In 2003, I began making research trips to India, primarily to the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, where I had a Fulbright Fellowship in 2005–06. India proved to be an invaluable laboratory to study the nature of artisanship, design thinking, and the lessons of innovation and sustainability that could be learned from the Indian craftsman. The artisan as designer is a major stream in my on-going research.

During the same period I have been investigating the nature of visual perception and how (and why) our physical and cognitive functions affect how we create both two-dimensional and three-dimensional artifacts.

Several years ago on a walk through the village of Parvathagiri, Andhra Pradesh, the two parallel lines of study in Indian artisanship and visual perception collided in the work of a local sign painter. Without the study in visual perception I would not have seen the radical innovation of the three-dimensionality of the letterforms I was seeing around me in India, and the perceptual leaps the sign-painters were asking of their viewers. This has led me to ask additional questions about the role of pattern and color in culture that I am investigating for upcoming work. The two documents, which you are free to download here, will give you some indication of the nature of this body of research.