Preface
By Carla Atwood Hartman, daughter of Lucia Eames
Nearly two years ago, the Eames Family committed to archiving the body of work created by our mother – Lucia Eames. A large number of unsorted bins arrived here in Denver, and I began ordering, scanning, and tagging full-time, with the work far from done. I am privileged to have this responsibility – each day I have awakened anticipating the next revelation and my admiration for her as an artist and woman has grown by leaps and bounds. I have not been alone on this journey; as always, my siblings have been beside me, even while not physically proximate, helping in different ways. They shared in my joy as snapshots winged their way. And, Mary Cate Chilton, becoming more passionate daily, began with me on Day 1. And we had the help of a few short-term hires. To date, we have witnessed many treasures: sketches and writings for her metalwork – gates, panels, bollards, stools, plant stands, benches and more – 6 1/2’ of paper; 199 sketchpads weighing in at 85 lbs, filled with writings and elaborate drawings that explore variations of nearly fifty motifs, all joyful and filled with humor and optimism. Finally, well over 100,000 photographs. And it continues. In this book, a commemoration of her first solo posthumous exhibition Lucia Eames: Seeing with the Heart, we present a few of these images. Her five children took on the challenge of writing introductory essays for each of the five chapters – not an easy task as, like us all, she was a complex person. There are bits and pieces that we still do not know, and look forward to learning as we research and interview. While we all wish she was here to answer questions, more important would be that she could share in knowing her impact: the increased rippling effect on an ever-widening audience.
Photos by Lucia Eames. © 2022 Lucia Eames Archive Scans of Lucia Eames artwork. © 2022 Lucia Eames Archive Photo by Richard Barnes. © 2014 Richard Barnes courtesy Eames Office, LLC Photo by Charles Eames. © 2010 Eames Office, LLC Photo by Carla Atwood Hartman. © 2022 Lucia Eames Archive Photo by Eames Demetrios. ©2022 Lucia Eames Archive Photos by Unknown Photographers. © 2022 Lucia Eames Archive
During her lifetime, Lucia (1930-2014) called several regions of the U.S. home. Born in St. Louis, she spent most of her childhood in Missouri, except for two years in Michigan. From age 12 on, after her parents’ divorce, she spent summers in California visiting her father. She chose to attend college on the East Coast, and before her senior year, she married and stayed East where she bore three children: Carla, Byron, and Lucia. She divorced in 1960; moved to San Francisco; married and had two more children: Eames and Llisa. Although she traveled to visit family in St. Louis and the East Coast, and later, often went to Los Angeles to care for the Eames House, she called northern California home from 1960 on until her death. Although my mother was a charming, gracious and generous woman and friend, there were times that she must have felt like the odd duck. Her parents divorced at a time when few did; afterwards she lived in a dorm room at Washington University at the end of a hall from her mother, newly made assistant dean of women. Fortunately, shortly thereafter, her grandparents, who lived just a few miles away, provided her with a stable home. She was probably the only one of her friends who left each and every summer for California where she visited her beloved father and stepmother. Very few women took engineering classes at Radcliffe in the early 50’s, and assuredly even fewer carried a child in their final semester. Furthermore, although divorces were a bit more frequent by her divorce in 1960, she was a single mother of three at age 30. She occasionally marvelled that she was the youngest mother in her oldest daughter’s class and the oldest mother in her youngest daughter’s class. And, with her youngest two at her feet in the studio, she worked – designing and welding. When her stepmother, Ray, died in 1988, she took on the care of the Eames House and Eames Office. And, finally, getting divorced for a second time at age 68, was difficult – all the more so, because it was her second husband who convinced her to leave what she had considered her “final” beloved home in San Francisco to move up to the rural isolation of Petaluma. Yet, throughout, Mom, even while writing of her heartbreak caused by her final divorce, kept drawing. Despite the clouds of darkness surrounding her, she drew suns, celestial figures – elements of hope, optimism and joy. She managed throughout to keep her essence intact – seemingly using her art as a lifeline. Such inner strength is inspiring and can serve as a lesson for all.
