Past Speaker Bios

Judy A. O. Lynn

Judy A. O. Lynn creates books, boxes and block prints to house or record life’s everyday bits and moments, whether stored as words, doodles, or pictures. Her work, influenced by nature and her surroundings, is conveyed in clean and simple terms. She enjoys designing pieces that are both beautiful and functional, yet open for the owner to complete with their own unique touches.

Her work is found at regional galleries and she participates in local art shows and festivals. In 2004, HGTV featured Lynn as one of their artists on the show Crafters Coast to Coast. She has been making books, decorative boxes, and prints since 1991.

Lynn Menne

Lyn Menne is Assistant City Manager for Community and Economic Development for the City of Decatur, Georgia. This position evolved out of her role as Executive Director of the Decatur Downtown Development Authority – a position she has held since 1983. She has been an active partner in the implementation of the Decatur Town Center Plan- hailed as one of the best examples of Smart Growth planning in the metropolitan Atlanta area.

Menne received her undergraduate degree in American Studies from Queens College in Charlotte, NC and her master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of Georgia. Prior to joining the Decatur staff, she worked for the State Historic Preservation Office, creating their first public information and education program and served as manager for the Georgia Main Street program at the Georgia Department of Community Affairs.

In explaining how someone with a background and interest in historic preservation ended up in economic development, Menne says that she believes people are drawn to protecting older buildings because they have a fundamental need to experience a “sense of place” and a “sense of community.” Her work with the City of Decatur has been as much about nurturing Decatur’s unique character as it has been about developing physical buildings.

 

Alan Messer

Grammy award winner, Alan Messer has been photographing musicians for thirty-nine years. He has more than eight hundred album covers to his credit, has been widely published in magazines and has several print media and advertising awards.

Messer left school at sixteen to become a professional photographer in London. He shot his first magazine cover a few days later, and the second was the Beatles. During his apprenticeship he photographed, among others, the Rolling Stones, Diana Ross, the Kinks, and T.Rex, as well as tour photographer for Iggy Pop and Deep Purple.

With "itchy feet" and excited by America and its commercial possibilities, Messer moved from his native England to Nashville and opened a studio there in 1978. An amazing opportunity to photograph the country music scene unfolded. He was often shooting a session a day, many of which were LP album covers. His nights were spent printing in his darkroom. Taking a break from the pounding schedule, he was introduced to silk-screen printing, This led almost immediately to a Grammy in 1989 in the Album Packaging category.

A screen print of his photograph of Johnny Cash set the stage for a series of ten albums for CBS Records (now Sony) called American Originals, with the Cash print defining the graphic style. A limited edition book of Alan’s photographs of Johnny Cash from 1976 - 2003, is to be published by Genesis Publications in 2008, titled, JOHNNY CASH American Legend.

 

David Oakey

David Oakey leads global efforts in sustainable or “smart design” by learning from nature through the study of biomimicry. He is passionate, following his steps to sustainability through process, product, and people. Oakey challenges industrial designers, architects, teachers, and students to take action and impact change today. Sustainable design must be innovative, utilizing efficient use of materials, seeking smart products, and eliminating waste in the process. Respecting the Future is the conscious choice of systems thinking, recognizing how design impacts the world during and after its life cycle.

Oakey, educated in carpet design at Kidderminster College, pursued his entrepreneurial dream establishing David Oakey Designs in 1985. Structured for integrated design and development programs, Oakey has created an award winning work environment for design research.

Oakey and his philosophies have been featured in Business Week, Fast Company, Interior Design Magazine, New York Times Science, Green Futures Magazine, I.D. Magazine, and The Smithsonian Magazine.

Matt Rollins

Matt Rollins is Creative Director at Iconologic, a brand design firm in Atlanta. He and his team work with brave clients who understand that the story they tell, the experience they become and the image they embody must be designed with the same daring as the product they create.

Before Iconologic, Matt used to run a small design firm called Basis that did deeply satisfying work but never made much money. Before that, he spent eight years as Creative Director of EAI, a design firm in Atlanta. Before that, he was a designer at Frankfurt Balkind Partners in New York where he once spent a whole day designing a movie poster with Bill Murray. The poster turned out very poorly, and it wasn't his fault: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107048/posters

 

Lars Spuybroek

Lars Spuybroek is the principal of NOX, an art and architecture studio in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Since the early nineties he has been researching the relationship between art, architecture, and computing, not only by building but also by writing, speaking, and teaching. He received international recognition after building the Water Pavilion (HtwoOexpo) in 1997, the first building in the world fully incorporating new media. In 2004 NOX finished the D-Tower, the Son-O-house and a cluster of cultural buildings in Lille, France (Maison Folies). In the same year Thames & Hudson published his 400-page monograph, NOX: Machining Architecture.

Spuybroek has won several prizes in exhibitions all over the world, among them presentations at several Venice Biennales, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Victoria and Albert in London, and the Guggenheim Bilbao. He is a tenured professor and the Ventulett Distinguished Chair of Architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.

 

Artists Panel Bios

Amy Landesberg

Amy Landesberg is an artist and an architect. Her public art projects may be appreciated as examples of either field but fit neatly within neither.

 

Joe Peragine

Joe Peragine is a painter and sculptor. His work deploys a pop art sensibility toward a dichotomy of intents. His often humorous images provide a visual reward while they question those aspects of American society from which the images emanate.

 

Danielle Roney

Danielle Roney is an installation artist working in sculpture, digital media, and public intervention. Her work examines modernization and pluralistic societies with the goal fostering public intimacy to create a more tangible global community.