Bob Clark Beyond: Inspiration

latest inspiration posts

April's Featured Artist: Bisa Butler

Known for her stunning and colorful quilted portraits, Bisa Butler seamlessly blends a passion for storytelling with the dynamic medium of textiles to create vibrant works of art that document the Black experience. Butler was born in New Jersey in 1973, where she first learned sewing techniques passed down to her from her grandmother and mother. Her father was an immigrant from Ghana, and Butler drew inspiration from the colorful fabrics and garments of his homeland, as well as batiks from Nigeria, and prints from South Africa. After majoring in Fine Art and graduating cum laude from Howard University, she wanted to use art as a way to communicate and highlight the stories of people who far too often have been marginalized.

April's Featured Architect: Maya Lin

Artist, architect, and memorialist Maya Lin was born in 1959, into a family of artists. Her mother was a poet and literature professor and her father a ceramicist and the dean of Ohio University’s College of Fine Arts. Both of her parents fled China in 1948 in order to escape Communist rule. During her childhood, Lin already demonstrated a propensity for mathematics, ceramics, and a keen interest in nature—all of which have become central in her works. Though she was trained as an architect, she prefers to describe herself as a designer. Lin has designed a range of works from public and private buildings, to memorials and landscapes. She is best known for her memorials that have a historic character—the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. and the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. It was the Vietnam Veterans Memorial that earned her success very early in life, winning the competition for her design at the age of 21. Remarkably, she had not even completed her undergraduate studies at Yale University when she won. She has also completed several large sculptural landscapes of note, such as Groundswell at Ohio State University, Wave Field at the University of Michigan, and Eleven Minute Line in Wanås, Sweden. Lin and her work have received many awards, including the National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, both awarded to her by President Barack Obama.

Earth Day Book Review

On Earth Day, when Shawn was about 7 years old, I was working from home for some reason (very rare) and Shawn ran by me and I noticed he had a shirt on with an animated cartoon of the Earth. I beckoned him over so I could get a better view and was horrified to see that he had a t-shirt on that read “SAVE THE TREES” on the front in bold letters. My immediate reaction was to tell him to get rid of that shirt because we (Clayco) are who the trees are being saved from. That was true then and it’s still true now. My company probably cuts down more trees that are “in the way” at our projects than any other building company in America. Although we now work hard to mitigate our footprint, we have a long way to go. Now we try to not just understand our footprint and completely mitigate it, but also take into account the BIG picture and work towards helping our clients achieve their ambitious plans in this same regard. Like SAFETY, these types of initiatives require a top-down/bottom-up strategy within a business. The first step to that is “The Greening of Bob Clark”. It’s a journey, and I can promise my company and I are on the right path.

March’s Featured Architect: Lamar Johnson Collaborative

Clayco added the discipline of architecture and engineering to the enterprise back in 1999 with the founding of Forum Studio. The idea from the start was to be a creative force with extraordinary technical strength to cultivate a culture of design-build within the Clayco brand. Three years ago, we merged Forum Studio with the Lamar Johnson Collaborative to expand into a full-service design and architecture firm. This move provided innovative designs that stimulated positive change and further expanded our brand nationwide. The united companies have given a boost to the “integrated” platform we have and also bring the true meaning of Art and Science to the purposeful projects we work on.

Some Of My Favorite Books

I was recently asked to create a list of my top 5 books of all time. It’s difficult to narrow down my top 5, or even my top 50 books of all time. If you ask me in 6 months, my answer may even be different. However, here are some that come to mind.

The Books That Inspire Me to Think Big

Recently I decided to read, in quick succession, an assortment of books about phenomenal business and tech leaders. I’ve found that reading related books one after the other usually leads to new insights that come from seeing the similarities and the differences.

Inspiration

I have always had an insatiable curiosity

What causes me to get out of bed every morning is driven by inspiration. Ever since I was a little boy, I was inspired by my insatiable curiosity, which caused me to be a reader, a thinker, and a dreamer.

I can remember being inspired by seeing Bobby Kennedy on TV and watching videotapes of Martin Luther King Jr., and being deeply saddened by their assassination even though I was only 10 years old when I experienced all of this.

As a little boy, rocket flight was a big thing. I remember being fascinated by the moon and the stars and the astronauts exploring them.As humans we are achieving remarkable things that only a handful of years before were just in the imagination.