Always drawing himself with a pipe, Seymour Chwast, designer, illustrator and co-founder of Push Pin Studios with Milton Glaser back in the day, said that the pipe adds a special something. I must agree. This was at at the last big AIGA event of the season, entitled Seymour: The Obsessive Images of Seymour Chwast.
Brightly lit variations of Chwast’s art for the event lined the theatre, with different words floating out of the pipe.
Held at the new SVA Theatre, the event was a conversation between Chwast and Steven Heller. Heller started the evening off by saying that Push Pin Studios was something that young artists either strove to be, or rejected — and Heller was in the second group. There was much bantering between the two (Chwast: ‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you about (not hiring me for jobs)’), though I must admit that a lot of the time I wasn’t sure if they were really joking or having a battle of wills. Chwast seems to have a rather dry sense of humor — many of Heller’s questions were met with ‘why not?’ type responses. But whatever the dynamic of two’s relationship really may be, it was a lot of fun looking through all the selected images from Chwast’s book, Seymour: The Obsessive Images of Seymour Chwast.
My favorite part was at the end, when they treated us to a ‘surprise’ (earlier in the talk, Heller urged Chwast that they must hurry, ‘So we have enough time for the … the surprise at the end’ — ‘Oh, yes, the surprise’).
The surprise was that they brought out an easel so Chwast could draw things requested by the audience. They provided him with a smock (though he was using a magic marker — ‘what they used to call a magic marker,’ according to one of the two gentlemen, I forget which … though I thought they were still magic markers?). It was quite funny when Chwast showed mock modesty and retreated behind the easel to don the smock, like so:
See the arms fling about as he shrugs into it:
Buttoning up, I suppose:
And here we have a rhinoceros:
A cat/automobile (he couldn’t choose between two requests … or he saw an opportunity?):
And a shark who’s a fan of Darwin:
Some help from Steven Heller in drawing a portrait of Heller:
And my personal favorite, the last drawing, which was of ‘sadness’ (who also has legs):
Aside from the excitement of the conversation, the night was like a who’s who of the design world. My volunteer friends and I saw some of our professors from Pratt (I saw my former typography instructor, Herman Schaper), former employers/co-workers, designers from Pentagram including Michael Bierut (my volunteer friend Ann used to intern there and recognized many faces), my fellow Random House intern Livia (whose supervisor is on the AIGA board and brought her along) — and my personal favorite, Chip Kidd, who had his book signed by Seynour Chwast:
Chip was nice enough to let me trouble him for his signature, which wasn’t just any signature, but an amazing illustration of Batman:
I also grabbed Mark Byron, who coordinates all the volunteers and such for these events, for a photo, since I won’t be seeing him until the next season starts. Mark is such a sweet guy and does such a wonderful job.
It’s a pity that the events have to stop during the summer, but I’m sure next year there will be lots more exciting things coming our way.
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