On April 11, 2002, the Eli Whitney Museum will open an exhibition of small works by designers, artists, architects, educators, and engineers. Each will make of common materials uncommon expressions.
This exhibition will help define design as a way of thinking: a fundamental mission of the Museum’s teaching. The exhibition will celebrate the breadth and significance of design as an economic activity in the New Haven region
The April 11th premier will support the Museum’s Apprentice Training Program and will underwrite workshops and classes for very young designers from all communities.
The Ideal: The Sphere
Leonardo wrestled with philosophy. He studied the ancient Greeks who illustrated ideas with mathematics. Like Plato, he envisioned pure forms,a simple and perfect geometry beyond the surface of the imperfect world. Of theses forms, the sphere was quintessential: the absolute atom, the pure planet.
The Real: The Cradle
Leonardo reveled in invention…the creations of the human hand that manipulate, manage, magnify and mirror nature. Nature usurped classical geometry as the ruler of Leonardo’s mind. And yet Leonardo connected invention to nature as simply and precisely as the concave of the tee embraces the curve of the sphere.
The Challenge
Does the tee exist only for the sphere? Leonardo proposes that it is an invented relationship and so it is possible to improvise infinite new relationships. Create new relationships for the sphere, the tee or both. Find new connections, new forms and new meanings.
Photography by Robert Lisak www.robertlisak.com
