progress on the prairie

Bulgarian-born Luba Lukova is a graphic artist extraordinaire. Usually, I like to talk about little-known or local artists, but I only recently discovered this almost 50-year-old woman’s work, so I am eager to share. I have just never taken the time to look critically at graphic design or poster design as its own genre. I’m glad I did. Still, I’m not even sure they’re in the same genre or if I’m using terms like “graphic design” correctly. Also, what defines a work of art as a “poster”? I don’t know, but bear with me…

Even though the field of graphic design seems to have a reputation as being full of youngster hipsters, Lukova has been around for a long time, and that’s probably what is so refreshing about her art and personality. She presents a refined, mature, polished perspective in a world that can sometimes appear overly loud and haphazard or too flowery, too punk-y, too aesthetically trendy, too confusing, too Jackson Pollack.

Of Lukova’s portfolio entitled Social Justice 2008, one art reviewer said better than I could:

Dovetailed somewhere between Picasso’s wood-cut years and German Expressionism, Luba’s stark statements require but two or three colors to say a thousand words – undeniable words — about societal conditions.

The piece below, to me, manages to say what Donna Haraway took a whole manifesto to say. Not that Haraway’s The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness is too long or anything. It isn’t. It’s perfect. I just think it’s incredible how some people use paint or color or images to speak. And other people use words. Both can bring me to tears on the right day at the right time.

And I also appreciate her wisdom in interviews. So often, I hear artists complain about “the industry” be it music, film, etc. Or artists complain about a lack of an audience or peer group, say for poetry or photography. But Lukova- and this is something I can say for most of the graphic designers I know personally- embraces the business side of her art in a responsible and respectable way. I’ll end with some of Lukova’s advice for success; it’s practically its own brilliant graphic design in words:

You don’t have to have a graduate degree, but you have to learn and keep learning and look for excellence in your work. You have to be really good at what you do.

I like that. Have a LOVEly day,

Spring