The Poetry of Sight: 2014

Monday, December 29, 2014

Frank Lloyd Wright Poster | Kelly Cunningham

Wright poster © Kelly Cunningham 2014

Cedar Rock, originally known as the Lowell Walter Residence, was designed in 1950 by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. An exemplar of his Usonian style, it is located near Quasqueton IA, and has been designated as Cedar Rock State Park. For the past ten years, the Friends of Cedar Rock organization has held an annual seminar—called An Afternoon with Frank Lloyd Wright—in which speakers talk about Wright's life, beliefs and achievements.

To celebrate the tradition of that seminar, in the fall of 2014, graphic design students in the Department of Art at the University of Northern Iowa, were asked to design a series of posters that focus on Wright and his accomplishments, not limited to Cedar Rock. The poster above was designed by Kelly Cunningham in a course in Digital Image Design (2014).

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Richard Neutra, Life and Shape [his autobiography] . New York: Appleton Century Crofts, 1962, pp. 179. Neutra, a Viennese-born architect, came to the US in 1923, and eventually moved to Chicago, where he searched for buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright, whose work he had admired while living in Europe—

I looked around the western part of Chicago, and south, near the university, but nobody could tell me anything about this famous architect I was talking about. People were flabbergasted that I should have picked up the ideals of a great Chicagoan in a European library…

But where were the prairies, the woods, the lawns? Where, anyway, was Woodlawn Avenue? Once I got there, I would actually find the famous Robie House. My heart always skipped when I imagined the moment: I would ring the doorbell and ask in very broken English, "Is Mr. Robie in?" And so I finally did.

"Mr. Robie? Never heard of him." There was a Mrs. Wilson living there. She had bought the house some years back, and was probably the fifth owner. She wasn't at all enthusiastic about it—but to me it was a lovely, wonderful place.

I asked Mrs. Wilson why she had bought the house. "Oh," she answered, cold fish, "I got it very cheap. The man who owned it had to get out. No, she didn't particularly like it, and she had all kinds of petty criticisms. Nothing was working, of course; at that time the house was already some fifteen years old, and badly neglected.

See also: Roy R. Behrens, FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT and Mason City: Architectural Heart of the Prairie (2016).

Sunday, December 28, 2014

Miami Art Deco Postage | Stephanie Berry

Above Hypothetical postage stamp, commemorating Art Deco architecture, by University of Northern Iowa graphic design student Stephanie Berry (2014). Reproduced below is a block of stamps that repeats and juxtaposes the single stamp to produce a synergistic whole.

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British sculptress Clare Sheridan, in a diary (1921) as quoted in Teresa Carpenter, ed., New York Diaries. NY: Modern Library, 2012, pp. 16-17—

Mr. [Horace] Liveright, my publisher, fetched me and took me to the Ritz where we dined with [various notable people, among them American financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch]…Mr. Baruch (whose name I mistook for Brooke) has white fair, fine features and stands 6 ft. 4. I gathered from the general conversation that I was talking to someone whom I should have heard of, and as I could think of no distinguished Brooke but [English poet] Rupert Brooke, I asked if he was related. And then Mr. Baruch rather reprovingly spelt his name for me. Instantly by a faint glimmer of memory, "Wall Street" came to my mind and I seemed to have heard in London that he was a friend of [her cousin] Winston [Churchill].

Miami Art Deco Postage | Danielle Schweitzer

Above Hypothetical postage stamp, commemorating Art Deco architecture, by University of Northern Iowa graphic design student Danielle Schweitzer (2014). Reproduced below is a block of stamps that repeats and juxtaposes the single stamp to produce a synergistic whole.

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Richard Neutra (Austrian-born American architect) in his autobiography, Life and Shape. New York: Appleton-Century Crofts, 1962, p. 123. In this passage, he describes his experience as an army officer during World War I, when, accompanied by an orderly, he traveled on horseback through northeastern Montenegro—

[My orderly] was not obnoxious in any way. He didn't step on anybody's toes, or kiss any girls, or do anything else that might have caused trouble. His slow talk was like that of his Saxon ancestors. He came from Transylvania, the southeastern section of of Hungary near the mountainous Rumanian border. His home village was so underdeveloped that he had never seen a stairway. When he first beheld stairs, later on in a "hinterland" hotel, he climbed them on his hands and feet; he only knew how to use a ladder.

