The small sculpture installed over the park for the closing party.
Two flights, 12 long hours of travel and 1 epic Uber ride into the heart of San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter. It was all worth it knowing the next few days would be filled with adventure, good food and an explosion of creative thoughts and lessons from Adobe MAX – The Creativity Conference.
When I decided to attend the conference, I knew I was going to be surrounded by endless creativity and be able to find some inspiration to bring back with me but I didn’t appreciate just how many times my brain could be filled to the brim in one day. Each day the conference had a few demonstrations on new products as well as speakers with stories to share. A few of the better known speakers included fashion designer Zac Posen, photographer Lynsey Addario, and writer and Director Quentin Tarantino. While each of these speakers had an amazing story or quirky personality that changed the way I think about my own work, I was most intrigued by Experiential Sculptor Janet Echelman.
One day, Janet realised her life was too sheltered and she was not experiencing it to the fullest. Her solution? Become an artist and travel the world. As a painter, she was hired to give exhibitions in galleries around India. When her paints and supplies did not arrive in time to complete the project she looked elsewhere for inspiration. She started making bronze sculptures in place of her paintings but needed to make them bigger, more impactful. She found inspiration in the form of fishing nets she saw while walking the beaches of India. These were nets she had seen everyday on her walk but hadn’t seen as anything other than what they were. She used the fishing nets to sculpt a dynamic art piece that moved with the wind and changed in the light. These sculptures are the size of buildings and hang in the air from poles. Many of her sculptures are permanent and can be seen in Portugal, London, Amsterdam, Spain, Miami and many more locations.
As a designer, I have always been fascinated by the ability to create something digitally and turn it into something I can hold in my hand. I often wondered if that was just the geeky designer in me because I love packaging. You know those memes that say ‘I made dis”? Yea, that feeling right there. Janet was able to make a career out of this and have the whole world admire her ideas. Her sculptures start as ideas in her head that come to life and take shape in the real world. She fulfilled her desire of making her sculptures something you can, and want to, get lost in. I got to experience that first hand at the MAX Bash. A small sculpture was installed over the park where the closing party was held. Listening to Janet talk about these sculptures was cool, but seeing it in person was mind blowing. The sculpture changed colours and moved with the wind coming off the water and when you looked down there were paisley-like shadows all over the floor. It felt a bit like being at a carnival and a lot like design magic.
In fact, the entire MAX Bash was like being at a carnival. There were spinning balls of fire, trees of cotton candy, art pieces made of jelly beans, sharks carved out of wood and hung from the trees. The MAX Bash mimicked the rest of the conference by surrounding you with inspiration and creativity in all of its elements. The labs, sessions and workshops at the conference were the training pieces needed to make your work come to life and then you walk into MAX Bash and, for me at least, start thinking about how to make your work more visible.
Oh, and did I forget to mention the food? The desserts moved around the park on a conveyor belt and food trucks – oh the food trucks where everywhere! There must have been 30 food trucks AND stalls set up in between serving pizzas and salad and anything else you could think of. If anyone knows me, they know how much I LOVE food.
The whole of San Diego stole my heart with the food. From Argentinian steak to Little Italy Pasta, Old Town Tacos and of course juicy, fat, gourmet burgers, I ate my way around San Diego. Of course I couldn’t go all that way and not play tourist. I checked off a few things like the San Diego Zoo, Sunset Cliffs, La Jolla Cove, Sea Lion Tour, Old Town, Little Italy, Balboa Park, Seaport Village, Coronado Island…. *inhale* I could get lost in San Diego for a month and still find new things to do every day.
My trip to Adobe MAX 2016 was the perfect combination of creativity, food and travel. The only thing more I could have asked for was extra space in my belly for the food. #FoodIsLife
