• 

What a better way to kick off Garrison Art Center’s 50 years in Putnam County than by exhibiting Ivan Chermayeff’s 50 graphic collages.

Ivan Chermayeff was famously known for designing iconic logos of giant corporations such as Chase Bank, Mobil, PBS, the NBC peacock, the Smithsonian, Showtime, Harper Collins,  National Geographic, PamAm Airlines and other hundreds more.

He started collage-making when he was a teen. Some of his collages take days or weeks to finish and he once said that he can make 40 collages in a week. He also confesses that he collects “garbage” like crazy, collecting tons of circus poster walls from Mexico, old envelopes and postage stamps and gloves he sees lying around.

A sneak peek of Ivan Chermayeff Collages

Due to his heavy logo designing background, one can notice a distinct and consistent theme in his collages and that is the graphic quality in them.

When asked about his collages Chermayeff said, “What I’m playing with is making new visual connections. It’s the arbitrary placement of them that sometimes makes them interesting. That’s what my collages are all about.”

You can still catch his work until February 9, 2014 at the Riverside Galleries at 23 Garrison’s Landing, Garrison, Tuesdays through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

See you there.

•