Howard’s Story

For the past few years I have been making patterns for applications to any surface that can hold a pattern. More on that later.

I have been swimming in a variety of visual waters for more than three decades.

South African born and raised, my interest in art began when I began to lose my sight at ages seven and eight. The condition, abnormal cone- shaped corneas in both eyes, worsened until at age thirteen I had seven percent vision in both eyes. I began large charcoal drawings  on paper, on the floor, my nose pressed to the paper. I was operated on in my teenage years, and upon graduating high school I entered the Johannesburg School of Art. I studied industrial design and industrial ceramics for two years before switching majors to graphic design and textile design, which I studied for a further two years. I graduated at the top of my class with a Dip.A.D.

I moved to California and entered Art Center College of Design where I studied illustration and fine art graduating cum laude after three years in 1978 with a BFA (Hons).

I immediately drove to New York City and began a career designing and illustrating for clients that ranged from giant firms to tiny concerns.

Three of those early years were spent as a graphic designer for WNBC-TV News, producing as many as five  illustrations and graphics  for the news in a single day. Thereafter, I did illustration  for major magazines, advertising work for clients such as Bergdorf Goodman,  Estee Lauder and Revlon, illustrated a book for the publishing arm of the New York Times and so on. As someone with wide-ranging interests it suited me perfectly to work across a wide spectrum of the visual world.

I left WNBC to work with the New York Institute of Technology on the Images II paint system, one of the first artist-dedicated computer graphics workstations. I spent a great deal of time at their facilities, as I and other artists  advised programmers on what artists might be looking for in a computer graphics system. At the time I also studied set design at NYIT, just for the pleasure of it.

Freelance work as an illustrator and graphic designer continued during these years.

In 1988 I had my second set of corneal transplants as my condition had returned.

In 1990, I returned to South Africa with my wife, Gayle Dallas Blackston and we spent the decade of the nineties there. I worked for most of that period exclusively in fine art, producing large abstract paintings most of  which now hang in corporate and private collections in eight countries. I had group shows and solo shows.

The need to engage more directly with the commercial market began to surface and I began to work on a Macintosh computer at the end of 1997.

I painted, as well as doing design commissions . I have not been one to appreciate the compartmentalization of visual disciplines and am intrigued today to see the walls fall down in creative endeavor.

In 2000 we returned to the United States, to Rhode Island, and I was immediately offered, and accepted a position as art director for a multi-media firm named Silverlight Productions, in Newport. I spent eighteen months there after which the company closed its doors.

Various commercial projects followed, and then I began creating patterns. I began them with no particular market in mind. I approached them as a fine artist. bringing all the rigor of my experience and training to bear on the designs which grew in a few years to a collection numbering in the thousands. We were now living in Westchester, north of New York City.

I founded a company for this area of work and named it DOON, after my splendid young boxer dog.

Although these patterns appeared to be most suited to textile designs, or wall coverings, I wanted them to be open ended and be afforded the possibility of being produced for unusual applications  and the newest technologies and materials. My interest in architecture accelerated in earnest as I explored new materials and marketed my work to architects around the world. This remains my primary ongoing work.

I signed a partnership agreement recently with a major glass manufacturer to provide some of my design work to the architectural industry as laminated glass  and I am developing relationships  with  manufacturers of Corian by Dupont, with a view to producing certain patterns in translucent Corian which can be lit from within. Or whatever they invent tomorrow. Young designers, engineers, architects labor away in Brooklyn New York as an example and I want to know what you are up to. The paradigm shifts. Let’s stretch it and see what shapes we can make.

DOON has become a brand with more than one arm yet I would say the company has a single focus. The idea of branding this company to encompass any visual work I might produce has given context to my core activity.

Please see page on DOON, and why he is so much more than a brand

I founded DOONCARD, which supplies design to, and endeavors to educate, young people in the meaning of design inside life. The product is simple and for those yet to enter the corporate world. Having some freedom to create  any type of design  has brought me back to fine art concerns. Each person gets a unique product, which contains social networking data along with any other contact information required. The project has just begun. The project is growing. The project will be successful.

I had my fifth corneal transplant late in 2007. I’m no longer fifteen or 38. Healing takes longer. Vision returns like a sleeping turtle. I still see shapes fast and accurately. Detail comes later. Up close. Personal.

I have become involved in the world of social media and believe we are in the beginning of discovering its immense value, firing disciplines, opinions and links through a disappearing universe of information. We look to the business-generating potential, the social networking upheaval, and social assistance, and camaraderie that is being borne right now. The bright minds of business and communication have their work cut out for them. Work.

My lifelong passion for photography is finally being given a public presence. Now I get comments! How cool is that. It raises the stakes as presence on the web does for any endeavor. All this is healthy. The fit shall run faster and further, the academics will dissertate, (!) the plagiarists will go shopping. And the small rooms furnished with cheap tables supporting some electronic gadgets and attended to by a good set of brains will inevitably shake the building.  I look forward to this as it changes every day, and this adrenalin is contagious. Who will do what and will be notice? Probably not but it simply means we will find out a short while later. Use and abuse and the rules will appear. And there are rules. So go forth. Make mistakes. Make something good, something you believe in.

And share it. Many of us will be watching.

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