Position @ UArts
Chair and Assistant Professor, Industrial Design, UArts College of Art and Design

Alma Mater
BSID, California College of Art (CCA)

Latest Accomplishment
Rama’s knife collection showed at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA) from March to August 2007. Click here to view the knives.

Design philosophy
”Design comes from a relationship, not from an individual. It should connect with one's self, with one another and to the world.”

Childhood
”Growing up ‘off-the-grid’ in the Sierra Nevadas of Northern California offered a unique perspective on life. My father is an artist, and I used to make my own toys – nothing ‘store bought.’ Subsistence was tough, but with imagination and inventiveness as a guide, life found meaning. Simple things like joy, play and curiosity are paramount in my creative process.” 

What kinds of projects do your students work on?
”Our students are actively engaged in our local community. Currently a junior group is designing a collection of sustainable furniture for the first Habitat for Humanity LEED certified Case Study House. Other projects have included helping to envision a community park as well as designing products for a school for the blind. Early on, students are asked to collaborate. In sophomore year, they design and fabricate survival units for a class camp-out. Inevitably it rains or snows, and as a group, they are confronted with not only the elements, but with each other as they scrabble to hold together their designs.”  Click here to see the tents.

How did it come about that you exhibited your knives at SFMOMA?
”When the museum decided to do a show celebrating 100 years of Design Innovation by select faculty and alumni from the college I attended, my work was chosen as it embodies cutting-edge thought and a high level of execution. The exhibition organizer, Henry Urbach, and I had worked together in the early 90’s… Many connections made while in school have continued years later.”

What do you consider your greatest design accomplishments?
”I thought having work in the Museum of Modern Art New York would be the seminal moment. It was important to me, but as an accomplishment, I was more truly moved when I saw a taxi driver in Brazil who had taken a band from a Swatch watch I had designed (one of my first designs), and put it on his old Omega. It became his, and in turn I was a part of his world, and he a part of mine.”