Frank Lloyd Wright related

Two Architects Build Houses for Themselves

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin East, entry courtyard

Frank Lloyd Wright and Philip Johnson number among the most well known American architects of the 20th century. Both are remembered for their many commissions by others, for buildings constructed both in the United States and overseas. Notably, each of these men designed a house for himself and each reflects something of the respective architect’s vision for an ideal domestic building. The results differ dramatically and beg for some explanation, especially in the case of Philip Johnson’s Glass House.

To help appreciate the theoretical basis for these vastly differing houses, I find it helpful to draw upon a distinction made by the earthscape artist, Andres Amador (featured in a prior post). Speaking about his temporary compositions ‘sketched’ upon large stretches of beach areas at low tide, Amador refers to some of his works as “geometric” and others as “organic.” The geometric works display a quality readily suggested by the name for them, and reflect Amador’s training in math as an engineer. The organic works arise, he says, from the site, and he suggests that these pieces communicate their form to him. For me, Amador’s distinction can also be referred to as the distinction between pattern that is ‘received,’ as compared with pattern that is ‘imposed.’

Amador’s distinction between the organic patterns that arise from the site, and the geometric patterns that result from conceptual pre-planning, can assist us in perceiving some themes that are implied by the architectural designs produced by Wright and Johnson for their homes. In the case of Wright, he built Taliesin on family property in Spring Green, Wisconsin, in an area where he grew up and with which he had a deep attachment. Like much of his other work, Wright wanted Taliesin to appear as if it was an extension of the materials and features of the site in which it is placed, being an ‘organic’ development of a human habitation within a natural setting. Wright’s intent is evident in the way that the horizontal bands of stucco on the facade, as well as of the limestone in the foundation and walls of the building, parallel and mirror the layers of stone found on the site.

Exterior elevation of the house, as if emerging from the site (photos above and below)

While Philip Johnson’s architectural practice was located in New York City, he planned to build a house for himself and weekend guests in nearby New Canaan, Connecticut. Johnson’s Glass House clearly reflects his indebtedness to the work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and the European modernist movement in architecture generally known as the International Style. Employing Andres Amador’s distinction, the Glass House clearly embodies a geometric conceptual basis, with the result that the building does not so much emerge from the site but instead sits upon it as an imposed human-made form. The carefully clipped and very flat lawn, and the linear walkways serve to emphasize the distinction between the structure and its natural surroundings. This leaves the Glass House appearing to be like a sculptural object that has been placed on a plaza, or like a vase on a smooth table-top, rather than as something arising from within its setting.

The Glass House, exterior view (above), and interior view (below)

Brief attention to the history of these two buildings provides further insight. Wright lived at Taliesin much of his life, while also retreating to Taliesin West in the Arizona desert during the winter months. Over the years, he gathered a sizable community of apprentices who lived and worked with him at both locations. To this day, the architectural fellowship that is part of his legacy maintains both homes and studios. By contrast, though Philip Johnson first lived part-time in the Glass House himself, he soon discovered how it was largely unsuitable for that purpose, other than for entertaining guests in the living and dining areas of the structure. Given the sudden notoriety of the house, the constant presence of unwelcome visitors and architecture-minded prowlers made it problematic for every exterior surface of the house to be comprised of glass. Johnson soon made it a habit to stay in the adjacent bunker-like Brick House, designed for the site as a guest house, when spending time in New Canaan.

Obviously, it is easy to stress the marked differences between these houses designed and built by Wright and Johnson for themselves. Andres Amador’s dual approach to his earthscapes may help provide a reminder of the way that both-and thinking can aid how we consider certain objects of interest. Wright’s organic home and studio, emerging within and receiving inspiration from its site, and Johnson’s temporarily lived-in Glass House, imposed as a geometric sculpture upon its site, share a common distinction. Regardless of functional considerations, each house has its own way of displaying beauty, and both remain among a small list of internationally recognized architectural achievements of historic significance.