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Gaming Infographic | Kramer Dixon

Gaming infographic © Kramer Dixon 2014

Above Gaming infographic by University of Northern Iowa graphic design student Kramer Dixon (2014).

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Philip Hone (American diarist and Mayor of New York), talking about US senator and orator Daniel Webster, on March 29, 1845, in The Diary of Philip Hone—

Old men are apt to be careless and slovenly in their dress…Black is safest, it is peculiarly the garb of a gentleman, and never goes out of fashion. But in this matter of dress one of our great men (than whom there is non greater), Mr. Webster, has a strange fancy. He is not slovenly, but on the contrary tawdry, fond of a variety of colors. I do not remember ever to have seen him in the only dress in which he should appear—the respectable and dignified suit of black. I was much amused a day or two since by meeting him in Wall Street, at high noon, in a bright blue satin vest, sprigged with gold flowers, a costume [as] incongruous for Daniel Webster as ostrich feathers for a sister of charity.

Saturday, December 20, 2014

Infographic | Brandi Weis

Infographic © by Brandi Weis (2014)

Above Country Music Association infographic designed by University of Northern Iowa graphic design student Brandi Weis (2014).

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Robert Craft, An Improbable Life (Vanderbilt University Press, 2002), p. 184—

Dorothy [Christopher Isherwood's maid] had never heard of [Russian-born composer Igor] Stravinsky. She thought she recognized Igor as a Jewish comic on the Molly Goldberg show.

Igor Stravinsky autograph

Ibid, p. 147—

In 1953, he [Stravinsky] broke off his connection with Hollywood's two Russian [Orthodox] churches, for the reason that the priest-confessor had asked him for an autograph.

Image Font | Andy Snitker

Image Font © Andy Snitkner (2014)

Above Image font designed by University of Northern Iowa graphic design student Andy Snitker (2014).

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Theodore Roethke [American poet, recalling a manic episode] , quoted in Allan Seager, The Glass House: The Life of Theodore Roethke (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991), p. 101—

For no reason I started to feel very good. Suddenly I knew how to enter into the life of everything around me. I knew how it felt to be a tree, a blade of grass, even a rabbit. I didn’t sleep much. I just walked around with this wonderful feeling. One day I was passing a diner and all of a sudden I knew what if felt like to be a lion. I went into the diner and said to the counter-man, "Bring me a steak. Don’t cook it. Just bring it." So he brought me this raw steak and I started eating it. The other customers made like they were revolted, watching me. And I began to see that maybe it was a little strange. So I went to the Dean [at the school where he was teaching] and said, "I feel too good. Get me down off this." So they put me into the tubs.

Titanic Infographic | Bradley Kennedy

Infographic © Bradley Kennedy (2014)

Above Infographic by University of Northern Iowa graphic design student Bradley Kennedy (2014).

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Henry Adams, in Victor Schreckengost and 20th-Century Design (Cleveland OH: Cleveland Museum of Art / University of Washington Press, 2001), p. 10.—

Another of [drawing instructor Frank N.] Wilcox’s exercises [at the Cleveland Institute of Art in the 1920s] was to go down to the Five and Ten on 105th Street and look at the objects in the window for 45 minutes. Back at the school, the students would make drawings of precisely what they had seen—the objects, the prices, and every other detail. After completing the drawings, they went back to the store window to make sure that everything was accurate.

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Robert Craft, An Improbable Life (Vanderbilt University Press, 2002), p. 33—

On Sunday afternoon, December 7, 1941, my father and I were watching a football game in Rockville Center, Long Island, when a loudspeaker announced the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The game went on as though the statement had not been understood, or taken for another Orson Welles radio hoax, but when twice repeated, the stunned, disbelieving crowd in the bleachers began to drift away. As we drove back to Manhattan, the automobile radio sputtered news bulletins, one of which said that the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston had been cordoned off by police because of concern that its great collection of Japanese Art might be endangered by reprisals.

