From Flowers to Total Work of Art:
Saarinen Designs in Textiles
Saarinen Designs in Textiles
By Susan Saarinen, SLA, Golden, CO
Loja Saarinen, wife of Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen, was an award winning sculptor when she met her husband. As a young woman, she was trained in all the womanly arts of the day – cooking, sewing, weaving, dressmaking and embroidery. Upon her marriage to Eliel, at the time, one of the foremost architects in Finland, she gave up her sculpting career and devoted all her energies to furthering his. To this end she learned to design in many media, but textiles became her primary expression. She borrowed from her knowledge of traditional ryijy rug weaving and, working with her husband on designs, developed a modern expression of the old art, abstracting elements and working them into her tapestries and carpets.
Susan Saarinen, principal of Saarinen Landscape Architecture in Golden, is the daughter of architect Eero Saarinen, designer of the St. Louis Arch and grand-daughter of Eliel Saarinen. She grew up at Cranbrook, an intensely creative environment, where sculptor Carl Milles and ceramist Maija Grotell taught and where her godfather, Charles Eames, furniture designer Florence Knoll, weaver Jack Lenor-Larsen and sculptor Lily Swann, among others, met and developed their crafts. Susan is a landscape architect and an artist comfortable working in several media.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Denver Botanic Gardens – Gates Hall
Denver Botanic Gardens – Gates Hall
6:30 – 8 p.m.