Note: A short introductory video about Andres Amador and his work, giving examples from both of the geometric and organic categories, introduced above, has been produced by KQED of San Francisco. It can be found on YouTube ( https://youtu.be/T_tIG5mo1DM?si=0MkjxkTEK48eC-aV ).

Taliesin East has been named a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the Glass House is a National Historic Landmark.

Earl Young’s Boulder Park Charlevoix Houses

Earl Young’s Boulder Manor, built for himself, as seen on a recent day

Summer visitors to Charlevoix encounter at least two things about the area: first, that this part of Michigan is a haven for boat lovers and especially cruisers on the Great Lakes; and, second, that the city of Charlevoix is the home of Earl Young’s so-called ‘mushroom houses.’ The first observation regarding boats and the appealingly clear lake water is easily recognized. The second association with the area takes a bit of discernment, usually gained from seeing brochures or the small electric carts evident in town bearing the label, “Mushroom Houses Tours.”

A pleasant walk around Charlevoix while viewing the many houses that Earl Young designed and built in the community reveals that his approach to home design was not uniform, and that his work avoided that to which the wider community has also not succumbed – becoming a caricature of itself. For he could have approached his design work in such a way as simply to repeat and imitate prior successes, pressing forward as so many architects have done to inaugurate a particular and distinctive style in home design. Instead, Young consistently displayed his overriding commitment to his chosen materials – stone and stone-related products. Therefore, when at the age of 35 in 1924, and in buying a tract of land adjacent to the Lake Michigan shoreline, he built ten houses with enough variation among them that later homes constructed by others are frequently confused with those of his own design. Young gave the tract along with its homes the fitting label of Boulder Park.

The Owl House, named for the arched front windows

This variability in the architectural character of the Boulder Park homes helps us to begin to recognize how the common ascription to Earl Young, of being the mushroom house architect, is in some ways a misnomer for him. A few of his houses nicely justify the label, given their firm rootedness to their sites, their often low or extending rooflines with irregular surfaces, and his heavy use of large stones and boulders in a number of them. Yet, Young was equally comfortable specifying limestone cut in horizontal block slabs and even commercially available brick or block products with which to construct walls with traditional uniformly-spaced layers of mortar. We may not be enamored with the some of the results of his work, but I think most of us can identify with Young’s lifelong intention to remain true to his materials and to the sites in which he set them.

A 1929 limestone cottage in Boulder Park, known for the rolled edges of the eaves

Two neighboring homes in Boulder Park illustrate Young’s consistency of intent, and flexibility with regard to ‘style.’ Boulder Manor, built in 1928 (displayed at the top of this post), sits in close proximity to the Pagoda House, built in 1934, seen below.

My favorite among the Boulder Park houses is the home that Young built for himself, called Boulder Manor (top photo). It is constructed with massive pieces of stone and boulders from the area, and features a matching smaller playhouse for his daughters that has a working fireplace.

Rear view of Boulder Manor along with the playhouse for the Young’s daughters

In some ways Earl Young was a bundle of contradictions, an idiosyncratic visionary who was known to tell some clients what they needed in terms of a home, and yet also one who could reside with an out of town family for a considerable period of time so as to get to know how they lived before designing a home for them. He had a consistent love of rough, ‘undressed’ stone to be used as found, and at the same time a willingness to use stone in a very conventional way. Young was famous for wanting to do virtually everything ‘his way,’ often to the consternation of others, including town leaders. And yet, one house of his in Boulder Park was the result of a client convincing him to build a home based on a design plan found in a women’s magazine, the 1933 Enchanted Cottage with its very English-looking windows (seen below).

The best introduction to Earl Young’s Charlevoix houses is a widely available book by the photographer, Mike Barton, titled, Mushroom Houses of Charlevoix. Filled with color photographs, and documenting every one of Young’s structures built in his home town, the book provides superb photographs, and better ones than I am able to provide.

