Cooper Hewitt says...
Born in 1928, Barbara Stauffacher Solomon studied painting and sculpture at the San Francisco Art Institute. After the death of her husband in 1956, Solomon moved to Switzerland to study at the Kunstgewerbeschule School of Arts and Crafts in Basel with noted Swiss graphic designer Armin Hofmann. She later received her Master of Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. As a graphic designer, Solomon’s iconic style mixes the Swiss Modernism of her education with the pop culture of the West Coast. She is well-known for her 1966 large-scale Supergraphics installed in the interior of The Sea Ranch in Sonoma County, California.
In addition to her work in graphic design, Solomon is noted for her original garden and landscape designs as well as for a number of detailed sketches and drawings she produced of historic gardens in Europe. Solomon designed the popular Ribbon of Light installation on the Embarcadero Promenade in San Francisco in 1991, and in 1996 she won a competition to design the Vesey Green in New York City’s Battery Park.
Solomon has taught Landscape Design at Harvard's Graduate School of Design, the Yale University Department of Art & Architecture, and the University of California, Berkeley, Architecture Department. She is the former Head of the Landscape Department at the California College of Arts and Crafts (now the California College of the Arts).
