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This year has brought all sorts of projects– finishing a picture book, two murals, comics, a teaching opportunity, and more books ideas. But March brought in something entirely new: an invitation to illustrate the centerpiece of an exhibition at Brown University that opens next week on September 9th!

Concept Sketch for Industria City

Nathaniel Walker, a PhD student in architecture at Brown, contacted me in the spring to discuss his new favorite book, Ignis: The Central Fire, by Didier de Chousy. Written in 1883, the science fiction novel is about the industrial exploitation of the Earth’s central fire by a group of English investors. Filled with daisy fields, robot slave revolts, and a train shaped temple/city hall built over the central fire, Nathan was inspired by the book to put together a show on Futurism as part of his dissertation. And my job would be to draw the city of Industria from the novel!

But where do you begin when designing a Victorian Utopia? And what makes a city look like “the future” to us today? I started with the whimsical architectural drawings of Winsor McCay and photos from the Paris Exposition of 1889. The Eiffel Tower, built as the main entrance to the Fair, was what a few French architects had in mind when they envisioned the future.

Paris Expo 1889

Paris Expo 1889

Illustration by Winsor McCay

Iron and glass would be central components, along with borrowing some domes and towers from ”Oriental” architecture in the exotic East. Onion domes and Taj-Mahal towers meant “future” to Europeans in 1899.

I also discovered the drawings of Albert Robida and looked at a lot of Steampunk art. Flying machines with happy couples and lots of balmy steam would be primary components! Notice how the vehicles are open-air with no visible system of propulsion? Apparently both aluminum and helium had recently come into public awareness, so it was assumed that soon people would be sailing along with their sweetheart in their new aluminum flying carriages. Looks like fun!

Illustration by Albert Robida

Illustration by Albert Robida

The exhibition opens September 9th in Providence, Rhode Island at the Bell Gallery in the List Center at Brown University. More information soon. Next up: Industria Sketches. Stay tuned!

Ignis: The Central Fire, by Didier de Chousy, is the story of building a Utopian city around a hole straight to the earth’s core. This steamy wonderland, full of moving roads and glowworms, flying machines and glass houses, revolves around its train-shaped temple built on a platform over the great hole. Worshippers and civilians alike gather there to celebrate man’s industrious future!

Writing by the seat of his pants through tangents and digressions, de Chousy describes the temple as inspired by both the Parthenon (Greece) and the Pantheon (Rome). As the temple sets much of the visual tone for the city architecture, it was a natural place to begin sketching for my drawing for the show Building Expectations: Past and Present Visions of the Architectural Future at Brown.

Here are few sketches of the temple design, with great thanks to Google Sketchup for enabling me to build a 3D computer model to help with the circle perspective:

Up next: the final rough sketches for Industria!

The expectations build for Building Expectations! Here are the final steps in my process before arriving at the finish:

After many rounds of making drawings and a few key conversations with the curator of Building Expectations, Nathaniel Walker, I honed in on a train-shaped temple design I liked. And then, of course, it was death by tiny buildings!

Final Temple Design for Industria

I had hundreds and hundreds of tiny buildings to draw in 3-point perspective to “build” the city of Industria. Colored pencils on tracing paper helped me keep different sections in order as I began to construct a composition that would work as both the cover of the exhibition catalogue and the centerpiece of the show. The temple and a strong foreground was important for the right-hand side, which would end up being the front cover of the catalogue:

Early Compositional Layout for Industria

But the back cover needed strong visual weight too, to balance the city detail. Perhaps a very large building, and a moving road with robots? The entire piece also had to contain a significant number of key architectural details from the book, such as French gardens, smoke stacks, glass/iron and “lacy stone” buildings, a “moving road,” and robot slaves. And, of course! a happy couple on a flying machine. And a cat, just because:

Composition Draft in Colored Pencil

And here’s a look at the final rough draft for the drawing, a combination of drawing and gray digital tone:

Building Expectations will open this Friday, September 9th, at the Bell Gallery at Brown University. The final drawing, View of Industria, was executed in graphite at 36″ x 48″ and digitally colored for the giclee print. More views coming next week!

At long last, the final drawing! View of Industria was done in graphite at 32″x48″, and digitally colored and printed at 48″x72″. Commissioned as the centerpiece for the show Building Expectations: Past and Present Visions of the Architectural Future, it celebrates the city of Industria from Didier de Chousy’s novel Ignis: The Central Fire, published in France in 1883. I’m very excited for the official opening this Friday, September 9th, at the David Winton Bell Gallery in the List Center at Brown University!

Curator Nathaniel Walker, a doctoral candidate in architectural history at Brown University, has put together a fantastic collection featuring historic works from the fervid imaginations of past futurists along with newly commissioned art work (including my drawing!) to illustrate a fresh look at the future. He will kick off the show at 5:30 with a brief talk about these visions of the future. Hope to see you in Providence this Friday at 5:30pm!

For the invitation, please click here:  BuildExpect Invite

For the press release, please click here.

Nathaniel Walker, curator of the exhibition Building Expectation at the Bell Gallery at Brown University, just sent me this review of the show last night as seen in the November/December 2011 issue of Art New England. Thank you, Steve Starger! To learn more about View of Industria, click here or here. The gallery of roughs and project development is here.