Dave Curry
American Artist 20th Century,
also known as
David S Curry of Seattle Washington

American artist, graphic designer, painter, serigrapher (silk screen print artist), model maker, home builder, and amateur inventor of the 20th Century. He is best known for creating custom made graphic designs which were then installed in many of the various Boeing Aircraft clients who ordered Presidential jets, Air Force Ones, and fleets of commercial airliners around the world.

Dave worked from the early 1950's in the Boeing Aircraft starting out as a technical draftsman for Boeing. He sometimes did some special projects, for example, he created the 3 color 4-page program for the Boeing Children's Christmas Party held in Seattle in 1951 on December 23rd. He continued from circa before 1960 as a graphic designer for WDTA (Walter Dorwin Teague Associates) a renowned industrial design company. His graphic design work has flown all around the world in Boeing airplanes for the latter half of the 20th Century. It was a time when many nations around the world were emerging from colonialism, and many, many of those nations and national airlines bought Boeing jet aircraft. Dave's graphic design was installed in all or nearly every Boeing jet airliner from circa 1960 to the mid-1980's. In the latter part of his career, he led a small team of graphic designers in the Teague Renton office inside the Boeing plant.One of the main items of graphic designed by Dave for the Boeing aircraft was the window panel, which was an interior passenger cabin wall in which the window was mounted. It was is press-formed sheet of aluminum, bonded with vinyl on which are the screen printed multicolor graphic designs, and overlaid with a sheet of clear vinyl or plastic to protect the graphics. Other projects related to Boeing were too numerous to mention, and some went beyond two dimensional graphics. Two examples:

AIR FORCE ONE: Scale model of a 707 Air Force One. Dave hand crafted some parts for the scale model of JFK's airplane on a Mattel Vac-U-Form.

FINE ART, SHOWS, FESTIVALS, etc. Dave created many original paintings, prints, serigraphs, posters with high quality silk screened abstract designs intended to be viewed under fluorescent black light, and also quite a few bas-relief aluminum etchings. His artwork was regularly entered in juried art shows in Washington State in the following summer time art festivals: Bellevue, Renton, Kirkland, Seattle, Mercer Island, etc. He and his wife, and children also had an exhibit booth at many festivals, primarily in the 1970's where many graphic art works were available and exhibited. The art works were all produced at home, except some of the black pen and ink prints were printed by local lithographers.

BOEING: LARGE BIRD CHARACTER FOR ROLLOUT OF DELIVERY OF BOEING JET: Boeing asked for a huge replica of the Western Airlines bird character to be perched on top of the fuselage, reclined against a pillow resting against the aircraft's tailfin. The television ads showed the bird character reclining against the pillow, holding a glass of bubbling Champagne, and sighing with pleasure: "Western Airlines! The ONLY way to fly." Dave was asked to help create a huge real life replication of the bird character for the rollout ceremony. The team created the bird body jigsawed out of a large piece of painted plywood, the legs were made out of bendable steel wire conduit, and the Champagne bubbles were weather balloons. At the rollout ceremony where Boeing and Western Airline officials presented the first airplane of the order, the bird created a real life re-creation of the television and print ads with a giant bird character reclining on the actual aircraft.

Early life: Dave's ancestors had run a gristmill in southern West Virginia. Dave was born in Greenbrier County in West Virginia in the 1920's. His father had attended Eastman Business College in New York State. His mother's family owned some land in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Dave's parents operated a small department store there, and Dave's father was an officer at a local bank and also was elected and served as Greenbrier County Sheriff. Dave's younger brother was Richard Orr Curry, Ph.D who was a professor of U.S. History at University of Connecticut (U Conn). Close relatives is or are a medical doctor, college professor, and former Postmaster of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Dave helped his parents by helping to run the Curry general department store in White Sulphur Springs. While making grocery deliveries, on the way back he sometimes stopped off at the local airfield and took flying lessons. One of his older sisters encouraged him to take singing lessons and fine arts painting lessons. There was good quality instruction available locally, due to the proximity of a world class resort hotel, The Greenbrier, which had grown up around a sulphur spring renowned for health benefits.

Mid-20th Century: Dave entered aviation navigation school for the US Army Air Corp., which was later the US Air Force. He qualified as a navigator, and served briefly in World War II. After the war, he returned to the US and attended art school on the GI Bill. He attended Art Center School of Design (in Los Angeles, California) and The Art Institute of Chicago. He also attended Canisius College in New York and Virginia Polytechnic Institute (VPI). He married a Seattle girl in Chicago, and they lived there and in California before moving to Washington State to raise a family.

INVENTIONS: When not at the office creating graphics for many of the various Boeing clients who ordered Presidential jets, Air Force Ones, and fleets of commercial airliners around the world, Dave liked to invent toys and products for home use.

MOTORIZED LUNCH BOX: This was a whimisical adaptation of the standard metal lunch box. It was created as a kind of practical joke toy to take to the office at Teague. It was designed so that the model airplane wheels and tires were invisible because they were completely enclosed in the lunchbox. The lower tread of the tires projected discretely out of the bottom of the vehicle through four slots cut through the sheet metal of the ventral surface. Flashlight batteries (four D-cells) drove a small electric motor which powered the wheels through a small set of gears. One unique feature was a see-saw switch concealed within the lunchbox, and which, when the lunchbox collided with an obstacle, caused the switch to perform a teeter-totter reversal of polarity of the current going to the motor, and caused the lunchbox to reverse the motor and back away from the obstacle. One of the pairs of tires could be made to steer, and so the lunchbox could perform a long series of reverse trajectory trips around the floor of the office or home, to the amusement of coworkers on their lunch hour, or wife and children at home. There was only one prototype made. It was black or grey in color, and was the kind of simple, classic design that looked like a tiny barn with an oval roof, with room for a small insulated Thermos(tm) bottle in the lid. The motorized lunchbox remained an artifact of Dave Curry industrial design lore, but was never put into mass production.

