Mornings with O’Keeffe: A Conversation with Eames Demetrios

Join Eames Demetrios (Chairman of the Board, Eames Foundation) to learn about Georgia O’Keeffe’s friends and artistic contemporaries Charles & 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 the Man& Eve Gallery in London, UK; Grand Rapids Art Museum (Michigan, US); Prazeres Gallery (Portugal); Anchorage Museum (Alaska, US), Halsey Institute of Art (Charleston, South Carolina), Hope College DePree Gallery (Holland, Michigan), Espacio Valverde (Madrid) 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), and Kcymaerxthaere: The Story So Far . . . (Folio 1).  That 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 authoring 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 for Scale is the New Geography, the Essential Eames Exhibition at the Art and Science 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 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, 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 or so. 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 that of the University of Georgia.  His film and video works have shown at numerous museums and festivals: Library of Congress, Gulbenkian (Portugal), Smithsonian Institution, MOCA (LA), LACMA (LA), Meguro Art Museum (Tokyo), Film Forum (LA), Sundance Film Festival, Cairo Film Festival, and dozens more. Grants received include the Long Beach Open Channels grant (for video art), the Peter Norton Foundation, Ox-Bow College Artist-in-Residency, and others.

No matter which hat, he brings out the adventurous side of his creative partners, institutions such as the Singapore Museum of Art and Science, 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.