Sustainable Aesthete
Memoir by Byron Atwood, son of Lucia Eames
The bluebirds returned a few days ago, back to their home at the garden’s edge. We had cleaned out last year’s nest and fixed the roof with a cedar shingle just in time. They are back again. A bluebird can live up to 6 or more years, and 95% mate for life. Lucia Eames loved bluebirds. Purposely constructing a new nest every year in timeless devotion to the necessities of survival made bluebirds and birds in general yet another thematic touchstone in her artistry. The natural world resonated with Lucia; her eyes always saw the beauty, her mind appreciated the intricate wonder, and her heart soared in those special moments when Nature’s gifts filled her with great appreciation and thankfulness. Her art frequently depicted birds of flowing beauty, as well as butterflies and their eternal fluttering gracefulness. As a nesting bird looks to find the optimal materials for their nests, Mom too would carefully, devotedly gather natural materials, long reeds of grass, graceful twigs, colorful feathers, shapely leaves, snake skins and then make exquisite weavings from her findings. This delicate yet powerful interlacing of found materials exemplify her own inner resilience and provided nourishment to her soul. Her heart was filled with a passionate love of life’s offerings, a love that joyously grew as she celebrated and shared this love through her art. Lucia Eames approached her art – whether it be photography, writing, drawing, designing, collaging, weaving, gathering, furniture, gates, metal sculpture – with an intense purposefulness to utilize any and all materials with respect, care, and thoughtfulness. She saw the possibilities in the seemingly infinite objects we are surrounded by, seeing what others didn’t. An envelope typically doomed to end up in a trash bin would be used masterfully in one of her collages and spring to life as a breathtaking butterfly. She brought to life beautiful outdoor Starburst and Sundance gates laser cut from her exquisitely drawn
designs. She saw the beauty in the numerous drops from the cutting process and made wonderful compelling art from what would ordinarily be considered scrap. Her use of found materials was yet another way for her to celebrate and promote what is possible for each of us to accomplish by creativity with what we have available to work with. Before Mom passed away I had asked of her a special favor: to gift me one of her Sunburst gates. We installed it – a gate of steel about eight foot tall and eight foot wide – back at my home in Vermont in front of the pond. The sun sets behind it and is magnificent in spring, summer, fall, and winter. The shadows it casts are an everchanging delight. The birds love perching on it and I love looking at it. Mom, the bluebirds are back. Yesterday morning the female was perched at one end and the male at the other end. It was beautiful and you were with us.
California Optimist
Memoir by Eames Demetrios, son of Lucia Eames
When we were growing up in San Francisco in the 1960’s, Mom invited an amazing person to stay with us. His name was Haku Shah and he was a friend of our grandparents, busy installing an exhibition that summer at the de Young Fine Arts museum, and so Mom offered to put him up. Not only was Haku an accomplished artist in his own right, eventually to be considered a national treasure of India, he was a scholar of his nation’s traditional arts - the topic of his show. One day Haku decided to make a rice drawing for the household and so, on our living room floor, began his work. The hardwood floor was a perfect canvas for the crushed rice – a traditional technique, felt to express the transitional nature of life by the delicacy of its material. I remember vividly the lines of the palace appearing on our floor, the curved forms of its roofs. I remember too that, like a palace in a fairy tale, it grew and grew, leaving the confines of the living room and expanding into the dining room. Mom was delighted, pushing the dining room table to the corner so construction could continue. (Knowing Mom, there must be photographs somewhere of this!) Finally the masterwork was done and, though it would soon – like all palaces of the great and powerful eventually are – be swept into the dustbin of history, for suspended moments it was a glory to behold. It was so stunning and had been done live in front of us from the fingertips of our new friend: we were bowled over. Mom was so grateful as she understood it completely for the gift it was, honoring her hospitality. I won’t pretend to remember how long he waited, but certainly, knowing just how gracious he was, well before dinner time, Haku would have begun to sweep it all up so that order could be restored and the dining room table could be operational again. She asked Haku not to destroy it. She couldn’t bear to see it swept away into any dustbin, historical or otherwise.
