Architectural Visions
What may come across as alien in my work is less about visions of another world and more about exploring alienation from the one I live in. There is often a stark contrast between what is created for us and that created by us. Could the human experience of environment be brought closer to the forces that shape the universe? What would we have when those processes come together in synthesis?
I imagine the intersection of energy and matter that results in structures. Living systems must balance a play between the conservation of energy and the risky need to expend that energy for growth and seeking existence beyond stasis. I take that flow and let it guide architectural forms that are in tune with their environment. This is the stuff of creation.
That my structures can so easily be cast as ‘alien’ speaks to the limitations we have on terrestrial architecture. Probably my earliest influence from common culture would be the picture books of Dr. Seuss, who drew impossible and silly structures, but ones that were of their own world and served its inhabitants well. Later I encountered the work of architects Antoni Gaudí and his heir-apparent, Santiago Calatrava. These influences I share with my architect father, who was himself trained by an organic master, Bruce Goff. My father encouraged my exploration of the works of Frank Lloyd Wright and Eero Saarinen. At 22 I started drawing organic forms as architectural objects, inspired by a proposed tower designed by Calatrava to top NY’s Cathedral Church of St. John The Divine, my first big patron as an artist. I saw that a building could be made of curves. All lines in architecture do not need to be straight. We can build our dreams of space and form and not be limited by our rulers.
Within the Architectural Visions series I seek an architecture that is built of the world and in harmony with it, utilizing the inherent energetic and material flow patterns in natural systems. Throughout my life I have imagined what other worlds would be like, and despaired that I will not see them, but then, delighted that I can.
I imagine the intersection of energy and matter that results in structures. Living systems must balance a play between the conservation of energy and the risky need to expend that energy for growth and seeking existence beyond stasis. I take that flow and let it guide architectural forms that are in tune with their environment. This is the stuff of creation.
That my structures can so easily be cast as ‘alien’ speaks to the limitations we have on terrestrial architecture. Probably my earliest influence from common culture would be the picture books of Dr. Seuss, who drew impossible and silly structures, but ones that were of their own world and served its inhabitants well. Later I encountered the work of architects Antoni Gaudí and his heir-apparent, Santiago Calatrava. These influences I share with my architect father, who was himself trained by an organic master, Bruce Goff. My father encouraged my exploration of the works of Frank Lloyd Wright and Eero Saarinen. At 22 I started drawing organic forms as architectural objects, inspired by a proposed tower designed by Calatrava to top NY’s Cathedral Church of St. John The Divine, my first big patron as an artist. I saw that a building could be made of curves. All lines in architecture do not need to be straight. We can build our dreams of space and form and not be limited by our rulers.
Within the Architectural Visions series I seek an architecture that is built of the world and in harmony with it, utilizing the inherent energetic and material flow patterns in natural systems. Throughout my life I have imagined what other worlds would be like, and despaired that I will not see them, but then, delighted that I can.
Bug Bldg 1995 ink and colored pencil on paper 16x12 in.
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Organic Landscape I 2017 graphite on paper 8x12 in.
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Urban Lighthouse 1990 graphite on paper 15x20 in.
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Organic Landscape 2015 graphite on paper 9x7 in.
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Organic Landscape II 2020 graphite on paper 8x10 in.
Organic Bridge 1994 graphite on paper 15x20 in.