Not Built in a Day

I think most architects have hobbies producing some kind of art or craft - some design furniture, others paint or draw, still others sew, and there are probably as many different outlets as there are individuals.  One of my colleagues at work is a talented  encaustic painter  (painting with wax), another designs and builds his own surfboards, and one of my  former colleagues  makes decorative knives. As for me - I make, well, random stuff.  The impulse is there, but the discipline (the craft, you might say) isn't, so the art pieces and crafts I make are whatever takes my fancy at the moment, allowing me to explore different techniques and materials.  I haven't posted any of my crafts for a while, so here is a selection of pieces from the last couple of years. "Collected Works" As a kid, I collected all kinds of things: figurative erasers, toy cars, stickers, enamel pins, etc.  Lately I've been interested in trying to turn those collections ...

Back in February, I decided that the thing I wanted for my birthday was to visit Julia Morgan's Hearst Castle.  If you aren't familiar with architect Julia Morgan , then you should fix that right away.  Two years ago she was awarded the AIA Gold Medal, posthumously, as the first woman to receive this significant prize.  (Many of us wondered why the AIA couldn't find a living woman architect to be awarded, but that's a story for another post.)  She's generally considered one of the most important architects of the California Arts & Crafts movement of the early 20th century.  She was the first woman admitted to the French Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the most prestigious school of architecture of the European academy system; the first woman licensed in architecture in California; and one of very few women architects practicing in this country in the early 20th century.  Hearst Castle is considered one of her masterpieces. Unlike many of her buildings, ...