Sunday, December 7, 2014

Teaching Drawing in the Dark

It was Monday, December 8, 1941, the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and the day on which war on Japan was declared. That morning, a drawing instructor named Hoyt L. Sherman (1903-1981) arrived at his office at Ohio State University in Columbus to find his colleagues—still stunned by the news of the bombing—discussing how they, as teachers of subjects like art and design, could contribute to the country's defense. Sherman joined the discussion—and, within a matter of hours, he had come up with a curious plan. more >>>

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Miami Art Deco Postage | Gina Hamer

Above Block of synergistic postage stamps by University of Northern Iowa graphic design student Gina Hamer (2014), commemorating historic Art Deco architecture in Miami. Scroll down to see the single stamp from which the final block was made.

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Peter De Vries—

Life is a zoo in a jungle.

I was thinking that we all learn by experience, but some of us have to go to summer school.

I write when I'm inspired, and I see to it that I'm inspired at nine o'clock every morning.

Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign something is eating us.

Miami Art Deco Postage | Bailey Higgins

Block of stamps © Bailey Higgins 2014

Above Block of synergistic postage stamps by University of Northern Iowa graphic design student Bailey Higgins (2014), commemorating historic Art Deco architecture in Miami. Scroll down to see the single stamp (one of several variations) from which the final block was made.

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Ralph C. Wood, The Comedy of Redemption (Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988, p. 230—

[American comic novelist] Peter De Vries is so funny a writer that it may seem inappropriate to take him seriously. His puns are unabashed. Like the cleaning lady, he says, we all come to dust. The mere thought of cremation turns one of his characters ashen. De Vries's aphorisms are no less outrageous. The American home, we are told, is an invasion of privacy. Never put off until tomorrow, we are advised, what you can put off indefinitely. What is an arsonist, we are asked, but someone who has failed to set the world on fire? De Vries's vignettes are even more discerningly surreal. A chiropractor attending a patient throws out his own back. A husband who demands that his wife explain why she bought a mink coat is told that she was cold. Another wife sues her husband's mistress for alienation of his affections, and asks for $65 in damages.

Art Deco Stamp © Bailey Higgins 2014

Saturday, November 22, 2014

Pictorial Font Design | Bradley Kennedy

Image Font © Bradley Kennedy 2014

Above Design for a pictorial font by University of Northern Iowa graphic design student Bradley Kennedy (2014).

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Sarah A. Leavitt, Introduction in Priscilla J. Henken, Taliesin Diary: A Year With Frank Lloyd Wright. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012, p. 15—

The Taliesin Fellowship [Frank Lloyd Wright’s school near Spring Green WI] was received suspiciously by many; newspapers and magazines reported the activities at the farm to be exotic and somewhat strange…Beginning during World War II, the FBI focused on Wright’s antiwar stance and sympathies with Russia and Germany, and investigated whether Wright was unduly influencing his disciples to have anti-American views. Ten years later, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was still worried about Wright and the Fellowship, writing to the Bureau field office in Milwaukee that Wright needed to be watched, given that his “school contained no classrooms” and “appeared to be a religious cult.” Hoover mentioned rumors that “the foundation held dances to the moon, told the students how to think and that if a student did not attend certain meetings which had nothing to do with the study of architecture, the student would be dismissed from the school.” He also reported that his informant “had heard there were homosexuals attending the school.” Newspaper reports throughout the 1940s and 1950s made reference to Wright’s “communist” views and his nontraditional learning environment.

See also: Roy R. Behrens, FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT and Mason City: Architectural Heart of the Prairie (2016).

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Miami Art Deco Postage | Kat Bartlett

Miami Art Deco Stamp © Kat Bartlett

Above Block of synergistic postage stamps by University of Northern Iowa graphic design student Kat Bartlett (2014), commemorating historic Art Deco architecture in Miami. Scroll down to see the single stamp from which the final block was made.

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Alec Guinness, My Name Escapes Me: The Diary of a Retiring Actor (New York: Viking Penguin, 1997), p. 46—

During one Christmas holiday in London I was taken to a fancy dress ball at the Town Hall in Kensington and I went as a candle and candlestick. I was sixteen. I fashioned a white tubular arrangement out of cardboard to go on my head, and from crepe paper a yellow and blue candle flame; also a wide white cardboard collar. I won the first prize, which was a large, brown, fiber suitcase. But it was a humiliating experience as so many people flicked their cigarettes into my collar and then said, "Sorry, thought you were an ashtray."

