Mornings with O’Keeffe: A Conversation with Eames Demetrios

Join Eames Demetrios, Chairman of the Board, Charles & Ray Eames Foundation, to learn about Georgia O’Keeffe’s friends and artistic contemporaries Charles and Ray Eames.

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This talk is presented as part of Mornings with O’Keeffe, a free virtual lecture series held on the first Wednesday of each month. Please register in advance. Email contact@gokm.org or call 505-496-1000 for assistance with event registration.

Can’t make the talk? This program will be recorded and posted on our website and YouTube Channel.

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About the Speaker

Eames Demetrios wears many hats in art, design, filmmaking, and storytelling. Demetrios also gives talks all over the US and internationally (50 countries spanning 6 continents) on many subjects, ranging from design to science, scale to his own work. He was a TED Conference Main Stage speaker in 2007.

His current large-scale project is his parallel universe, Kcymaerxthaere, a global artwork of multi-dimensional storytelling. For this, he’s so far installed 150 markers and historic sites involving 26 linear languages, in 30 countries on 6 continents. The project can be found in stories set in bronze markers and historic sites, vignettes from a foot across to 150 yards in circumference, stone carvings and even buildings—like a novel where every page is in a different place. The work has been exhibited at Man&Eve (London, UK); Grand Rapids Art Museum (Grand Rapids, Michigan); Galeria dos Prazeres (Madeira, Portugal); Anchorage Museum (Anchorage, Alaska); Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art (Charleston, South Carolina); De Pree Art Center and Gallery at Hope College (Holland, Michigan); Espacio Valverde (Madrid, Spain); and many more. He has given TEDx talks about the project in Taiwan, Singapore, Lithuania, Armenia, Nepal, and other countries. He has published 6 books centered on this project (Wartime California, Discover Kymaerica Travel Guide, Discover Leddl & Parts of kNow Estrelliia, Please Don’t Connect the Dots (Blue & Green editions), and Kcymaerxthaere: The Story So Far . . . (Folio 1). The last book is currently being translated into over 25 languages.

Demetrios is best known in the design world as director of the Eames Office and author of several books related to the Eames Work: An Eames Primer, Eames: Beautiful Details, 100 Quotes, Ray Eames: Changing Her Palette, and Essential Eames: Words and Pictures. Among his many achievements through the Eames Office is the thinking curriculum, Scale is the New Geography, the Essential Eames: A Herman Miller Exhibition at the ArtScience Museum in Singapore, the re-introduction of many Eames furniture pieces, and the release and video restoration of the Eames films. In addition, he works closely with Vitra and Herman Miller to be sure the Eames furniture is always made authentically, and he was instrumental in the founding of the Eames Foundation that preserves the Eames House (he is Chairman of the Board). His book, An Eames Primer, intended as a thematic biography of the lives, work, process, and philosophy of Charles and Ray, is now widely used by schools and available in three languages.

In addition, Demetrios has made over 60 films and videos of various lengths over the past 25 years. Themes and topics include a fiction feature on homelessness, a documentary on Sambo Mockbee’s Rural Studio, and the Malibu/Old Topanga Fire. Some of his purely film projects include the Powers of Ten of Wine, Ping Pong—capturing the design process of Frank Gehry, and Carnival in Chiapas, about the modern Maya of southern Mexico. His work is in a number of private collections and in the collection of the University of Georgia. His film and video works have been shown at numerous museums and festivals: the Library of Congress, Gulbenkian (Portugal), Smithsonian Institution, MOCA (Los Angeles), LACMA (Los Angeles), Meguro Museum of Art (Tokyo), Film Forum (Los Angeles), Sundance Film Festival, Cairo International Film Festival, and dozens more. Grants and residencies received include the Long Beach Open Channels grant (for video art), a grant from the Peter Norton Foundation, and the Ox-Bow College Artist-in-Residency, among others.

No matter which hat, he brings out the adventurous side of his creative partners, institutions such as Singapore’s ArtScience Museum, Portugal’s Gulbenkian Foundation, and businesses like Universal Studios and Interface, Inc. (a billion-dollar flooring company run on sustainable principles). Other important clients include Emeco, IBM, Coca-Cola, and the California Academy of Sciences.

He resides in Los Angeles with his wife and two sons.