AIA Cleveland and the Women-in-Architecture Committee Presents:

Susan Skarsgard

This lecture will be structured around an unusual career path that has wandered through some of the most interesting and important legacies of design in America. This includes an insider’s view of the General Motors Technical Center campus, designed by Eero Saarinen and considered to be a modern masterpiece of industrial architecture. Then a deeper dive inside this highly-controlled campus at the Global Design headquarters, to see where GM vehicles are imagined today. This story will be told with a profound link to GM’s design history and with a unique perspective on how her corporate career has been informed and influenced by her personal art work and relentless curiosity.

Susan Skarsgard is an artist & designer from Ann Arbor, Michigan known internationally for her fine art works, artist books, design and calligraphy. Her art installation “Imagine/Align” blooms every spring at the University of Michigan’s Nichols Arboretum in a one-half mile long line of 20,000 yellow daffodils traversing the environment, mapping thought and inspiring contemplation. 

Video on "Imagine-Align | Susan Skarsgard"

She has been a featured speaker for many art and design organizations, conferences & events and has conducted workshops and classes traveling extensively throughout North America, Australia, and Europe. Her work is widely collected by individuals and institutions including the Library of Congress Rare Book Room, University of Michigan Special Collections, University of Delaware, San Francisco Public Library and Smith College. The Newberry Library in Chicago has committed to collect her papers and work.

Skarsgard apprenticed in the late 1980s with Gerry Campbell, a masterful lettering and type designer from Detroit. She received her MFA in 2004 from the University of Michigan School of Art + Design.

Skarsgard has worked at General Motors Design since 1994. For 12 years she designed vehicle emblems and lettering for automotive nameplates and corporate & brand identity. Currently, she the manager of the GM Design Archive & Special Collections, which she and her staff founded in 2008.

Cost:

$15  AIA Members and AIA Cleveland Members  

$25  Non-Members

Tickets include complimentary parking, drinks and hors d'oeuvres at 5:00pm reception

Parking:

Complimentary Parking is provided for all guests.  Guests may park in either the "Annex Lot" or "Lot 73" located on the parking map below.  Please enter the building through the designated "C" entrance to the CIA building also shown below.  AIA Cleveland representatives will be on hand to direct you to registration table and Gallery C for the reception.

 

Thanks to our Event Sponsors:

Zaha Hadid Sponsor Level

 

Julia Morgan Sponsor Level:

 

Eileen Gray Sponsor Level:

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