LETTER FROM OUR PRESIDENT

May 2013

Dear fellow Designers, Industry Partners and Students,

Well, we have had quite a wonderful spring season!  It has been a great pleasure for me, as your President, to host our two outstanding events.

Our next event, the Design Symposium, held on May 5^th at Giovanni's on the Water in Darien CT was another wonderful evening.  Our industry partners put on a beautiful display of their products.  I personally learned a lot about their companies and look forward to working with them.  Our speaker, Jamie Drake FASID, gave a fabulous presentation, explaining and displaying his beautiful portfolio of work.  Jamie was his usual gracious and wonderful self, mixing  and talking with all of our guests.  Thank you Jamie, we love you!

Moving forward, the Strategic Planning Committee, which consist of present, past and future board members is in the process of starting the strategic planning for 2013-2014.  In fact, your incoming board will be attending the Chapter Leadership Conference in Los Angeles, June 20 to 22, where they will be gathering a lot of new information for strategic planning for the chapter.  I look forward to their report when they return.

Our next meeting will be our Annual Meeting, scheduled for September 12 at the Milford Yacht Club.  We are planning an interesting program, as well as awarding several of our members who have played roles in making this past year so successful.  I will be handing the gavel to your new president, Sara Hopkins, Allied Member ASID.  Of course, we will all visit and have a delicious dinner too.  I hope to see all of you on September 12^th - it will be another great evening for our chapter.

Always my best to all of my ASID CT members,

Lynn Garelick ASID

President     

We appreciate their willingness to serve the chapter and look forward to their leadership!

Tuesday, July 23 from 5:30 - 7:30 pm

Abstract Art, Works on paper, Acrylics

by artist David Morico

Cocktails and Canapes

Wakefield Design Center

652 Glenbrook Road

Stamford, CT

10% ofevening sales will go to ASID scholarship fund

 

John is a Registered Interior Designer in the State of Connecticut has been practicing Interior Design for 30 years. He is a Past Connecticut Chapter ASID President were he also served on the board for 8 years and is a Past president of (CCID) Connecticut Coalition of Interior Designers, the current CCID Vice President of Legislation, has been a CCID member for the 16 years, 13 of which he was a board member.

John founded "Arabolos Design Associates" in 1985 and still provides residential design services for renovations, new construction and additions, specializing in Media Rooms, Kitchens and Master Bedroom and Bathrooms. Commercially he also has designed many restaurants including "Saint Tropez" now redesigned into "Brazzier" in Fairfield Ct., The "O - Bar" in Trumbull Ct. and most recently in the fall of 2012, "Frosty Twist" a frozen yogurt, coffee and breakfast establishment in Milford Ct. Many of his students have worked as interns in his office and or have worked as design assistants on many of his projects.

He has been a practicing professional artist since 1969 exhibiting his work throughout the country.  Since 2001 he has been a member of the Silvermine Guild in New Canaan, CT, and is also represented by the Silvermine Gallery.  At Silvermine he runs a monthly "Art Speak" critiquing program for professional member artists and serves on the Silvermine Gallery Committee. He has won numerous art competition awards and has had his work published by Art New England, Gallery & Studio and Direct Art Periodicals, and also the New Haven Register. He has had his artwork published 9 times for "Nature Genetics" periodical covers.

In March 2005 John published his first book about his art titled, Chaotic Symmetries - The Artwork of John Arabolos©.  The book is about the study and investigation of "chaotic" patterns found in nature whose random forms and self-similarity have been altered through the utilization of symmetry, geometric morphological sequencing and related mathematical principles to aesthetically control and create both order and systemic structure from random organic imagery. See arabolosart.com. This artwork was exhibited recently at the Yale Environmental Science Center at the Peabody Museum of Natural History in an exhibition called Ecological Symmetries.  Currently this work is on exhibit at The John Slade Eli House gallery in New Haven and will again be featured this fall of 2013 from October to December in an extensive exhibition at the New Haven Lawn Club.

Based upon his artwork, in July of 2008 John filed for a patent for a new "Disruptive Technology" for creating systemic morphological pattern sequencing. This design methodology enables the creation of an infinite number of self referential patterns from any given pictorial reference. This applied technology that has been developed, is currently being used in the creative development of pattern sequencing within the "Graphic Image Terrain" by the fine and applied arts of the Interior, Architectural, Textile, Graphic Design and Education industries. This past year, the domestic and European patents have been approved. The process can be seen and utilized as on online design tool at "Image Terrain.com".

Please share with the reader how your passion and love for academia and design has motivated you to shape an outstanding Interior Design Program.

After receiving my Master's degree in 1980 from Pratt Institute I had planned to go directly into teaching Art and Design at the college level. At that time there were no art or design teaching jobs to speak of in the immediate New England area which meant I would have had to leave the state of Connecticut if I wished to teach. Unfortunately, because personal obligations kept me local, I inadvertently fell into the professional world of Interior Design. After working for numerous firms from 1980 - 1984 I opened my own Interior Design Practice in Fairfield Ct. and grew my design business to include an Architect as a limited partner, two Interior Design assistants, and a support staff of three.

