Karla Kowalski, founding partner of Szyszkowitz+Kowalski, the immensely inventive organic firm from Graz, has a penetrating eye on the characters of her colleagues.

Karla Kowalski of Szyszkowitz+Kowalski recently resigned after 15 years as professor at Stuttgart's Technical University. As part of the leaving festivities, she privately published and presented to her colleagues a book of sketches and doodles made during the many faculty meetings she was obliged to attend. Some are abstract graphic compositions, others landscapes, but the strongest impression comes from a series of animal figures like those that she also models in plaster (AR January 1997). They have particular stances and expressions, and they also wear striped or patterned garments as an extension of their natural plumage. Are some of them caricatures of colleagues at the meetings? Cryptic notes in the corners sometimes suggest it.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]