Rainbow Arch, 2001 / aluminum & stainless steel / 7 x 12.6 x 2.6 feet

from kennethsnelson.net

Q: Your work is often associated with the ideas of Buckminster Fuller. What was your relationship?

A: I was an art student just after World War II and I was attracted to the work of the Russian Constructivists and to the larger world of geometrical art that evolved worldwide in the first-half of the twentieth century. In the Summer of 1948, when I was twenty-one, Buckminster Fuller became a huge influence from the moment I met him at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. I went there from my home in Oregon to study only with Josef Albers the Bauhaus Master. Professor Fuller arrived for the summer session as a substitute for an architecture professor who withdrew at the last minute. It was Fuller's first teaching job.

A questionnaire, listing the above five questions, was sent out this Spring to a select group of associates of the Buckminster Fuller Institute. We are pleased to present a montage of their responses below. The authors of the following musings on synergetics range from close friends and colleagues of Buckminster Fuller to latter day admirers who knew him only through the legacy he left.