Devon Foster

In my senior year of Pratt Institute's Master of Industrial Design program, I participated in the creation of Materials Exchange (MX). MX was a department funded initiative to increase environmental awareness and recycling efforts among students by developing a facility where students could drop off unwanted or unused material (wood, plastic, metal, fabric, assorted fasteners) and exchange them for materials they needed for their design projects.

While studying Illustration at the New York City High School of Art and Design, eight students including me were chosen to create murals on 3' x 6' masonite board to be installed permanently in the windows of the school's Kenny Gallery. My mural, whose theme was "The History of Art" depicted significant points in art history. With mixed media, I reproduced images of early cave paintings, Pre-Columbian art, Greek and Egyptian sculpture, Judeo-Christian art, Japanese Ukiyo-e and snips of famous works by Georges Seurat, Pablo Picasso, Georgia O'Keefe, Jackson Pollock, illustrator and graphic designer Milton Glaser and various examples of typography. Completed and installed in 1988, the murals are displayed there to this day.