Gestures in Sawdust

Why do designers want so badly to come off as fine artists? I'm not saying this fella's sculptures are no good, but what the heck? Why are you writing about them here? I don't see much design value in someone making what are essentially doodles. Quaint is one thing. Pieces like this discovered in an ancient tomb also would be more valid. But I see little design value in studying a crude sawdust bridge beyond masturbating your eyes with something you fancy.

Thanks for your comments, Joseph but I think you miss the point. Over the years, Design Observer has written extensively about designer sketchbooks, the “doodles” that plant seeds for future work, the sketches that allow ethereal ideas to emerge more fully later. When you went to college, did you take classes in 3-D design? Drawing? Painting? Art History? Of course you did. To be fully engaged as a designer means being open to expanding your visual language. Many designers actively paint, sculpt, write poetry, or take photographs. And, we have many world renowned illustrator/designers (and readers of DO), who work with paint, ink, found materials, wire, objects. You ask why designers “want so badly to come off as fine artists?” They don’t, or if they do I think they have missed their calling. Some are both. I dare say all go to museums. All read about the things they don’t do in their day-to-day life as a designer. John Byam was an elderly man who was not a designer, and didn't consider himself an artist of any kind—he just made things from his imagination. That we can view these extraordinary assemblages for what they are only enriches my eyes, and I share them with my readers. By the way, that “crude” sawdust bridge you dismiss as having little design value, I am humbled at the visual power and complexity of that piece.