TRAFFIC LIGHT: Dave created a working 3 color traffic semaphore light. It was originally derived from experiments with a Mattel Vacu-Form

HOVER CRAFT: Around the early 1960's He home built an experimental ultralight hovercraft which achieved liftoff in the backyard of the family home, but was never put into production. The design was a small gasoline engine drove a belt and pulley which turned a large aluminum ventilator fan, filling an aircushion chamber made of polyethlylene film stretched over a lightweight wooden frame, and enclosed all around with a polyethylene skirt keep vertical weighted with glass marbles. A rotating superstructure intended to make the hovercraft steerable proved too heavy, and was detached and put in service as part of a backyard treehouse for his children.

TRAFFIC LIGHT: In the 1960's Dave adapted the plastic vacuum forming technology similar to what he had used to make parts for the JFK Air Force One model, to make a functional 3 color toy traffic light. It had six flashlight bulbs (3 shining each direction) which were regulated by a mechanical turntable switch, and powered by flashlight batteries. It was about the size of a quart carton of milk, but was crafted of vinyl, with parabolic plastic reflectors similar to a what a 3-egg plastic egg carton would be. That component was vacuum formed at home using a home made vacuum forming system. A form was made with 3 reflector bowl shapes crafted into plaster of paris. Exhaust tubes at the bottom of each reflector were connected to a home vacuum cleaner. A sheet of vinyl was heated in the home stove oven, and then the hot sheet of vinyl was draped over the mold, and the vacuum cleaner was switched on, and the vacuum drew the hot vinyl sheet into the mold where it cooled against the plaster of paris bowl shapes. It was then removed and trimmed to fit into the traffic light chassis, and 3 flashlight bulbs were installed on each side, and wired to the custom fabricated, battery powered turntable switch, and the red, yellow, and green translucent lenses were installed. When completed, it could be hung anywhere, and switched on, and it would cycle repeatedly and continuously through the red, yellow, and green light program. It was useful for amusing and occupying children with tricycles, wagons, skateboards, bicycles, and toy pedal cars in structured activities they could switch on and off.

SHOCKING PINK: Dave created an ingenious practical joke item which was a quart can of silk screen ink or paint which, when shaken by hand, would deliver a mild but perceptible electric shock to the hand of the shaker. It did not actually contain any ink or paint, but rather contained a springy switch which would make and break an electrical contact when the can was shaken. The mild electric shock was delivered by a battery powered voltage boosting coil wired to to contacts on the label and exterior of the paint can. There was some shocking pink paint dried on the outside of the paint can, which made it look like an ordinary can of paint or silk screen ink. The label was crafted with large press-on plastic black lettering to add to the impression it was a genuine item. The letters were large, however, and the color description "SHOCKING PINK" (a particularly bright hue of ink or paint) would not fit on the label. So the text was truncated to fit on the can label and the final item was labelled "SHOCKY PINK" (a careful and vigilant label reader might become suspicious at this atypical hue name and perhaps spoil the surprise by not shaking the can). This was an infamously popular item around the Boeing Renton plant and silk screen shop and the WDTA Renton office and in the Curry house in the mid-1960's or thereabouts. One coworker was seen to be so surprised at the shock received as a result of shaking the can of "SHOCKY PINK" that he hurled it across the room and emitted a loud shout of surprise. It survived much shaking, hurling, and dropping, and provided much amusement and hilarity everywhere it went. It was never patented nor ever manufactured beyond the original private reserve prototype.

HALLOWEEN costumes, Custom designed and hand silkscreen printed Valentine and Christmas cards: Dave would spend lots of time creating and fabricating Halloween costumes for his children. One year he made space suit costumes for his sons. They included audio and visual effects controlled by an aircraft surplus switchbox. Dave's wife made the arms and leg sleeves out of a material intended to resemble an articulated space suit. Another year, his son Richard wanted to go as a magician's rabbit in a top hat. Dave created this costume for him. For many years, designing and silk screening holiday cards was an annual project. Each year, they created unique, original designs for Christmas, and for the school classroom Valentine's day exchange.

HOME BUILDER: Dave built a home from scratch. It was adapted from a standard split level design by his wife on sheets of graph paper, who is also an artist. It was built from raw land purchased circa 1960. It was an evening and weekend project while Dave commuted to his full time day job with WDTA at the Boeing Renton plant. Although many people did some room remodeling or additions while lived in their homes. Not too many people turned amateur home builders and actually built their own home from the ground up. A few phases were done by contractors, but most of the construction was completed by Dave and his wife and with help from their children. It took many years to complete, but was eventually completed and occupied.

Dave died in Seattle, WA immediately after his first known heart attack in the mid 1980's. One of his Professors at the Art Institute of Chicago had admonished his students for them to enjoy their student career at Art School, because most of them would not be making a career of art, but would be obliged to work in other types of occupations. Dave was the exceptional art student that went on to have a long and successful career as an artist. He supported a wife and raised children on his earnings as an artist. All of his children graduated from a college or university with at least a bachelor's degree, and several obtained post graduate degrees. At one point, Dave's career as successful and prolific artist was shown by the fact that the skies were filled with his graphic artwork installed in the Boeing airplanes such as the 707, 727, 737, 747, 757, 767, etc, flying to all parts of the earth!

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