Kandinsky, Defragging, and Spinning at the Milwaukee Art Museum

on coming together

“But it’s broken into pieces,” cried fox.

“The amazing thing about pieces,” replied bear, “is they always form a whole. If you do the work to put them back together.”

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Mobile: Spatial Defrag (26” x 26”)
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Have you ever watched your computer being defragged? Be honest.

I used to. And I’m not afraid to admit that I loved it. 😂

There was something so satisfying about watching a scrambled mess of colored Tetris-like blocks being reorganized, being put back together into a whole.

Order out of chaos.
All things in their place.

So, when the Milwaukee Art Museum store asked me to create a series of mobiles for the museum’s Wassily Kandinsky exhibition, including his Fragment I for Composition VII, I was intrigued.

The assignment: interpret Kandinsky’s most famous works … as mobiles.

Spatial Defrag, a riff on Fragment I, has always been a favorite of the designs I created.

“Think of defragging as organizing a giant closet full of half-open boxes and partially-assembled outfits.” - Hewlett Packard

When I first looked at Fragment I, I felt like I’d opened the door on that giant closet.

It felt cluttered and jumbled; like a whirlwind had swept through.

And yet, there was something foundational amongst the tumult; a framework that undergirded color and line, bringing the composition all together.

As I was designing the mobile, I worked to bring that foundation forward, to find that whole that lie underneath the scatter of pieces.

If only we could do the same in life, right?

If only we could find ways to focus on the foundational things we value, that which makes us feel whole, rather than get caught up in all the surface noise – things that separate + divide.

Feels like a worthwhile goal, yes?

Where in your everyday could you benefit from a defrag?