Haku explained that it was okay, it was the ephemeral nature of the work. But Mom was having none of that. She loved it. And so the masterpiece stayed, not just for days, but for weeks, long after Haku left. Dinner and other meals were served while tiptoeing around it. As a kid, it was shocking and fun to realize that the same table where Mom required forks to the left, knives to the insides of spoons, napkins in napkin rings – could be wedged into a corner in the cause of something magic. Eventually the drawing did go the way of all things and not a trace remained. But those of us who saw it did not forget it. It was the first thing I mentioned to Haku when I met him as an adult, sending wishes from Mom. Optimism, among other things, is feeling that one’s world can get better. I even think it involves embracing change – which may be why seeing our mother seize that instant has stayed with me. No one, certainly not Mom, can celebrate change all the time, but I think it is no coincidence that Easter was Mom’s favorite holiday. The Easter eggs, the colors, Spring! And not just her creativity but also ours. She wanted everyone to celebrate. Mom’s attachment to a specific branch of Christianity was a bit loose, but the story of the resurrection, its connection to the fertility of Spring and themes of reincarnation in other faiths connected to her deeply. Actors like to say: Dying is easy, Comedy is hard. In a similar way, one might well add: Anger is easy, Optimism is hard. Mom felt the pain and risk of the world. I remember the peace marches we went to as kids: she was literally “Another Mother for Peace.” As I grew older, she would tell me often how lucky she felt that all her children were healthy and alive. She did not take it for granted. But though she understood her good fortune, she had her own pain. She experienced divorce three times from the inside: once with her parents, and with both of her marriages. She was an only child in an era when divorce was rare, which gave for her a particular version of that trauma. Perhaps there are five chapters in this book because she never wanted any of us to be as alone as she had sometimes felt as a child. And so, the joy I see in her art is also resilience, triumph, and a joy to remind us that always the world has beauty. No matter what part of the journey she was on, Mom created; it was also one of her ways of connection. When my kids were young, she told them about a darling critter called Little Dog. She said this of the stories:
It reminds us that we all have heart songs to listen to, wait for, work for and to… In 1976, for 14 days Christo and Jean-Claude’s Running Fence danced for 24.5 miles through quintessential California landscapes, through those rolling hills, making its way to the ocean. Mom had to see it. So, one afternoon she bundled me and a couple of friends into the car and took us on a road trip. She was her uncompromising self on the ride up, telling us that no art could be as good as the fences themselves in the natural course of human interaction. She was no pushover. At the same time, when Running Fence came into view, she was as intoxicated as any of us by the sheer audacity and beauty of the experience. She loved photographing it: curiosity was part of her optimism. Many, many years after our Running Fence adventure, Mom moved to a place not too far from there. In time, she designed for herself a Zen gate to put out in the middle of a field. She was inspired by old gates she’d see seemingly randomly placed in the landscape – they were all that was left after their fences, running and otherwise, were long since gone.