A Tao of Seeing: Reflections Inspired by Feng Shui

Michael Pollan’s writer’s hut, intentionally situated by a boulder on the brow of a hill

Recently, I observed my middle son moving a black plastic pond module around in a small space in his New Orleans courtyard. As he moved the container that would soon have fish in it, he tried situating the vessel in various ways, in relation to a tree, a fence, some potted plants, and an existing low stone wall. He is not a student or practitioner of feng shui, but I believe I was seeing some of those principles at work in his decision-making.

Western readers may have heard of feng shui, the Asian philosophical approach to discerning the unseen forces that affect objects and their balance in nature. It gives attention to the metaphysical or non-material energies thought to be at work upon or within the world around us. We might say that this approach provides a Tao of seeing, or a natural way of perceiving within and around surface phenomena to the underlying dynamisms that are believed to affect what happens in nature.

This notion that there are unseen forces at work in the world is an idea that is receiving something of a revival in Western Christian spirituality. This is noticeable when people refer to a concept attributable to the Celtic tradition, in which it has become common to refer to “thin places. “ These are places where the veil between the material and the ethereal or the heavenly seems temporarily dissolved. Another parallel here between East and West may lie in the quest within Christian spirituality for the goal of harmony and balance between people and the created world.

However, my reflections here constitute an aesthetic rather than a philosophical or historical inquiry. I am interested in the dynamics of movement we perceive in the circumstances that we encounter, and less in the metaphysical forces or energies that may be present within them. At the outset, however, I want acknowledge how a nuanced Asian approach can be an authentic route toward a culturally-informed appreciation of the phenomena we encounter, especially from a historically Asian perspective.

As we look at paintings in the context of Western culture, one factor we discern assesses composition and attends to the way our seeing is drawn from one part of a larger image to another. This dynamic is often an artist-intended aspect of an overall composition. Sight lines in garden design and arrangement provide another example, as does the architectural arrangement of space in buildings.

Attention given by Western designers to feng shui is sometimes criticized as being a superficial application of historically and philosophically nuanced ideas. But I want to give credit to ways in which our sensitivity toward perceiving movement and direction is a genuine factor that is available for analysis and articulation. We notice this when we encounter both two dimensional compositions as well as three dimensional spaces and the objects we find in them. We can always come to know more about what we see. Because what we see is something that is there, not simply what we believe, or are disposed or inclined to see.

An Asian garden said to be designed according to *feng shui* principles

Motion, balance between forces, spatial arrangement of objects, and the dynamic relationships that are visible because they exist between and among these variables, continue to grab my interest. Contrasts between colors and textures, as well as between sizes and shapes, play a significant role. Additionally, the perceived difference between what is natural and things that are humanly fashioned is equally significant, as is our perception of the criteria for what constitutes that which we consider to be natural. These are among the factors that help account for our sensitivity towards and interest in these many observable variables, and our common quest for purpose and meaning in the contexts where we find ourselves.

Motions and balance as we find these factors in Wassily Kandinsky’s painting, Several Circles

Painters, sculptors, and architects, seriously consider these factors within visual and spatial compositions. The painter, Wassily Kandinsky, and the architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, provide two examples of those who also perceived a spiritual dimension within their creative work.

If so, we – as caring lay observers of the world and of the things and places among which we find ourselves – should give deference to this evident fact. For we can all be thoughtful, as people often are inclined to be, about what we see, touch, and experience when we interact with visual phenomena.

I find myself increasingly sensitive to these aspects of our appreciation for Beauty, and endeavor to be more mindful about them. I am intrigued by possible parallels that may exist between Eastern metaphysical interpretations of visual phenomena and more familiar approaches to what we see that are shaped by Western aesthetics. Especially as these familiar approaches are described and developed within our artistic and architectural best practices.