 On or about 1991 I became a member of ASID and became completely immersed in the Connecticut Chapter through which by the time I became President Elect of the chapter I had met Christy Somerville Allied Member ASID and Assistant Professor of Interior Design at UNH. I began taking on student interns and was then asked to join the staff in the Interior Design program, create the Construction Documents courses and to redesign the existing Architectural Design courses. I brought all of my real world Interior and Architectural Design experience in both art and design into my teaching. My professional experience brought a depth and sense of reality of the Interior Design profession to our Interior Design program that cannot be had purely from academia.

Our program brings together the best of both worlds, practical and academic, so as to provide our students the most complete and comprehensive education and exposure to the Interior Design profession. This is what we have become know for and consequently why our students are desired by the design companies looking to hire them.

As a professional Designer and Artist I love what I do and I try to translate and transfer this passion to my students so they can experience and embrace and hopefully invoke their own inner excitement about their Interior Design education and their professional design careers.

What future challenges do ID educators face?

In my opinion, the most difficult challenge ahead for Interior Design Educators is a common problem that many if not most professions and industries face and that is how to stay cutting edge and current without sacrificing the basics, the fundamentals and the tactile practical aspects of what and how the Interior Designer works, applies their knowledge and technology so as to not lose sight of the smaller picture within the bigger more grand picture. There is always a new buzz word or global concept being embraced that is important and relevant to a sense of now. But the tendency of many ID programs is to go head over heels into new territory so much so that they leave behind and minimize the importance of the necessary foundations of their programs.

 An example in technology is the quick abandonment by many ID programs of hand drafting to only CAD. 15 years ago CAD was a new technology embraced and rightly so, but should never be done so as to abandon the craft of hand drawing and the development of true depth perception by relating real world objects in scale and in depth perception. The computer CAD programs do not accomplish a real world understanding of objects and spaces especially because they do not enable a designer to relate to the idea of what size and scale truly are as what does occurs when the eye, hand and mind coordinate to draw. Today many programs are reintegrating these drawing classes for just that reason. The ID program at UNH did not abandon teaching these basic drawing techniques. Clients want to see you the designer sketch and draw right in their presence. They need to see the creative process at work. This establishes a sense of awe and respect for the designer creative abilities. CAD is extremely important and for that 

matter, REVIT, the new software drawing program even more so as one of many tools the designer needs and must use. They are both, indispensible time savers but not replacements or the best tools to feature and or develop the designer's creativity and depth perception.

Please include one of your most rewarding moments as a professor including how long you've been teaching

I have to say that there are two examples that I have found to be the most rewarding;

• About 8 to 9 years ago my Construction Documents ll class was asked by the Dean of Ats and Sciences at UNH to redesign his room and 4 adjacent rooms to his office. He also asked us to redesign the layout for the Associate Provost's 3 offices. The design solution developed by my students including the room architectural layout features, color pallet, furniture selections, glass panel doors etc have become design standards continuously and currently being utilized throughout the university as they renovate the older existing buildings.
• 4 years ago I re-formed the "UNH Design Group"  which included 3 senior students assisting me in measuring the old existing 19^th century buildings on campus to create "existing conditions" drawings that the Facilities Department could use to evaluate and renovate to accommodate the changing needs for classrooms and offices. We began with Maxcy Hall, a 4 story building of about 80,000 sq. ft. The students also provided proposed locations for additional stairwells, a redesign of the third floor of Maxcy hall, a very large New Entry addition to the west side of the building, and a complete set of additional plans for identifying classroom, office and department uses. These plans are still being used today by the facilities department. The Vice President of Facilities has repeatedly expressed to me how often they use our plans. Soon the program will be reinitiated so as to measure up the remaining buildings that still need to be done.

              

    

Stephanie Macari

Stephanie is the new Student Representative to the Board. She is a student at the University of New Haven.

Hollie Sutherland ASID LEED AP

Hollie was a member of the first class in a new Interior Design MFA program at Endicott College in Beverly, MA. She studied for two years and completed a thesis titled "The Lived In Interior: Discovering the Authentic Self" for which she received the 2013 Joel Polsky Academic Achievement Merit Award. Her thesis explored the role of emotion in Interior Design.

Going back to school caused Hollie to consider architecture and interior design through criticism, history and philosophy. It gave her an overview of the field from Modernism through the present. She was surprised to find the vast amount of literature on architecture and the lack of material on interior design.

Hollie feels that designers today have a huge opportunity to think critically and write in a scholarly fashion about Interior Design. This approach can positively impact the perception of interior design. would cause the interior design field to be perceived as a serious topic. The lack of a history of critical thought on its origins, development and the contributions of interior designers needs to be addressed and analyzed. She believes there is a direct correlation between the acceptance of interior design as an intellectual field and the recognition of interior designers as professionals.

Next fall Hollie will teach Residential and Contract Design at Fairfield University.

To support the ASID platform issue of sustainability, ASID will no longer print and mail membership cards for allied or professional members. Members can log in to ASID.org and print a membership card 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, at their convenience. This process has been successful with our student and Industry Partner members, for which it has been in effect for more than three years.

To print a card, members must log in to ASID.org and select "Go to My ASID." Once in the My ASID section, they should then select "Print Your ASID Membership card."