Visual Poet
Memoir by Carla Atwood Hartman, daughter of Lucia Eames
Careful . . . careful, mustn’t let Byron and Lucia see me —no giving it away! What excitement Mom and our stepfather set up for us: find that week’s slip of paper (hidden much like an Easter egg); look up the single written word (often unpronounceable); triumphantly report the find at the dinner table (hoping to be the only one); use it correctly in a sentence (not easy); followed by the elation of applause! This “game”sometimes involving a full week of searching - introduced us to the beauty and complexity of words. Understandably, thesauruses and dictionaries – hardcopy only – became treasured lifetime tools. Mom was a wordsmith. She delighted in the wrestle – constructing, moving, interchanging, replacing – all the while pursuing the seemingly impossible, which was her notion of perfection. Time, never begrudged, made room for iterations amassed under her ministrations. A nearly-invisible, yet crackling, tension kept her in the pursuit. Finally, as she relaxed into completion, so too, would those of us in the house. Mom’s appreciation of a well-crafted page propelled her to take calligraphy classes, sometimes (delightfully) with us in tow. Her wondrous thank-you notes interlaced embellished words enlivened with calligraphic flourishes. These elaborate missives spilled with love and joy – treasures woven with strands of color, form, and sentiment – as did her poems and short stories: all the work of a visual poet. Her art was not her only art form; she applied her eye and craft to all areas of her home: walls, shelves, window sills – entire rooms served as canvases. From her early 20’s, she festooned walls with disparate items interwoven seamlessly and unexpectedly. In California, bulletin boards covered with colorful burlap served as collaged kaleidoscopes, assemblages of posters, invitations, graphics,
children’s drawings, 3D favored objects and more. While each delighted and stimulated, the whole was always greater together. As a photographer, she created similar magic. Those taken as a 17-year-old, presumably while visiting Charles and Ray, foretold of her interest in light and shadow, conveyance of mood, juxtaposition and intersection of lines (whether roofs of adjoined buildings, a feather’s barbs, or the veins of leaves). These tiny details were often what truly enchanted: the elegant curves of a yet-to-bud flower; a bug with legs outstretched clinging to a screen – its diagonals interplaying with the grid of the wire; pistil and stamens standing proud above petals with their forms shadowed against the same translucent petals below; the exquisite curving of hundreds of rose petals drying jumbled in a huge bowl. After we had grown, and during her time in the rolling hills of Petaluma, Mom’s focus turned even more to the natural. Photographing frequently, she captured the interplay of plants and grasses, cracked soil’s patterning, chance encounters with snakes and other creatures all the while continuing to revel in textures, light and shadow, color, scale and details. While she captured her visual joy, she also collected pieces of her landscape: feathers, when gathered, spewed forth from earthenware; stones, preferably black or deep grey, combined with the visual variations of matte and shiny; tall, green grasses becoming immortal when woven into extraordinary celebrations. There is so much in her words when she wrote: Even on the darkest days, the sun illuminates our lives— And, all who can, need only look lovingly at the commonplace. The prized sun, drawn differently 746 times in her sketchbooks, provided sparkle; as did any commonplace object under her laser-sharp focus. Through her photography, she exhorts us to look closely to find the magnificent for ourselves. During one of my last visits with her, Mom gifted me with a memory. It demonstrates her near gut-wrenching joy in the commonplace: we sat visiting in the back of her Petaluma home, enjoying a glass of wine and watching the sunset. Twenty feet away, dew drops, illumined by the setting sun, sparkled – a marvelous visual delight. At that time, her short-term memory had begun to fail her, yet for several evenings in a row, I witnessed her supreme wonder at the sparkling jewels hanging from her wire fence. And, just as she was moved, so too, was I, in finally realizing that Mom truly did see with her heart.
Celebrations of Joy
Memoir by Lucia Dewey Atwood, daughter of Lucia Eames
Mom chose to celebrate life. A happy birthday filled with colored paper, ribbons, and being the Queen for the Day, where “the birthday girl can do no wrong.” At times we might return home after a summer away and discover transformed bedrooms: a room paneled with vibrant red and orange fabric, another time with a delightful mural. Mom assembled Halloween costumes for us all from an assortment of leftovers. The year cardboard tubes, salvaged rods and fabrics were crafted into a Dr. Seussian giraffe was the year I realized that, when it came to the Best Costume Competition, the rest of the class was competing for second place: it was simply expected that Mom would win, delighting the class with yet another fantastic creature. I loved Mom’s costumes, teetering under the extended neck while straining to see through another’s eye slits, always trying to move as I imagined her creation would. Her makings were gifts of love: a sharing of beauty that her eyes and hands uncovered, and that in turn, revealed her spirit. Mom found beauty in a perfect line, a well-executed task, a smile, all nature. Her sharing could be as simple as rearranging rocks that she had found into yet another perfect tableau, or setting a table filled with color and life; it could be that glorious costume or a stunning bronze stool created for a beloved stepmother. For Mom, nothing was too big or too small to celebrate. While we might all expect the big, I thrilled at the small: Mom’s cry of joy when spotting a white horse, a four-leaf clover or a rock and tree perfectly balanced on a Petaluma backroad seen anew in each passing. Simple yet wondrous discoveries were as cherished as life’s applauded milestones. Both enriched her spirit. Even when house-wide decorations gloriously celebrated Christmas or Easter, they harmonized seamlessly with Mom’s already perfectly balanced celebrations of daily life, seen in delightful settings and displays.
