A Celebration of The Art of Design: Jane Davis Doggett at The Arts Company

The Tennessee State Museum organized a retrospective exhibit of Jane Davis Doggett's artwork last fall, which has since traveled to Yale University Art Gallery, where its stay has been extended through July 11, 2010. Ms. Doggett, a Nashville native, was a distinguished graduate both from Newcomb College and then the Yale University of Art and Architecture in the 1950's. Her prime artistic mentor at Yale was Joself Albers, whose groundbreaking books-- The Interaction of Color and Homage to the Square are considered landmark works in modern art.

Concord Installation

She learned her lessons from Albers as well as from other mentors including Louis Kahn and Alvis Eisenman, and then began to blaze her own trails. She is now known by her artistic peers as a pioneer in wayfinding graphics, designing signage for some 40 international airports, among other achievements in her field of design art. She has singularly been instrumental in bringing the primary concepts of modern design-- initiated by the influential Bauhaus school of thought in the 1920's--into the practical world of large public spaces.

I Came, I Saw, I Conquered

In the past decade, she has created her own new approach to combining art, philosophy, and literature in creating affordable contemporary artwork conceived and produced through the latest technologies and materials of the computer and internet mediums of the 21st century.

Ms. Doggett's exhibit opening at The Arts Company May 1st is focused on her recent series of signed, limited-edition wall panels and prints based on selections from proverbs and various cultures, rethinking literary and philosophical ideas in her own visual idiom of graphic design. The panels and prints have been developed by Ms. Doggett to make affordable designs of the highest quality available to the public, using the latest printing technologies and papers, to assure a long life for her visual interpretations of philosophical precepts of cultures of the world. Her visual interpretation of each line in the 23rd Psalm in a series of 12 graphic panels is a case in point.

23rd Psalm

She labels this new work IconoChrome Images, and notes that these images are graphic statements that form a language on their own. They are not illustrations. Each design is based on a combination of iconic shapes and bold colors that present a simple visual way of communicating ideas familiar to lots of people in a fresh new way.




















Make it a point to see the array of Jane Davis Doggett's compelling artwork that speaks in color and form to the viewer. You can meet Ms. Doggett personally on Friday and Saturday nights (April 30 / May 1) at The Arts Company as part of "A Celebration of the Art of Design." It's an encounter that will connect you directly with the world of modern art, how it works and how it makes meaning. You can take the opportunity to put Ms. Doggett's book on Talking Graphics side by side with Josef Albers' Interaction of Color.