Field Study 9

Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, a designer known best for her association with the Supergraphic Movement of California, was a student of dance in San Francisco, before moving to Basel Switzerland as a young widow, in 1956 to study graphic design at Basel Art Institute under Armin Hoffman. 

Her most significant and influential designs utilizing Super Graphic style were for the Sea Ranch Architectural development in Gualala California in the 1970's, who's timeless quality and innovation still remain a hallmark of the design foundation of the region.

Solomon has continued to practice and teach, both at Harvard and Yale to name a few, and expanded upon her graphics into architecture, fine art painting as well as landscape design. Her feminist leaning sensibility I find refreshing in a world during her time which was permeated by glass ceilings. 

In an interview with Creative Review Magazine 2011, Solomon, an aware feminist,  spoke upon the subject of her male peers, and their seeming requisite career freedoms to indulge, without limitation and constraint, their creative expression in the field, against her own struggle to balance her personal art practice with that of her life demands as a mother and homemaker:

"Now that I happily live alone with my dog I have time to think, and realize that I was always so frantically busy making money to live, taking care of my daughters, and worrying about men, that I never had the time to think, least of all about my work. At my office I just drew up the first design I visualized so i could leave to pick up my daughters from school, shop for dinner, cook and clean, play wife and do all the stuff working mothers do." (Barbara Stauffacher Solomon).

"Clever verbal architects used my skills to promote their projects; mostly real estate developments. I designed good design covers for many questionable commodities. I worked fast and well and my projects in or below budget. I flattered the men, got paid, and then went home to cook dinner." (Barbara Stauffacher Solomon).