From Dream to Reality: Michael Pollan and His Writing House

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In an updated preface to his book, A Place of My Own: the Architecture of Daydreams, Michael Pollan laments how some readers approach his book expecting something like a “how to” guide to building their own writer’s hut or shack. Though he does provide a wealth of detail concerning the construction methods he used, the book’s richness lies in its thoughtful engagement with the idea of human shelter and its function in architecture. Of particular note is the attention he gives to the French writer, Gaston Bachelard, whose book, The Poetics of Space, prompts a good deal of reflection by Pollan. The author quotes Bachelard with words that obviously inspired the subtitle of A Place of My Own: “I should say: the house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.”

Michael Pollan dreams of building and inhabiting what we might call his own writer’s studio in the woods behind his Connecticut home. As he muses about its possibilities, he considers potential designs in dialogue with his chosen site for the small building. From a book by the English geographer, Jay Appleton, he gleans the insight that ideal human shelters provide two dialectically interconnected values, ‘prospect’ and ‘refuge.’ A shelter conducive for human flourishing provides both the opportunity to view and appreciate one’s surroundings while at the same time providing a secure resting place. Achieving these twin goals becomes one of Pollan’s priorities for his little writing hut.

At the same time, while embarking upon this project to build his place for writing, he acknowledges that the endeavor also provides the occasion for him to examine the idea of architecture, and its contemporary role in Western society. He discovers – through a gift subscription to Progressive Architecture magazine – that the field has increasingly become focused on the exploration and expression of ideas, leaving behind a principal focus upon providing beautiful yet practically useful spaces and structures for human habitation and work.

The interior of Michael Pollan’s writing house (note the daybed in the foreground)

Pollan realizes that what he wants to build is not something that points to something else, or to a set of ideas and concepts (as is the case with some contemporary practitioners in the field of design). Instead, he wants a structure that he can use for everyday work, for reading, and as a place where occasionally he can have a nap. With his aversion to the little building becoming an artistic statement rather than something truly useful, Pollan’s book reminds me of a principal theme in Tom Wolfe’s splendid little book, From Bauhaus to Our House.

Especially in the first two chapters, Michael Pollan offers a set of thought provoking and historically informed reflections on the nature and purpose of architecture, which are shaped in a writerly way. As much as I was drawn to the concrete aspects of his project – as in his account of his search for the ideal design of the window through which he would look while writing – I found his engagement with the theoretical aspects of the project to be very compelling. A good example of the latter is his reflection on our conscious experience of form and pattern in buildings, and our unconscious experience of the spaces we encounter and through which we move. Other examples include the role of feng shui in his selection of a site for his project, as well his explanation of the function of the Golden Section (or Divine Proportion, 1/1.618) in deciding the parameters of the rectangle for his floor plan.

Most of all, I appreciate Pollan’s delineation of the difference between the 20th century modernist or International Style approach to architecture, which abstractly stressed universality of form and consistent design elements regardless of a building’s context, with the architecture of someone like Frank Lloyd Wright, who focused on the connection between his buildings and their location within their chosen sites and his intentional employment of local materials. Pollan offers an insightful two-columned table to illustrate the difference between the two, with the first (stressing universality) labeled, “There,” and the second (stressing locality) labeled, “Here.”

All in all, he has given us a finely written book.

St John the Divine – A Building and a Gospel

In the summer of 1974, I left my Massachusetts prep school as one of the few graduates not intending to go on to college. I moved to Manhattan in a youthfully naive venture to try and replicate an aspect of the life of my hero, Frank Lloyd Wright. I wanted to follow his career path of eventually obtaining architectural licensing through practicing in the field, something that was and may still be possible.

Unfortunately, as a career move this was at an improvident time, largely due to what was then called “the oil crisis,” and its effect upon the economy. No architectural office was hiring beginning draftsmen, and some were taking on licensed architects to do the kind of basic drafting work for which I wanted to be hired. The former Frank Lloyd Wright associate, Edgar Tafel, was most gracious in allowing me to come to his New York City office for an interview and then by how he tolerantly responded to my youthful exuberance and evident lack of preparedness for the work. Philip Johnson was less patient with me. When I managed somehow to reach him by phone, he said, “Look – I don’t do the hiring around here. Talk to my associate!”

