At home with Charley Harper
Introducing Charley Harper, my favorite American illustrator.
Charley Harper was a Cincinnati-based American Modernist artist, best known for his highly stylized wildlife prints, posters and book illustrations.
I fell in love with his work during a visit to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York. He designed their logo and many pieces of his art sold at the lab gift shop. I bought a t-shirt, bird poster and a children's book How to Draw 28 birds in Harper's Style. His online store is doing a great job promoting his work.
Designer Todd Oldham produced several films and books about Mr. Harper to help make sure his legacy lives on. I've embedded two of the films and a brief introduction sourced from Wikipedia.
<h2>At Home with Charley Harper</h2>
<div style="padding:56.25% 0 0 0;position:relative;"><iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/85360946?color=ffffff&title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; fullscreen" allowfullscreen></iframe></div><script src="https://player.vimeo.com/api/player.js"></script>
<p><a href="https://vimeo.com/85360946">Designtex Stories: At Home with Charley Harper</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/designtex">Designtex</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>
<p>In this short documentary designer Todd Oldham talks with Charley Harper about the evolution of his work as an artist, his love of nature, his disenchantment with realism, and his embrace of simplicity.</p>
<h2>Rediscovering Charley Harper</h2>
<div style="padding:55.87% 0 0 0;position:relative;"><iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/69191562?color=ffffff&title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; fullscreen" allowfullscreen></iframe></div><script src="https://player.vimeo.com/api/player.js"></script>
<p><a href="https://vimeo.com/69191562">Designtex Stories: Rediscovering Charley Harper</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/designtex">Designtex</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>
<p>Todd Oldham speaks about his discovery of Charley Harper’s art, an ongoing source of inspiration for his own practice as a designer.</p>