countdown to 4.23: god no, it’s not just about mondrian

That was the first step with this year’s COUNT­DOWN TO 4.23 on 22 April 2017 … we WILL cel­e­brate 100 years of De Sti­jl (1917–31) but if we all get bogged down in Piet Mon­dri­an, we’ll all go mad from the pri­maries and squares and pri­maries and hell, Mon­dri­an broke with De Stijl.

But, be­yond that, Mon­dri­an is the most-copied of the move­ment. And his name is as syn­ony­mous with pri­ma­ry col­ors in rec­tan­gles as Kleenex means tissue.

In­ter­pret­ing the meth­ods of De Sti­jl, that’s where we start­ed – less Par­tridge Fam­i­ly bus (above), MOR Dutch de­sign – and this year the WE is a bit different.

Last year, 4.23 was a to­tal­ly made up event.

I want­ed to do some­thing dif­fer­ent than I’d usu­al­ly ex­pe­ri­ence at art shows, con­ven­tions, ex­hi­bi­tions. I want­ed some­thing ap­proach­able – that’s a big freeflow­ing mod­ern art par­ty that we sneak ed­u­ca­tion into. Sort of the at­mos­phere I try to have in my class­room, but larger.

SO (cit­ing burnout on my part af­ter last year’s crazi­ness) I’ve brought the FLOM­MI­NESS of 4.23 into my Spring 2017 ad­vanced graph­ic de­sign course at Uni­ver­si­ty of the Pa­cif­ic, one of four col­leges where I cur­rent­ly teach. 

And af­ter a hand­ful of busi­ness-based brand­ing projects (where stu­dents got to show me what they are re­al­ly good at), I gave the ti­tle of art di­rec­tor to Alex McBride (left) and as­sis­tant art di­rec­tor to Jon Sanchez (wayyyy in the back) – who had no idea their first batch of home­work as­sign­ments were akin to a job interview.

ROUND­ING OUT the rest of this year’s 4.23 team is Adri­ana Flo­res, Kyle Sab­bati­no, An­drea Lara, An­tho­ny Con­del­lo, Joan­na Duong, and Con­nie Ortiz. 

AND some mem­bers of my cur­rent BAU course – and MOST of our usu­al band of flom­mists. (cred­its to come!) (and wait till you see what stuff Louis is BUILD­ING – PIET MON­DRI­AN will be at 4.23! Kinda.)

BUT for the de­sign stu­dents, up FIRST: Posters and fly­ers – and the con­tent that goes with them. Which is hard to do, cause like last year, every time they turn around, I add some­thing. Or delete some­thing. Cause this is what we do. A lot. The goal is cool event, no mat­ter WAT.

AND WE’RE DE­TER­MINED TO GET OUR PRESS RE­LEASE OUT be­fore the event this time. And we hit a few walls al­ready. But hav­ing stu­dents OWN this is part of the game. It be­comes MOR than a grade.

Part of FLOMM has be­come (since the move­ment is grow­ing or­gan­i­cal­ly be­yond the game app) the con­cept that ART and the CRAFT of ART is all around us. And it doesn’t just in­volve can­vas and paint. Graph­ic de­sign is an art form, it in­volves TY­POG­RA­PHY and COM­MU­NI­CA­TION. Per­for­mance, En­ter­tain­ment, Mu­sic, Com­e­dy, Culi­nary – even the Cir­cus – all these fields have their cre­ative ART components. 

AND as we move along, many of us have what we’re good at. OF­TEN overlooked.

SO
on the 22nd,
we are now including:

a pro­pa­gan­da work­shop (with zines to the first 100 attendees),
vin­tage TIN­TYPE pho­tog­ra­phy (bring a Jack­son, there is some cost involved),
a sus­tain­able avant garde fash­ion show,
build your own LOOK! a work­shop on the lat­est trends in Eu­ro­pean makeup,
an ap­pear­ance by fa­mous Dutch artist MONDAIN,
the art of acupuncture,
a De Sti­jl por­trait artist,
un­ex­pect­ed cre­ative ven­dors and forms of en­ter­tain­ment on the edge of the mainstream
(MAYBE we’ll have a BAND called The Fly­ing Rec­tan­gles. Re­al­ly. We’re chat­ting as I type this.) 

ANNNNNND we’ll see what else we can do. NO ONE WALKS OUT with­out some­thing. Door prizes, art, sculp­ture or ??

CAUSE we’ll all be MAK­ING things. 

JOIN US on the 22nd. It will be as unique a night as any of us can dream up.
 
 

—steve mehal­lo

Flom­mist Steve Mehal­lo is a graph­ic de­sign­er, il­lus­tra­tor, font de­sign­er, ed­u­ca­tor, food­ie and gad­fly. He is the cre­ator and founder of FLOMM! Up top: Piet Mon­dri­an (Dutch, 1872–1944) with Broad­way Boo­gie Woo­gie, his fi­nal com­plet­ed paint­ing (col­orized), source.

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