Welcoming Posters from Russia
Last week was an exciting first week of school for UMSL Designers! On the Tuesday after the MLK holiday, with the syllabi still warm from the printer, my new colleagues Liz Sullivan, Scott Gericke greeted the bright rested faces of our amazing students.
But this first day was extra exciting and hopeful because right after introductions and housekeeping, the junior studio students helped me hang 88 amazing posters from the Golden Bee 12 International poster Biennial!
Golden Bee is a large international poster Biennial that has been running in Moscow for 26 years or so (The announcement for the most recent call Golden Bee 13 just went out!) You can learn more about the biennial at goldenbee.org
I have been very lucky to have my work included in a few of these biennials, especially after I received my first catalog from Moscow. My heavens! The catalogs are a clearing house of sublime work of talented designers from Europe, (with great representation from Eastern Europe), Asia, and the Middle East, etc. The last Golden Bee biennial boasted 17,000 entries from 77 countries. Golden Bee was where I first learned about Homa Delvaray, Erik Brandt, Peter Bankov, Harmen Liemburg, Richard Niessen, Wei Li, Shipeng Tang, Niklaus Troxler, Lanny Sommese, Jouri Toreev, Cedomir Kostovic, and and several others who have become favorites.
As a person who longs for opportunities to travel, seeing the first catalog felt like a chance to vicariously visit all sorts or cities around the world. It was like having a warm drink and a spirited visual conversation with 100’s of like-minded artists and designers from cities I will likely never see.
As if this was not enough, director Serge Serov also sent us a second show! is a collection of 500 posters commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. We will be showing these as well as a slide show.
So now you can have your own conversations! The Golden Bee /1917-2017 Opening is next Thursday February 1 at 5:00 pm at UMSL Gallery FAB at the Fine Arts Building, at the corner of Rosedale and Florissant Road. Serge Serov, the exhibition director will be there for the opening and will be lecturing at 6:30 at Gallery 210. Come meet him! Come see these amazing posters!
