MTC ART GALLERY

William Blackwell

Geometric Expressions

An architect by profession, William Blackwell has a corollary interest in geometry. He is the author of Geometry in Architecture, published by John Wiley & Sons and republished in paperback by Key Curriculum Press. Editorial Trillas in Mexico published a Spanish version, which is still in print. A second book focusing on his innovations in pure geometry is nearing completion.

Blackwell’s interest in geometry, coupled with a love of color and design, has led to the explorations in geometric art shown in this exhibit. His work has been shown at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) in Berkeley, the Berkeley YWCA, Route One Gallery at Pt. Reyes Station, the Hearst Art Gallery at St. Mary’s College, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) sales and rental gallery at Fort Mason.

His domestic furniture designs were once given a one-man show at the SFMOMA as part of the “Bay Area Art Explosion” series.

As an architect, Blackwell has had an unusually diverse and interesting career.Notable projects include design of an airport reception pavilion for the late King Hussein of Jordan; planning for the new city of Jubail in Saudi Arabia; a conceptual plan for Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to the U.S. Capitol in Washington DC; and designs for street furniture still in place on Market Street in San Francisco.

He has been employed by Paul Weidlinger & Associates in New York City; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Architects in San Francisco; the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency; Market Street Joint Venture Architects; and the Bechtel Corporation. He has been retained as a consultant by Fluor Daniel Electronics; Corwin Booth Architects; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.

Blackwell holds an undergraduate degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a graduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley, both in architecture. He is a Korean War veteran.

Artist Notes: “Geometric Expressions”

Although strongly attracted to color and appreciative of art, I have had no formal training that would combine these interests with my unusual aptitude for geometry. However, I have spent many hours wandering through museums, and have seen and admired the influential work of Mondrian, Kenneth Noland, Sol LeWitt, Frank Stella, and others who have successfully used geometry as an art form. To this day, I remain captivated by Ellsworth Kelly’s tightly framed Red White, 1962 in the permanent collection of the SFMOMA.

For relaxation, I began to make colored ink washes in my apartment but always in a geometric framework. This process was a natural. Later I had a home workshop with the tools and space needed to develop my present layering format and a decent level of craftsmanship.

The importance of functional geometry in our daily lives can hardly be overstated. The pleasure of the subject, however, is in the discovery of relationships of shapes, lines and planes, which is mathematical investigation coupled with visual presentation. When color is added — voila! – the product can transcend the strictly functional and begin to fulfill the art spirit.

My colors, incidentally, are chosen for clarity and harmony in a fully resolved composition. The pure shapes of geometry lend themselves to full strength colors, (i.e., the primaries), and I rarely use earth colors.

Geometric art cannot be viewed in the same way as a recognizable landscape or portrait. The beauty of the expressions is in the ordering of shapes, lines and planes — and in the elegance and simplicity of near perfect relationships.

Sometimes, the visual — although purely mathematical — can become surprisingly sensual and suggestive. Such are the curves of life.

A friend once asked about the importance of what I do. The one thing I can say with certainty is that my special interest has given me countless hours of preoccupation and concentration away from the cares of the day.
— William Blackwell

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