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Ina Mayhew traces the winding path of the arts that led her from New York to Italy and back again, to the fascinating world of film production design.
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Ina Mayhew
DISCIPLINE
TAGS
production design / art / richard mayhew / spiral / theater / spike lee / charles lane / bob fosse / aretha franklin / covid-19 / jewelry / italy / suny purchase
YEAR
Production designers are omnipresent throughout a film.
They curate the entire visual aesthetic of a cinematic journey—not entirely unlike, say, a creative director in the world of graphic design.
Ina Mayhew knows about bringing fictive worlds to life. A graduate of SUNY’s Purchase College, she has been working as a Hollywood production designer since the late 1980s, and her credits are vast: The upcoming Respect. Netflix’s “Heartstrings.” Spike Lee’s Get on the Bus and Girl 6. Ava DuVernay’s “Queen Sugar.” A dozen Tyler Perry films. MTV’s “Teen Wolf” series. Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s “Family Feud” video. And on and on.
Though she excels at bringing the narratives of others to life, in this episode, Design Matters explores her own.