"Eventually, Everything Connects"

Hi there,

Well, I'd like to talk tonight about Charles and Ray Eames, two people who I hadn't thought much about until recently, but have been a subtle influence of mine over the years. The reason I bring them up here is because I just saw a documentary on them (Eames: The Architect and the Painter), and I found that the way they worked and what they accomplished had a lot in common with what I desire. As you might know, here in the L.A. area, an exhibit will be shown on the Eames' well-known house up in Pacific Palisades that they designed for themselves in the 1949. Ice Cube did a promo for this exhibit. I didn't know Ice Cube had that background.



The Exhibit is on L.A. art. Anyway, what fascinates me about the Eameses is that they brought all of these elements and fields of design together. They worked in architecture, funiture and industrial design, photography, film and interior design. This diversity in work was inspiring to me, since I've always been a jack-of-all-trades type myself, and I have had diverse elements that I am attracted to. I am interested in politics, environmental issues, interacting with people, capturing images, designing worlds and telling stories that matter. I haven't thought of a good way to do all these things in my career life.

The Eameses also combined their personal, creative lifestyle with their work. For them, there was no separation between life and work and fun. That is really a model for the type of work I would like to be in in the long term. I was pondering this the other day, and I am beginning to realize that your work should really be connected to your joy. It should be something that grabs some part of your soul, and moves it, takes it on a journey. Otherwise, you'll end up like Peter from Office Space, schlepping to work every day, but hating it the whole time.

Breaking out on this new path was not easy for Charles to do. He had a wife, a child, and following an uncertain path in design was not accepted by his then wife. So they split up, and then he proposed to Ray. The two were collaborating on a design for a simple chair, but it fell through in 1940. When World War II was going on, and their design ideas worked well for building more efficient splints than what the military had. So they went to work mass-producing them.

After the war ended, they returned to the original chair design, forming this design. This time, they were successful, and they began mass-producing these. In the late 1940's, they began producing furniture ideas for furniture manufacturer Herman Miller. No longer content to simply be furniture designers, Charles and Ray branched out into film and photography. They were commisioned by many companies to make these films, and produce these building designs. One of their main clients was IBM.

An interesting point, particularly for this time, was that Charles and Ray were serious collaborators, in addition to being married. Remember, this was the 1950's, when women had almost no way of achieving things, or figuring things out. Even though Charles was the one to whom the clients went for consulting, Ray was an essential part of the Eames office. Even to have the limited inroads into this collaboration was a significant frontier.

Anyway, Charles relied heavily on Ray's keen aesthetic tastes. On one occasion, the State Department asked them to commission a film on America, to be shown to a Soviet audience. Now, this was to be somewhat an advertisement for America, a tad nationalistic, however, the Eameses had some vision of their own. This vision was what made their design team so dynamic, so forward thinking. The point is, at the very end, they needed a shot to cap it off, which they hadn't decided on yet. So Ray told Charles "[use a clip of] forget-me-nots," these flowers being a universal symbol of friendship. Charles knew enough to take the risk of building on Ray's vision. This decision changed the whole dynamic of the film.

The Eameses made more than 80 films in their lifetime. Through said films, they explored nearly every subject they came across. Charles wanted to make a film about toy trains? Boom! They made Tocata for Toy Trains. They made one about the circus, after the Eameses visited a circus and went to town with photography there. The exhibits they put together also explored many different subjects, from mathematics, to Revolutionary War-Era history.

Of course, the one they are best known for is Powers of Ten. This film, in particular, used to give me goosebumps when I was young, in fact, it still does. It was originally made to make science more accessible to younger students. I remember that even when I was about 7, I didn't get all the concepts, but I got the sheer vast scale of these images and numbers. I was grabbed by the numerical part of it, 1, 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, so on. That made an impression on me that still lasts.



The whole film is available above. It is about 8 minutes long, in its entirety. Watch it! I rarely directly tell people to do things like this, but here we are. Anyway, it taught me, in a subconscious way, about communication that takes place beyond words. This is something that powers my creative work, including this blog. In person, there is only so much I can say to people. With spoken words, I am not the most articulate guy. I often stumble, or have to correct myself. On this blog, or in writing, or on a drawing pad, I can lay out what I want to tell, what I want to show, the interactions I want to explore.

Charles was quoted as saying that film is rarely used as an art. I think this is, unfortunately, correct. Not that there aren't redeeming parts of film, however, film is rarely used in a way that actualizes its potential, in my view. It can be both an art form, and a means of communication. Another beautiful example of this is Koyaanisqatsi. While different in its subject matter from Powers of 10, to me, those two are highly evocative of those same experiences. They have goosebump-inducing musical scores that work well alongside the images, and the narrative structures, to connect you to the nonverbal essence. Even though Powers of 10 has a clearly-defined, scientific narrative structure, and Koyaanisqatsi has a more interpretive form, they both lead you on a journey of the soul, that physically moves you.

It is this type of creativity that I dream of emulating. I hope, in my own way, to create things, and to interact with people. Many times, people will ask me "Why are you so angry?" I am rarely, in fact, angry. I am usually just deep in thought, deep in my internal exploration. There, I encounter many things that pop up, but only some of them make me angry or annoyed. I really like people, as a whole. There are so many things that I want to be able to communicate to people that I rarely can adequately express in words. How I will express them, I still do not exactly know, but I believe I can use my creative mind to come up with the way. Where it will lead, is a discovery I will make. That's why I wanted to bring the Eameses up tonight.

See ya, and keep wondering, folks!