Herron student’s blog appeals to the neat freak in us all
This is a shortened version of a post that appeared on the blog of the IUPUI Herron School of Art and Design. Thanks to Rob Bullock for allowing us to share this with you:
Meet Austin Radcliffe, president of IUPUI Herron School of Art and Design’s Active Student Artists organization. He’s a senior better known for his other organizing, a blog called Things Organized Neatly.
Austin at work, organizing things neatly.
The carefully curated catalog of orderly images replete with Radcliffe’s own work and comments has been touted from The New York Times Magazine to the Sydney Morning Herald. Many of his 160,000 subscribers find the tidiness soothing, like contemplating a tank of fish, while CBS News called his blog “a haven for web surfers with obsessive compulsive disorder.”
Radcliffe, who is completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in general fine arts with emphasis in printmaking and furniture design at Herron, said he receives post submissions from all over the world.
“I feel like the site has sort of influenced the trend of this aesthetic,” he said. “There’s a certain minimal aesthetic, and also the human elements of cataloging and details. The urge to arrange things at right angles or on some sort of grid appeals to the eye, even if it’s not a symmetrical arrangement.”
In addition to focusing on furniture design in his last semester at Herron, he’s working as a curator in alumnus Casey Roberts’ Mount Comfort Gallery in Indianapolis’ Fountain Square cultural district. After an anticipated December graduation, Radcliffe will head to New York City, where he’s already done an internship with artist Tom Sachs.
Want to see your own OCD tendencies displayed digitally? Be warned that Radcliffe’s standards are exacting — he’s willing to accept imperfection in the world, but he isn’t willing to post it on his blog.
Tags: Active Student Artists, Austin Radcliffe, Mount Comfort Gallery, Things Organized Neatly, Tom Sachs
