As part of the 2022 AIGA National Conference in Seattle, Washington, the DEC hosted the SURFACE mini-conference on Thursday, October 20th, 2022 from 8:00 am – 1:00 pm (PST). SURFACE featured peer-reviewed papers, panels, workshops, posters, and other work from design educators, graduate students, and others. You can learn more about the conference here: https://educators.aiga.org/2022-dec-m...

PRESENTATION TITLE:

Resurfacing: Tiles of Our Times

PRESENTERS:

Steven McCarthy (he/him)
Professor Emeritus
University of Minnesota

Many Portuguese building facades and interior spaces—churches, palaces, houses and public buildings—are covered with azulejos, or ceramic tiles. Portuguese azulejos
have a history dating to a visit King Manuel made to Seville, Spain in 1503, a city whose architecture and design reflected Moorish Arabic influences that themselves reveal stylistic lineage from Roman and Byzantine tile designs. Azulejos are a designed surface that keeps resurfacing.

While Portugal’s tiled walls are richly decorative, they have functions too: documenting and communicating Portugal’s colonial era, and serving as insulation against heat, moisture and cold. Bright blue tiles typically illustrate larger scenes as composite murals that depict historical, religious or cultural content from a time when Portugal had global power, while those in other colors are used for repeating patterns and geometric shapes in non-representational designs. Azulejos can now be found in Brazil and other former colonies in Africa and Asia.

This presentation will show the result of a contemporary tile project completed during a three week artist’s residency in rural Portugal in March 2022. The creative project acknowledges the legacy of traditional tiles while exploring the possibilities of new imaging, reproduction and adhesion methods in environmental installations. It also furthers the concept of global influence, local inspiration, cultural trade and dissemination.

Tiles of Our Times is both a body of visual work and a public dissemination campaign. The designer mined local Portuguese printed graphics such as maps, brochures, books, advertisements, packaging and other ephemera for texts, colors, patterns and images for the collage series source material. The collages are all 14 x 14 cm squares, the size of traditional azulejos (about 5.5"), and are designed for modular tiling, with compositions divided into halves and quadrants (two outward-facing semi-circles create a full circle, for example).

The designer had been to Portugal a half dozen times over several decades and had familiarity with local customs and culture. Topics and themes emerged in the collaged tiles: the wine industry, the sea—for boating, fishing and surfing—village life, tourism, national pride, indigenous crafts like Barro Negro (black clay pottery) and cuisine like pastel de nata (egg-cream pastry, a breakfast staple). Collage accommodates social commentary, juxtaposition, humor, parody and a recontextualized aesthetic.

Eight collages were selected for scanning and printing by Tondelagrafica, a local printing company with digital capabilities. An exterior grade adhesive-backed vinyl material was chosen for its imperviousness to weather and its easy application on flat surfaces. Four hundred stickers of eight designs were printed and trimmed for about €90 (roughly $100).

Tiles of Our Times has been installed in public places in Portugal, California and Minnesota, and packets have been distributed so others can do their own stickering. The project adds to the contemporary interpretation of azulejos as realized by designers Chermayeff & Geismar’s tile mural for the Lisbon aquarium and art collective Faile’s tiling of a modern house in Los Angeles.

Tiles of Our Times is modular, performative and transient, and yet is rooted in Portuguese azulejo tradition.

You can download a PDF of the SURFACE Mini-Conference abstract book here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1B-GN..., or can purchase a print on demand copy here: https://www.blurb.com/b/11386732.

To learn more about the AIGA DEC please visit our website: https://educators.aiga.org/

SURFACE Intro motion graphics by Ali Place
Branding elements by Vinicius Lima
Intro Music by Ringo Jones]


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