when racial, social, and environmental justice remain in jeopardy. Topics explored in the book include an overview of the designer’s practice, from the foundational architecture culture of Chicago (Burks’s birthplace) to his latest speculative project; the workshop-based collaborative ethos of his studio, Stephen Burks Man Made; and the politics of design. In the conversation between bell hooks and Burks, hooks brings her critical eye to design as it relates to the broader field of African American cultural production.Distributed for the High Museum of ArtExhibition Schedule:High Museum of Art, Atlanta(September 16, 2022–March 5, 2023)Philadelphia Museum of Art(November 19, 2023–April 14, 2024)

This revelatory book explores the contributions of Betsy James Wyeth (1921 2020), a multitalented maker of designed environments and interior spaces, preservationist, and creative partner to the beloved American artist Andrew Wyeth. Betsy herself created the world around her through imagery, decorative arts objects, documents, and paintings by Andrew and others, which were largely shaped by Betsy and the worlds she created. The volume features stunning photography of key sites such as Brinton s Mill and environments that define her creative vision. Scholars discuss her process and significant role in projects like the Shore House at Broad Cove Farm, the site of the formation of Betsy s refined and minimalist design sensibility. Personal reflections from her family shed light on Betsy s life and influence, with additional contributions that explore her publishing endeavors and support for the maritime economy. Through a wide range of fine and decorative art objects from the remarkable and largely unexhibited holdings of the Wyeth Foundation for American Art that pertain to Betsy s legacy, select loans, new photography, this book allows visitors to understand and explore her designed environments as never before.

Matson’s fabric works unite painterly abstraction, digital technology and textile tactilityWorking within a renewed interest in craft practices, Los Angeles–based artist Christy Matson (born 1979) creates woven pictures that explore memory and imagination through the layered history of textile production, while advocating for issues surrounding sustainability. Her abstract, constantly evolving compositions resemble paintings, and yet they are deeply rooted in textile history. Using a digital jacquard loom together with the language of historic weaving techniques, Matson honors the centuries-old craft while also embracing a new approach to technology. Her works allow viewers to engage with textiles of the past in thoughtful, innovative ways. A continuation of the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Currents series, which highlights new trends in contemporary art, this volume brings together nearly 50 of Matson’s most recent works from the last five years, and is the first publication to explore Matson's wide-ranging textile art.

This is the first volume to document and contextualize Sonya Clark’s large-scale, collaborative artworks. These projects demonstrate Clark’s career-long commitment to addressing the urgent issue of racial inequality in American society and her philosophy of creatively engaging the viewer in reflection on the nation’s history of slavery and our roles in dismantling systemic racism today.As an extension of her abiding commitment to issues of history, race, and reconciliation in her work, Clark is also distinctive as an artist for her use of textiles and other everyday materials, which she aligns with the intertwined histories of art and craft. For marginalized people (African Americans and women, in particular) handwork has been essential to survival and consequently has functioned, and continues to function, as an important means of creating a group identity. Hence, for Clark, craft is essential to the question of equality.

Alexander Girard’s Imagined Worlds examines a modern design luminary whose collection of global folk art and vernacular forms informed his expansive design practice. The book focuses on the Museum of International Folk Art, its displays and archival collections, and Girard’s Santa Fe years, as a locus for the designer-collector’s wide-ranging practices. From his home and studio in Santa Fe, Alexander Girard’s work had international reach and profoundly impacted modern design. Lavishly illustrated, this book explores through thoughtful essays new facets of Girard’s design production and folk art collection, underscoring the inseparability of the two and culminating in his exhibition Multiple Visions: A Common Bond at the Museum of International Folk Art. By reflecting on selected displays, providing cultural context and highlighting artists and traditions, the publication offers new ways of approaching Girard’s legacy. Published in conjunction with the long-term installation of Multiple Visions: A Common Bond, the Girard Wing, Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe. Multiple Visions: The folk art and toy collections of architect and designer Alexander Girard (1907–1993) – including unpublished photographs of his final designed environment.