Focus on Faculty
Professor Joel Mason, Chair
Advertising Design & Graphic Arts
BlueEvening
'Signs & Spaces'
During April 2006, New York City College of Technology's Grace Gallery featured an exhibition of color prints representing 25 years of photographic experimentation by Professor Joel Mason, chair of the College's Department of Advertising Design & Graphic Arts (ADGA). Entitled "Signs & Spaces," the month-long show of 40 works with such deceptively simple titles as "BlueEvening," "EverReady," "FireChief," and "IgnitionOff" was one of the most successful in the history of the gallery.
According to Professor Mason, the prints embody his fascination with "abstract two-dimensional compositions of color and surface" and with "signs that have been transformed by the effects of time, weather, neglect and circumstance." The show was made possible by a Professional Staff Congress/City University of New York grant.
An artist and graphic designer with a strong interest in typography, Mason obtained his BFA from Cooper Union and earned his MFA at Hunter College. He went on to work as a graphic designer for what was then called the New York City Parks, Recreation & Cultural Affairs Department. "I originally became involved with signs when I worked there," he explains. "We designed outdoor signs and sign systems for the parks, zoos and historic districts."
Subsequently, Mason worked in a design studio on campaigns for clients that included local politicians, Citibank, Better Homes & Gardens, the New York State Department of Law, the New York State Urban Development Corporation and Battery Park City.
During travels in Europe and the U.S., Mason began documenting environmental graphics and signs; he saw the signs as "painterly" and sought to express their "unexpected formal qualities as surfaces and letterforms slowly oxidize, fade or undergo other changes."
Mason first came to New York City College of Technology as an adjunct in 1977 and joined the faculty as a full-time instructor two years later. In 1988, he became chair of the ADGA department, and has taught typography, graphic design, portfolio and internship classes.
A roving eye for design and composition led Mason to collect books (on design, photography, typography, maps, nature, geology, science), paper ephemera (post cards, labels, bags, prints), and other stuff. "I have a growing, somewhat eccentric pile of lost junk jewelry, medallions, pins, earrings, odd pieces of metal, etc.," he says.
His collecting began when a poster that he designed was included in the book Images of an Era: The American Poster 1945-1975, published in conjunction with a traveling exhibition sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution as part of the 1976 bi-centennial celebration. The poster, "Moon Site," resulted from an idea he proposed while working as a graphic designer for the New York City Parks, Recreation & Cultural Affairs Department to erect giant video screens in the Central Park Sheep Meadow the night of the first moon landing in 1969.
Mason has penned two articles for Connections, a former City Tech constituent magazine, on collecting: "Discover the World of Book Collecting" (Spring 2003) and "Discovering New York's World of Posters" (Spring 2001). He also had "Typographic," a photo essay published in Grand Street magazine and has shown his work often in group shows at City Tech. In addition, he participated in Hunter College's 1991 computer graphics group show, "Macro-Micro," and had a poster commemorating Brooklyn Borough Hall's renovation displayed in an outdoor exhibition adjacent to the building.
Shown here are 17 of the 40 visual images that Mason describes as reflecting his education as an artist and his "fascination with the sometimes ambiguous nature of the physical world." For additional information about the complete 40-print series, e-mail Professor Mason at jmason@citytech.cuny.edu.
All photos by Joel Mason. Click on thumbnails to enlarge.
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