Miami Art Deco Stamp © Kat Bartlett

Pictorial Font Design | Desirée Dahl

Pictorial font (2014) © Desirée Dahl

Above Design for a pictorial font by University of Northern Iowa graphic design student Desirée Dahl (2014).

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Alec Guinness, My Name Escapes Me: The Diary of a Retiring Actor (New York: Viking Penguin, 1997), p. 156—

On waking this morning I thought how lovely it would be to have a tame bird again. There has been Percy, a South African grey parrot who lived with us for about twenty-five years, gave us a lot of laughs and painful nips, could recite about the first two lines of a Hamlet soliloquy—"O what a rogue and peasant slave am I! Is it not monstrous that this player here"—except that he substituted "parrot" for "player," followed by gales of laughter; he also ripped sitting room curtains to shreds.

Sunday, November 9, 2014

Miami Art Deco Postage | Andrew Girod

Above Block of synergistic postage stamps by University of Northern Iowa graphic design student Andrew Girod (2014), commemorating historic Art Deco architecture in Miami. Scroll down to see the single stamp from which the final block was made.

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Dard Hunter, American Arts and Crafts-era designer and papermaker, My Life with Paper: An Autobiography. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1958—

A newspaper composing stick held about two inches of type—fifteen or sixteen lines. My father would always refer to the length of an editorial or any set matter as so many “sticks.” At noonday lunch I have often heard my mother ask about articles that were to appear in the paper that evening. For instance, my mother would say: “Did they have a large funeral for old Joe Basler?” and my father would answer: “One of the largest this year, about eight and a half sticks” (p. 10).

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[On a visit to Hammersmith, England, in 1912] I was only a few blocks from [Kelmscott Manor] where the famous modern edition of Chaucer had been printed, but the irregular streets had misled me. Upon inquiring the way to the old workshop of William Morris, I was surprised to be told by the young real estate agent that he did not know where William Morris had lived. He had never heard of Morris, and asked me if he had previously been the proprietor of a low rooming house for mendicants (p. 56).

Miami Art Deco Postage | Shane Rumpza

Above Block of synergistic postage stamps by University of Northern Iowa graphic design student Shane Rumpza (2014), commemorating historic Art Deco architecture in Miami. Scroll down to see the single stamp (one of several variations) from which the final block was made.

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William L. Shirer, 20th Century Journey : A Memoir of a Life and the Times (Vol 1). Boston: Little Brown, 1976, p. 193—

We stage-struck youngsters (sometimes I would work as an extra stagehand, moving scenery and props between acts [at Green's Opera House in Cedar Rapids IA], when a great star I wanted to see at close hand came to town) grew up in Cedar Rapids on a strange legend about Sarah Bernhardt. It was that she had been born Sarah King in the village of Rochester [IA], twenty-five miles down the Cedar River from us, that her mother had died when she was five, that she had run away soon afterward, entered a French convent at St Paul [MN], and, having learned the new language, set off to Paris, where she began her fabulous career in the theater. The legend grew when in 1905 it was reported that a veiled but elegantly dressed woman had stopped off briefly at Rochester to lay a bouquet of roses on the grave of the elder Mrs. King. When reporters noted that Sarah Bernhardt had played an engagement at nearby Iowa City the previous evening, they put two and two together, as reporters sometimes are tempted to do, and concluded that it was the great Parisian actress who had made the mysterious visit to the grave of one who must have been her mother. Ergo! The great Sarah Bernhardt, the most famous French actress of our time, was an Iowa girl!

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William L. Shirer, ibid, p. 18—

[The American novelist] Sinclair Lewis had worked as a telegraph editor and editorial writer on the [Waterloo IA] Daily Courier in 1908, the year after he graduated from Yale. He was fired after ten weeks, the editor informing him, Lewis told me once, "Young man, you'll never make it as a newspaperman. You can't write."