I had found a room a block and a half from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, which was a prominent local landmark and soon became a welcome place to visit. Only years later did I discover that the house in which I had been able to rent my room, the former Alpha Delta Phi fraternity house, on 114th St, opposite the Columbia University Library, was where Thomas Merton had lived when he was a student there.

I would walk over to St. John’s, an alluring place to stop and rest. Now, at this point in my life, I would say it was ‘to pray.’ But I would not have said that then. Yet, as one beautiful phrase in The Book of Common Prayer Catechism puts it, “Prayer is responding to God.” Those are profound words. If taken seriously, we can recognize how many, many people in this world ‘respond to God,’ quite spontaneously and quite naturally – and aside from doctrine or ritual.

The magnificent space and architectural achievement of the unfinished cathedral of St. John the Divine was a profoundly converting space for me, in ways I did not realize then, and in ways that would not really make sense to me until much later.

Drawn to this place, absorbed with my intuitions about its architecture, and visiting frequently with inquiries, I volunteered to become a docent, a kind of tour guide for visitors before places like this cathedral became commercially oriented, leading to the charging of fees and the like. In the process of my time as a guide, I learned many arcane and obscure things, among them the size and height of the granite columns surrounding the main altar (54’ tall, 6’ in diameter); the number and architecturally significant variations among the chapels adjacent to the ambulatory surrounding the apse that encloses the high altar; as well as significant features of other side chapels in addition to the crypt.

If you had asked me then about the nature of my interest in that building, I would have said it was purely of architectural significance. Ask me now and I will tell you that I was seeking a closer experience of what St John the Divine shares with us in his Gospel. I was – as we say in a paradoxical way – unconsciously looking for God. But what I was really looking for, as we all do, is the experience of being found… and of feeling found, by God.

I think it is also providential that my year in New York, and the brief time I served as an occasional volunteer guide at the Cathedral, was when Canon Edward West was Sub-Dean, and Madeleine L’Engle was officially the cathedral librarian. I may have had only passing contact with either of them, but both were exemplars of how the arts may draw people into a more direct experience of what our Christian faith is all about. The Cathedral of St. John the Divine has represented this vision and value for decades.

Where St. John the Divine as a building nurtured my nascent spiritual awareness, the Gospel given to us through St. John the Divine, and the hymn-poems in his Revelation, have been for me a key, a doorway, and a beckoning gateway into a greater fullness of life.

A Lost Treasure: Midway Gardens

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Someone as long-lived and hugely prolific as Frank Lloyd Wright might have been vulnerable to self-imitation in his work if he had run out of ideas before he ran out of clients. But like Picasso with regard to painting, Wright frequently surprised and impressed the wider public as well as many critics by his astonishing creativity, evident through several phases of self-reinvention in his work. Absorbing much from his teachers, Louis Sullivan among others, he then fundamentally transformed what he learned by creating new paradigms for architecture. FLW advanced our concept of what is beautiful and worth achieving through the design of buildings, and in helping us perceive the aesthetic potential of inspiring spaces in which to live and work, and simply be.

I have previously featured Wright’s 1923 Tokyo Imperial Hotel, located just down the avenue from the Japanese palace of the same name. Sadly, it was demolished in a 1960’s rebuilding program. An earlier structure for Chicago by Wright, with which the Imperial had considerable affinity, was his Midway Gardens, a large and elaborate project built in 1914. It was also subsequently razed despite its auspicious location on the Midway in the city’s Hyde Park neighborhood. Located across from Washington Park, and astride 60th Street, the Midway Gardens facility sat adjacent to the former location of the great Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893, in an area graced by the landscaping of Frederick Law Olmsted.

Now less well-known than its later Tokyo counterpart, Midway Gardens succumbed to its early demolition in 1929 due, at least in part, to Prohibition and the Great Depression. It is said that the complex was built with such structural integrity that the firm contracted to apply the wrecking ball went out of business as a result of its financial loss on the project.

