From home to office to fashion design, color plays an undeniably important role in our everyday lives. What or whom drives decision-making when it comes to the colors that comprise our homes, clothing, and environments? What role does color play in the work of designers -- and how does the public get to participate? Our esteemed panel will discuss the impact of color in the spaces surrounding us, while exploring how emerging technologies alter the decision-making process for designers and architects as well as laypeople.
Panelists include:
Amanda Williams, artist/architect, professor, and Biennial participant
Rob Hellander, BEHR interior design and color expert
Paul Preissner, architect, professor, and Biennial participant
Andrea Reynders, fashion designer and professor
Moderated by Lee Bey, architecture critic and photographer
To attend, RSVP Here.
Panel will be followed by cocktails & appetizers.
Amanda Williams is consumed with how combining art and architecture might help make all parts of the city thrive. Color is a central preoccupation in her work, with an evolving palette that is largely derived from the urban landscapes she traversed as a child growing up in Auburn Gresham, Chicago. Deeply invested in understanding the relationship of color, race, and space, Williams uses vivid, culturally derived colors to paint foreclosed and abandoned houses on Chicago’s South Side as a way to mark the pervasiveness of neglected and undervalued Black city space. A 3Arts Foundation awardee and recipient of a Joyce Foundation scholarship, she is a former Eidlitz Travel Fellow to Ethiopia and was a featured artist in Chicago Artists Month. Williams has exhibited and lectured at institutions including the Studio Museum in Harlem, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Syracuse University, and the University of Michigan, and she is a member of the board of the Hyde Park Art Center. A graduate of Cornell University’s School of Architecture, Williams is an Adjunct Professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where she recently received an excellence in teaching award.
Rob Hellander is an interior designer, color consultant, and set designer who has been with Behr for two years. A lifelong passion for color and creating beautiful spaces has brought his design work to a national and even international audience. Rob attended Parsons School of Design in New York City for interior design and has worked as a set designer and prop stylist for magazines and national television shows. Rob has designed the Behr corporate offices, retail stores, a boutique hotel and numerous single family homes. Rob has an extreme passion for travel and is always searching for the next trend in design and color.
Paul Preissner runs Paul Preissner Architects, which is located in Chicago. He has written a few essays about architecture for publications including Volume, Clog, PLOT and NewCity. Preissner’s work has been widely published and exhibited in the United States and abroad, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the Buenos Aires International Biennale of Architecture, and the Rotterdam Biennale, and is a part of the permanent collection at the the Art Institute of Chicago. Paul has taught at the the University of Pennsylvania, Syracuse University, the Southern California Institute of Architecture, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and served as the Hyde Chair at the University of Nebraska. He is an Associate Professor and Acting Director at the University of Illinois-Chicago School of Architecture and lives in Chicago with his wife, their daughter, their son and also their small dog.
Fashion designer Andrea Reynders has maintained a broad engagement with a range of fashion related endeavors in her varied roles as artist, educator, lecturer, curator, fashion consultant, stylist and production designer. Reynders has designed for numerous clothing collections, from her most current line of contemporary coats, and shirts under the ‘Andrea Reynders’ label. Her modern designs are linear, and sculptural.Professor Emeritus and former Sage Endowed Chair of Fashion Design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Reynders developed and taught numerous courses in fashion design and construction as well as interdisciplinary courses that cross the boundaries of art and design. She currently is the Design Director for the Chicago Fashion Incubator and mentors the Designers in residence with refining and strengthening their collections.
Co-presented by BEHR and the Chicago Architecture Biennial in partnership with AIA Chicago and the Fashion Focus Chicago program at the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events and the International Interior Design Association (IIDA).
