When considering Industrial Design, I personally rarely view it as art, but much more as an applicable science. Mainly due to my background, of growing up in a household of architects, I am mostly hesitant to approach a more art-based design, which is created in limited numbers and is often a section of the field, which is composed of one off pieces. Despite my personal feelings on many forms of art-based design, I do agree that are several sections of our field, which very much need to be designed and created in a one off format. The section which I have the deepest personal feelings and desires to explore at a latter date, is design for human memorial.
While it is common practice to have a granite gravestone to memorialize an individual who has passed on, people are increasingly realizing that there must be a different and better way. At this present time there are many directions which we as a field need to explore to get anywhere close to an ideal memorial process, currently one group of artists seem to be striving to reach that goal. The Death Boutique, the brainchild of Seattle based artist Greg Lundgren, is an art gallery, which specializes in art for memorial. All of the pieces featured in his gallery are created to help individuals cope and mourn the death of loved ones, while seeking to draw away from the darker side of death. Lundgren, as an artist, creates classically shaped headstones out of cast glass. By creating a headstone out of glass, it seems as if it is glowing, and adds a sense of “life” to the normally cold and grey memorial. Other artists whom create works for Lundgrens gallery make a variety of objects from ceramic urns to bone china made from the cremated remains of those that are being memorialized.
While Greg Lundgren and his ensemble of artists have begun to tap the future of memorial design, I feel there is much more that can be done, not just in a product design sense or an art sense, but in a reforming of the standard practice of mourning. We should search for different and better options to unbearable open casket funerals, in which those who have passed on do not even resemble themselves. In time, especially due to the rising rate of cancer and AIDS, I hope there may be more of what I consider to be the best memorial process ever, living funerals. As Jeff Goldblum artfully states in the 1984 film The Big Chill, “Amazing tradition. They throw a great party for you on the one day they know you can't come.” While living funerals are only possible to have when individuals are knowingly near the end of their life, it is an amazing experience for those suffering to see and be with all of those that they love and care for one last time in a happy period. Instead of people who wished they could have said good bye to you congregating around a coffin, a living funeral allows for the good byes to be said in person and for those that are dying to feel comforted, by the love of those that attended, in the last weeks of their life.
It is hard to say which way is the “best” for memorializing the death of a loved one, due to the unique quality of human life, but it is very easy to say that there needs to be something done to create new ways of remembering, way to celebrate the life of the individual who has passed instead their excruciatingly difficult death. May it be through product design, art of reforming the standard process of a society, I cannot say, but I do feel something can, and will be done.
While it is common practice to have a granite gravestone to memorialize an individual who has passed on, people are increasingly realizing that there must be a different and better way. At this present time there are many directions which we as a field need to explore to get anywhere close to an ideal memorial process, currently one group of artists seem to be striving to reach that goal. The Death Boutique, the brainchild of Seattle based artist Greg Lundgren, is an art gallery, which specializes in art for memorial. All of the pieces featured in his gallery are created to help individuals cope and mourn the death of loved ones, while seeking to draw away from the darker side of death. Lundgren, as an artist, creates classically shaped headstones out of cast glass. By creating a headstone out of glass, it seems as if it is glowing, and adds a sense of “life” to the normally cold and grey memorial. Other artists whom create works for Lundgrens gallery make a variety of objects from ceramic urns to bone china made from the cremated remains of those that are being memorialized.
While Greg Lundgren and his ensemble of artists have begun to tap the future of memorial design, I feel there is much more that can be done, not just in a product design sense or an art sense, but in a reforming of the standard practice of mourning. We should search for different and better options to unbearable open casket funerals, in which those who have passed on do not even resemble themselves. In time, especially due to the rising rate of cancer and AIDS, I hope there may be more of what I consider to be the best memorial process ever, living funerals. As Jeff Goldblum artfully states in the 1984 film The Big Chill, “Amazing tradition. They throw a great party for you on the one day they know you can't come.” While living funerals are only possible to have when individuals are knowingly near the end of their life, it is an amazing experience for those suffering to see and be with all of those that they love and care for one last time in a happy period. Instead of people who wished they could have said good bye to you congregating around a coffin, a living funeral allows for the good byes to be said in person and for those that are dying to feel comforted, by the love of those that attended, in the last weeks of their life.
It is hard to say which way is the “best” for memorializing the death of a loved one, due to the unique quality of human life, but it is very easy to say that there needs to be something done to create new ways of remembering, way to celebrate the life of the individual who has passed instead their excruciatingly difficult death. May it be through product design, art of reforming the standard process of a society, I cannot say, but I do feel something can, and will be done.
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