Andrea Zittel has made making new objects for everyday life, and living with them, her work. One striking example are lightweight living pods in the California desert landscape. Zittel has made clothing and furniture too. Her clothing projects were inspired by office work where she was required to wear something nice. Her response has been a self-designed piece of clothing she wears daily for months. She develops and lives with her experimental, practical and economical furniture. She is an almost practical, almost impractical, industrial designer, only constrained by the fact that she lives her life with the work. The result is beautiful.
After a few years prototyping her living pods in the California desert near Joshua Tree, Zittel cofounded the High Desert Test Sites. Once a year artists converge on the site to make and share art in landscape.
Another Zittel open source social practice project is her Interloper hiking club. Walkers gather in costume for wilderness hikes. Sometimes their hikes inhabit art fairs.
The essence of Zittel's effort is to create a minimal implementation of something we each are familiar with from everyday life. In the viewer, that can create a new sense of creativity.
She speaks at the PSU Monday Lecture Series. This series has been consistently engaging. It has moved to a new location - Shattuck Hall, Room 212, double the old location's capacity. 7:30PM Free