Mom captured the essence of what she saw, from dried grass and butterflies to stars and so much more, exploring relationships, sketching possibilities and refining her designs. It was a quiet process, with her entire body focused on her art. Watching Mom, I would forget to breathe. I felt I was seeing her true essence, all expectations stripped away. Mom invited me to a calligraphy class. I reveled in watching her warm up, her pens flowing effortlessly across the paper, delighting in her multiple iterations as she refined an elegant swoop, striving to achieve a perfection known only to her. The very process illumined her, infusing her with a grace of peace. It was a deeply joyful celebration. When the teacher complimented my admittedly wobbly work, Mom delighted in the sharing of her joy in process with me. Just as when I danced her costumes’ personas, there was passion and love, shared. Mom never stopped creating. Her creations provided understanding, comfort and renewal whenever life threw a curve ball – at times they were even a defiant celebration of life. Transformative and bonding, Mom understood the power of celebration: love infused with joy.
Creator by Nature
Memoir by Llisa Demetrios, daughter of Lucia Eames
While growing up at our house, our mother was always making. She created amazing, colorful holiday celebrations at Christmas, 4th of July and our birthdays. She would write poems and short stories while taking photographs and practicing calligraphy. She designed tote bags, scarves and stationery for special occasions for friends. Her thank-you notes were often as special and thoughtful as the gift she had received. Coming from a family of makers, I loved being around her because I learned so much watching how she approached her making process. Every material seemed to offer an opportunity for her to make something. She found delight and beauty in everyday objects like lined envelopes, newspapers, candy wrappers and strips of paper that most people would throw away. She would repurpose them into striking collages using texts from magazines and she always had a pair of scissors nearby so she could cut out butterflies, hearts and stars. Her kitchen counters were her drawing boards where she could talk on the phone or cut out shapes, arranging them while making a mug of hot cocoa. Mom liked to make from what she collected and found. She was very hands-on as she was making when she tested the strength, durability and flexibility of a material. She particularly liked to weave materials together. She would collect green pine needles on the ground on her morning walk and there would be several small, perfectly woven squares of pine needles sitting on her kitchen counter to dry in place later in the day. She also would take trimmings of the branches from the fruit trees, or long grasses and weave them together. She would hang them on the walls around her home and called them Penelope’s Plan B.
The list was endless of what she saved to make something later. She found inspiration when she saw an object like a bottle top or candy wrapper which she would transform, liking to see the range of possibilities. Over the years she created her own stockpiles of raw materials – saving corks, wine labels, scraps of paper, foil, rocks, bottle tops, Odwalla labels, silver liners from Carnation Instant Breakfast, envelopes, candy wrappers, ribbons, and wrapping papers. She would carefully steam, peel, flatten, smooth out each wrapper and label to save for her future projects when they were dry. Her artworks made simple, plain objects that might be overlooked by many into striking moments of beauty. Even when talking on the phone with friends and family or sitting in a meeting, Mom’s pen was never still. She was always drawing on pads of paper or steno pads, adding hearts to names, or rays of the sun or shooting stars across the page as she jotted down notes and numbers. She would explore subjects like the sun and stars endlessly as she spoke on the phone. For larger artworks, her method was to iterate on an idea by making multiple versions by hand or by photocopier until she finalized the concept. I would then work with her as she produced the final version at different scales – sometimes in steel, aluminum, bronze and stainless steel. Even when she had a pattern laser cut, she would save the shapes that dropped out – repurposing the pieces into other artworks so that there was as little waste as possible. Our mother’s creativity was as boundless as the materials she explored, and it was in her nature that materials flourished in new, captivating ways in her hands. My hope is that sharing her artworks today will inspire more makers, in order to show the boundless magic that can unfurl within the everyday.