Midway Gardens interior (above), Imperial Hotel interior (below)

Midway Gardens was created to provide Chicago with a year-round, indoor/outdoor, concert and entertainment venue where one could enjoy dining and socializing while being able to listen to live music. Like the Imperial Hotel and a number of Wright’s California houses, it was built in what is called the Mayan Revival style, and featured Wright’s characteristic horizontal bands of yellow brick intermixed with pattern-imprinted concrete block, soaring cantilevered terraces and overhangs, and Wright-designed ornamental features such as sculpture, light fixtures, and garden urns. As with so many of his projects, FLW prepared and oversaw the implementation of plans for every detail from roof and window design to that of the dining tables and restaurant china.

Of particular interest at Midway Gardens were Wright’s designs for the sculptures and sculptural elements executed by Alfonso Iannelli, many of whose stoneworks were lost in the subsequent demolition. Wright’s timeless designs for the Sprite sculptures later reappeared in stone at Taliesin West, and reproductions of them continue to be commercially available today.

A “Sprite” executed by Alfonso Iannelli based on Wright’s plans

Courtyard architectural detail

Surviving cast concrete forms designed by Wright

Midway Gardens interior terrace

Unfortunately, no color photos of Midway Gardens appear to have survived. However, photos of the Imperial Hotel help give us a sense of the design qualities of the Gardens structures and of what it would have been like to visit there. The foreign language labeled illustration below helps us appreciate the overall scale and character of the complex, and what a loss it is to American architecture that the facility was demolished, especially when it would be so congenial to contemporary design sensibility.

The Cottage Grove Avenue entrance area

Midway Gardens in its heyday

A link to my prior post on Wright’s Imperial Hotel can be found here. I am indebted to the website, WikiArquitectura, for some of the photos included here.

Note: blog settings have been changed to provide more opportunity to offer comments, using the link below.

A Japanese Tiny House: Less Can Be More

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Tiny house on wheels, by designer Haruhiko Tagami

Imagine Frank Lloyd Wright joining forces with Marie Kondo in accepting a challenge to create a tiny house on wheels. This is what Haruhiko Tagami has designed and built for a couple in Japan. Sitting on a single axle trailer frame and weighing approximately 1,300 lbs, Tagami has produced a remarkable example of a miniature F.L. Wright Prairie house on wheels. With its horizontal bands of unfinished lapstrake cedar planking, its recessed corner windows along with those of the light-admitting clerestory above, and clever use of space, the designer of this mobile mini-residence has done ‘the Master’ proud. It even includes a small but efficient wood burning fireplace.

Interior view

A very Japanese feature of this rolling tiny house is the intended multi-use of its principle room as a place for sitting, dining, and sleeping. Backless cushions are provided for sitting, with a table that can be stowed away, especially for night time. Bedding is then brought out from a storage cabinet and spread on a flat surface just as it would be in a traditional Japanese house. The small structure has a minimalist kitchen at the far end, made larger in feel by the expansive window adjacent to the work area. The clerestory above provides standing headroom for a person over 6′ in height, as well as a 360 degree view of the unit’s surroundings.

The kitchen area

When considering all the amenities built into this tiny house, it is hard to envision how small it really is. And yet it provides adequate room for two people to use for extended trips or as a get-away place in the country. The designer kept the overall result compact and light, suitable for towing behind an average vehicle, and able to be parked (without the vehicle) in a typical parking space. A portable toilet is among the items for which stowage is provided within, though the owners specifically did not want space taken up by even a small bathroom. Public toilets are widely available in Japan, and public bathhouses are easily found in almost every neighborhood or community, in addition to the numerous hot springs facilities located throughout the country.

