Vivian Beer ’00
I tiptoe through contemporary design, craft and sculptural aesthetics, sampling from each one.”
MECA&D Sculpture major Vivian Beer is a New Hampshire furniture designer and maker who describes herself as “tiptoeing through contemporary design, craft and sculptural aesthetics, sampling from each one.” She creates one‐of‐a‐kind and limited production pieces that “intends to transform our expectations of and relationships to the domestic landscape,” often combining industrial materials into her designs and has referred to her process as “sophisticated daydreaming.”
In 2014 she received a $25,000 John D. Mineck Furniture Fellowship from the Society of Arts and Crafts, awarded to one artist annually, which funded coast‐to‐ coast travel for her Desert Design Lab, which included spending two months in an RV with a mobile studio and visiting and collaborating with artists in Southern California, Utah and Nevada. The project included working with graduate students to bring a concept from small paper models to 300 pounds of bronze parts readied for fabrication and finish.
Vivian has also recently worked as a Smithsonian research fellow at the National Art and Space Museum studying the history of American aeronautical design in order to further inspire her work. Her work focuses on “the technical and cultural notions that have influenced the changing appearance of airplanes and the concept of speed over time.” She earned her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and teaches and exhibits internationally.