What Is Your Comfort Food?

I attended Christmas eve services with my family as millions of people did the other night. The familiar interior of the sanctuary, singing the hymns that you have memorized over the years and seeing the familiar faces (though they are older) felt just like when you eat comfort food.

This beautiful space is where my love for architecture began. I remember sitting with my parents and siblings and trying to look interested but really what I did most of the time was look at the beams, windows, the texture of the oak and cool smoothness of the marble. I remember when they installed the pipes. What excitement. Counting the different sizes of pipes and instead of listening to the sermon was quite entertaining. When I wasn't counting and I was sketching various views of the santuary on the service folders.

They say over and over that a church is not a building. It is the people. I guess that is some what true. For me, though, the building represents the people and all that it holds from all the years past and its future.

P.S. In the old days they had real trees that went all the way to the ceiling.

Archive: Angel Oak, Johns Island, Charleston County, South Carolina

This massive and majestic oak is said to be over 1,500 years old. Named after former owners Martha and Justis Angel it is probably our countries oldest live oak tree. It stands only 68 feet high but the area of shade covers 17,000 square feet! The longest limb is 89 feet long. Just 12 miles from Charleston it is worth the visit.

Located near the intersection of the Maybank Highway and Bohicket Road / Main Road on Johns Island, SC. Latitude 32.71727, Longitude -79.91917

FLW S.000 Unity Chapel, Spring Green, Wisconsin

1886. Is this FLW's first built design? No one is 100% sure. The interior of the chapel is credited to him as is a perspective drawing. It looks like a Silsbee as he worked for Joseph Silsbee when he first arrived in Chicago. The chapel was already in the works when FLW arrived. How fortunate that his Uncle Jenkins was the preacher of the church.

A tour bus from Taliesin arrives for a tour.
Frank is not here. He use to be here but he was moved to
Taliesin West as per his wife no.3 direction.

August 15, 1914. This is the grave of his love Mamah Cheney, the wife of a client (she divorced by then). Frank Lloyd Wright was in Chicago overseeing Midway Gardens when he received word that there was a fire at Taliesin. But it was far, far worse than that. A deranged worker locked all the doors, set fire to the house and killed Mamah, her two children 4 others with an
ax as they tried to escape. Who is reading Loving Frank by Nancy Horan?

This was the second time I visited the Spring Green area. I didn't learn until later that Ann Baxter is buried here as she is the granddaughter of FLW.

Sources: Frank Lloyd Wright by Ada Louise Huxtable, The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright A Complete Catalog 3rd Edition, William Allin Storrer

Archive: Art Show

Here are a couple pictures that I found leftover from an art show at the Waterloo Center for the Arts. I gathered commissioned drawings which hung for 5 months while a Frank Lloyd Wright furnishings and art from John Christian's Samara (located in Indiana) was in the main gallery downstairs.

The Lowell and Agnes Walter Residence in Quasqueton, Iowa, 1950 (Storrer Number) S.284, and Walter River Pavilion, 1948, S. 285. Located on the Wapsipinicon River, it is the first Frank Lloyd Wright home that I toured. This home has a signature tile which I included in my drawing. This home was given to the state of Iowa in 1981 after Mr. Walter's death and is now called Cedar Rock Park.

This is another wall of drawings all in technical pen and ink. I enjoyed seeing these houses as I hadn't seen them framed. -k

Summer House

Here is a house that I drew this summer for an anniversary present. This is right before I added the last trees, fence and sky. I really like how the windows turned out and the texture of the stucco. If I find a picture of the finished version I will post that one.
-kim

Pictures...and more pictures.

It has been quite awhile since my last post. Can it really be a more than a year already?
In the meantime, I have been taking pictures of all of my favorite subjects: family, kittens, Frank lloyd Wright and other architecture, bike racing, the students at the school I work at and scouting events.

Here is a picture of the outside of the Park Inn Hotel in Mason City, 1909 S.156. The interior picture is of the lobby. I chanced upon a great opportunity to be included in a tour of the hotel last month. Dr. Robert McCoy was my tour guide. I had spoken to him a couple times about the hotel and other matters FLW. It was a real pleasure to meet him. He is the driving spirit behind funding for renovation for this wonderful structure that actually was a model for other buildings to follow.

Now that I have recovered my username, password, and relearned how to post I will put some other pictures up.
Best wishes,
Kim