Lucia Eames Undiscovered American Heritage American Symbolist California Optimist Creator by Nature Sustainable Aesthete Visual Poet Celebrations of Joy
1930-2014
❤︎
Artist Lucia Eames dedicated herself to family, legacy, and community, leaving her personal story largely untold. Nevertheless, throughout her life in California, she pursued and honed her own aesthetic to form a visual vocabulary of familiar motifs and abstract representations. With optimistic themes of Joy, Hope, and Celebration, Lucia embraced the wonders of the universe and the beauty of nature in her art. She worked in many different media to create drawings, writings, photographs, and works woven with found objects. She is best known for her sculptural metal works rendered in cut steel and bronze and her powerful graphic designs embedded in printmaking and interior objects. Her early years were spent with her father, Charles Eames, at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where he taught and subsequently met her stepmother, Ray. Lucia’s talents were recognized at an early age when, at age 12, her wooden sculpture was published in the legendary Arts & Architecture magazine. In 1952, she graduated from Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, having enjoyed Walter Gropius as one of her professors. Lucia spent much of her adult life raising five children on a tranquil side street of San Francisco. Humorously, when the family moved, it was to a place a mere block away. Both homes had treasured gardens, with the second overlooking a large national park with the Golden Gate Bridge on the horizon. It was in these two wooden homes that Lucia forged her style, her artistic approach and her commitment to an all-embracing creative spirit. While building on her parents’ legacy and passing on their innovative teachings to new generations, Lucia quietly continued to create her own works. In later life, she lived and worked in Sonoma County, California, transforming her living and workspaces into treasure troves of extraordinary visual richness and expanded ranges of her work. She did the same with steno pads, filling them with writings and drawings that brought her environment to life. Her exhaustive archive, stored for decades in her home and recently unearthed, reveals the true artistic breadth of Lucia Eames. The work of Lucia Eames is in public and private collections and can be seen in the living room of the Eames House.
Colophon
Acknowledgements
This book is published in conjunction with the Milan exhibition, June 5-10, 2022, of the same name organized by the Eames Office, dba Lucia Eames Archive and Form Portfolios with Carla Hartman, Archivist and Curator, and Peter Christensen, Creative Director, with support from Crate & Barrel.
Lucia Eames Archive Carla Atwood Hartman Mary Cate Chilton with assistance from Olivia Kayang
© 2022 Eames Office, LLC dba Lucia Eames Archive, except where indicated. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, photocopy, information retrieval system, or otherwise, without permission from the Lucia Eames Archive. Conceptualized, Designed and Published by Form Portfolios. Printed in 1000 copies on acid free paper. First Edition. For further information: luciaeames.com formportfolios.com @luciaeames
Lucia Eames Advisory Committee Byron Atwood Sandy Burton Jackie Atwood Cassel Eames Demetrios Carla Atwood Hartman Eckart Maise Lucia Eames Project Staff Byron Atwood Ross Atwood Sandy Burton Jackie Atwood Cassel Eames Demetrios Llisa Demetrios Genevieve Fong Carla Atwood Hartman Ric Keefer Eckart Maise Chloe Martin Daniel Ostroff Kelsey Rose Williams With Gratitude from Lucia Eames Archive Diane Atwood Lucia Atwood Mark Burstein Martin Burstein Sonja Burstein Guthrie Demetrios Xander Demetrios Carl Hartman Rick Learman Shelley Mills Michael Nicastro Shane Zaier Camron PR Eames Foundation Eames Institute
Form Portfolios Peter Christensen Rita Rosa Prates Isabella Rose Celeste Davey Anders Brun Cecilie B. Hansen Chiara Manfredi Mette Lindberg Peter Jepsen Stefan Tervoort Janiece Piechocki Jack Lynch Mark Masiello