08/14/2016
Dave Ludlow will be exhibiting his artwork at The Texana Center for the Arts for the next few weeks. An opening night reception is planned for Thursday, August 18, beginning at 7:00 pm. Come meet this world traveler and accomplished artist along with his wife, Gloria, Thursday night. This is a free event! Everyone is welcome!
Dave shared this brief bio with TCA.
In High School I had decided that I wanted to be an industrial designer. In engineering school I made time to take art and design classes. During college I did part time work designing brochures, illustrations and graphic design for local businesses.
After college (1960’s) I worked for a large furniture manufacturer (500 employees) as an engineer and product designer. This manufacturing company made office furniture, living, dining, and bedroom furniture. Furniture was made for the government and hotel industry as well. It took hundreds of drawings every week to keep up with the new product introductions. Concept drawings and detailed engineering drawings from door pulls to five piece upholstered living room pieces. New product was coming out every week – original, unique, fresh designs-no China in those days.
In the 80’s the new job adventure was in the kitchen design and manufacturing. This included residential, apartments, businesses, and motel and hotel furnishing.
By this time in my life my children were “out of the nest”. I had an interest in the Mayan Culture of Central America. This resulted in archaeology and nature adventure trips to Central America. A rafting trip with the Terlingua Texas rafters on Central America Rivers in Belize, Honduras, Mexico and Guatemala provided exposure to the people, jungle, and over three dozen Mayan Ruins. During trips (including Costa Rica, Panama, Columbia, and Nicaragua) you develop an inventory of pictures that become a great source of painting subjects (over 2,500 colored slides).
In the 90’s nearly all of the manufacturing went to China. I went into the field of office seating. Custom ergonomic seating. Over the years this included big projects with customers like Nike and the Government. We produced between 30 and 50 thousand chairs a year. For twenty years the day to day work was designing new office chairs and marketing plans. It was a fun day to see hundreds of your chairs go out the door in the delivery trucks.