Miami Art Deco Postage | Cassandra Beadle

Above Block of synergistic postage stamps by University of Northern Iowa graphic design student Cassandra Beadle (2014), commemorating historic Art Deco architecture in Miami. Scroll down to see the single stamp from which the final block was made.

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William James, The Principles of Psychology—

In the meaningless French words “pas de lieu Rhone que nous,” who can recognize immediately the English “paddle your own canoe”?

H.G. Wells, as quoted by Simon Nowell-Smith, compiler, The Legend of the Master (London, Constable, 1947), p. 149—

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I once saw [Henry] James quarreling with his brother William James, the psychologist. He had lost his calm; he was terribly unnerved, He appealed to me, to me of all people, to adjudicate on what was and what was not permissible behavior in England…I had come to Rye with a car to fetch William James and his daughter to my home at Sandgate. William had none of Henry’s passionate regard for the polish upon the surfaces of life and he was immensely excited by the fact that in the little Rye inn, which had its garden just over the high brick wall of the garden of Lamb House [Henry’s residence], G.K. Chesterton was staying. William James had corresponded with our vast contemporary and he sorely wanted to see him. So with a scandalous directness he had put the gardener’s ladder against that ripe red wall and clambered up and peeped over! Henry had caught him at it.

Saturday, November 8, 2014

Miami Art Deco Postage | Kaisee Wiesmueller

Above Block of synergistic postage stamps by University of Northern Iowa graphic design student Kaisee Wiesmueller (2014), commemorating historic Art Deco architecture in Miami. Scroll down to see the single stamp (one of several variations) from which the final block was made.

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Audrey Flack, Art & Soul: Notes on Creating (New York: Penguin Arkana Books, 1991), p. 118—

When I was a student at Yale, [American painter] Stuart Davis came as a visiting artist. He walked into my studio and looked for a long time at my paintings and then began to speak. As he spoke, his cigarette never left his lips. It wobbled up and down at the corner of his mouth. I watched as the ash got longer and longer and finally flopped onto his shirt. As the cigarette burned down and got shorter and shorter, I realized that I hadn't heard a word he'd said. I was afraid that the cigarette would burn his lips, which had already turned brown from years of tobacco—life process interfering with art.

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Frank Lloyd Wright Poster Exhibit

Wright Posters at UNI Rod Library

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Roy Behrens on Iowa Poet James Hearst

The James Hearst Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Lecture Series will conclude at 7 pm, Thursday, October 23, 2014, when author, teacher and graphic designer Roy Behrens addresses the audience in Mae Latta Hall at the Hearst Center, 304 West Seerley Boulevard, Cedar Falls, Iowa. Behrens’s illustrated talk, titled “Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads in Them: Learning from Iowa Poet Jim Hearst,” will be followed by a reception. The event is free and open to the public.

Roy R. Behrens is a Professor of Art and Distinguished Scholar at the University of Northern Iowa. He holds an undergraduate degree in art from the University of Northern Iowa and a graduate degree from the Rhode Island School of Design. He has taught at art schools and universities for more than 40 years. Since 1990 he has been at the University of Northern Iowa, where he teaches graphic design and design history.

In addition, Behrens has written seven books and hundreds of essays and articles on design-related subjects, most notably books and articles on art and camouflage, for which he is internationally known. He has appeared in interviews on National Public Radio, NOVA on PBS, Iowa Public Television, BBC Radio, Australian Public Radio, and has appeared in a number of documentary films. As a UNI student in the late 1960s, as well as a faculty member in the early 1970s, Behrens knew Hearst as a writer and friend.

Since April 2014, the James Hearst Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Lecture Series has featured a variety of lectures and multimedia presentations focusing on James Hearst and his body of work. They have been presented by a distinguished group of writer-educators that also includes Jonathan Stull, Scott Cawelti, Loree Rackstraw, Barbara Lounsberry, George Day, Michael Borich, and Jeremy Schraffenberger.

Farmer-poet James Hearst bequeathed his home to the city of Cedar Falls in 1983 and asked that it be used as an arts center for the community. The Hearst Center’s 25th anniversary celebration is sponsored by the Rotary Club of Cedar Falls, the Cedar Falls Art & Culture Board and 93.5 The Mix.