Athens, Ga. – The University of Georgia Lamar Dodd School of Art Galleries are pleased to present Snap to Grid, an exhibition by Brett MacFadden. Based in San Francisco, MacFadden is an art director at Chronicle Books. The exhibition will be the first to feature his experimental typography on paper and in gold leaf on the windows of the Broad Street Gallery. This exhibition will be on view from Aug. 28 – Sept. 28 with an opening reception with the artist on Aug. 28 from 5:30 – 7 p.m.
This exhibition also offers special programming for a limited audience. On Aug. 28 there will be a workshop with Brett MacFadden and designer Mike Essl, assistant professor of graphic design at the Cooper Union in New York and freelance graphic designer. The workshop will be located in the ICE Room, room 101, lower level of the Tanner Building on the campus of the University of Georgia.
With Snap to Grid, MacFadden exposes a side of the practice of graphic design that is usually left unseen. The drawings, which are experiments and hand-drawn elements that are critical to the process of graphic design, include phrases in the designer’s signature hand-drawn type and window gilding. MacFadden is a designer moving between worlds, traversing the histories and practices of both book design and typography, employing digital and arcane technologies to contribute to this dialogue. These experiments are played out against a “grid,” the foil that MacFadden exposes as a liberating framework. With this body of work, MacFadden joins a continuum of artists utilizing the language of design, such as Andrea Zittel, Barry McGee and Jorge Pardo.
The exhibition’s title, Snap to Grid, refers to a setting in design programs that causes elements to adhere to a grid structure as if by magnet – a technological replication of the way lead type and rules were physically configured into a “lock-up” in traditional letterpress printing. This grid, used today and historically as a tool for precision in design, is exploited by MacFadden’s typographic drawings, which expose the creative variation available within even a rigid structure.
MacFadden received an M.F.A. in 2D Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and a B.S. degree from the Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. He worked with famed designer Lucille Tenazas before joining Chronicle Books. Recent projects include an illustration in the Sunday New York Times Magazine and the books NorCalMod, with co-designer Geoff Kaplan, and Modern Threads: Fashion and Art by Mariska Karasz in conjunction with the Georgia Museum of Art.
All Broad Street Gallery events are free and open to the public. The Broad Street Gallery is located at the Broad Street Studios Complex, at 257 West Broad Street, in Athens, Ga. Broad Street Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. For further information, contact Nora Wendl, Gallery Director, Lamar Dodd School of Art at 706/542-0069 or nwendl@uga.edu or visit www.art.uga.edu.
For more information on the Brett MacFadden visit www.brettmacfadden.com; for more information on Mike Essl, visit http://www.essl.com/work/ or http://www.cooper.edu/art/bio_essl.html