On a larger scale, the Oregon Cottage Company has produced in this country a tiny house they call the Tea House cottage (depicted below). It is built on an 8′ x 20′ trailer frame and includes a formal area for the tea ceremony. Though the exterior of this Japanese inspired example looks conventionally Western, the interior incorporates a number of distinctly Japanese features enhanced by the unfinished birchwood wall surfaces. The windows have opaque shoji screen coverings, and traditional tatami mats cover the floor surface, which contains an aperture for preparing the tea pot. This little ‘tea house’ even provides an enclosed Japanese style soaking tub.

Interior view of Oregon Cottage Company Tea House trailer

Clearly the spare minimalism of traditional Japanese domestic interiors is well suited to tiny house design. These structures provide very attractive places for rest and retreat wherein the beauty of being surrounded by less may contribute greatly to one’s experience of a time away. Imagine – even for a short stay – inhabiting one of these pleasing spaces.

In a Time of Darkness

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Chicago’s Unity Temple, by Frank Lloyd Wright (1908)

In a time of darkness, we seek light from above.

A couple of days after offering my reflection on “A Desecrated Beauty,” I heard the terrible news from the Holy Land with its many troubling details.

The desecration of beauty can rightly be seen as a violation of what is sacred. If we can associate this idea of violation with the greedy despoliation of an old-growth forest, or the thoughtless pollution of a tranquil waterway, what greater offense against the wisdom and love of the Creator exists than atrocious barbarity unleashed upon human persons made in the image of God?

Human warfare, whether justified on occasion through acts of reasoning that seek some form of the good, or abhorred as an absolutely unconscionable choice, always involves some evil. Hate does not reflect our better nature, unless perhaps it is hate for the ultimate source of all that is not of God. Yet, paradoxically, we so often embody evil through violent acts against people whose views and behavior we refuse to recognize, not only by damaging things that other people value, but by hurting them, even fatally, as well.

In spite of this, following Augustine and Aquinas, I accept the premise that acts of violence can in some circumstances and on some occasions be justified as acts in the service of justice and even of love. The view that the defense of other human beings can be a justifiable expression of our love for our neighbor, even if that defense may involve the use of force and acts of violence, is and has been a formative strand of biblically informed Christian moral reasoning. Therefore, I offer no judgment upon Israel and its leaders who are presently involved in responding militarily to the large-scale acts of terrorism against their nation and people.

Whether for decisions made in haste, or acts undertaken after due deliberation, Israel’s leaders and people will have occasion to judge themselves, their reasoning, and what they have done or not done. History, and others not directly involved, will certainly call them to account.

People impacted by the present conflict may find it difficult or even impossible to seek ‘light from above.’ Yet, in the midst of darkness, those who seek beauty, goodness, and truth, will best be prepared to receive that light, and the healing that comes with it. For the divine light is not absent and can be found.

Whether the divine presence is known and named as revealed, or unknown, or even secretly sought, Christ is the center of all that exists, the one in whom all things hold together, and through him God’s Providence is enacted. Evil will be vanquished, and all that is good or open to God’s redeeming guidance will be brought by him to its intended fulfillment and bliss (see Colossians 1:9-20).

For “the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a light has dawned” (Isaiah 9:2 & Matthew 4:16).

Chihuly’s Glass Installations

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Marine Blue and Citron Tower, by Dale Chihuly, installed in 2021 at Taliesin West, Arizona

The making of art glass, especially when glassblowing, begins with glass melted in a furnace heated to over 2,000 degrees f. by gas-powered flames. As the artist works with the material, additional quantities of glass shards are typically added to the furnace. The added glass may be clear or colored, especially when recycled glass is employed, and other ingredients can be added to achieve a desired hue or tint.

Once, when my glassblowing instructor was scooping shards of recycled material into the flames, he accidentally lost grip of the metal scoop, which fell into the molten glass. To his delight, this produced a most beautiful and unexpected yellow color in the subsequently formed glass objects. Of particular note in Chihuly’s work is the conjunction of multiple colors, and the agate-like striations involving both colored and clear portions of glass.

At the most basic level, glassblowing involves attaching a glob of molten glass to the end of a tube-like metal pipe, which is then spun while air is introduced into it. At first this creates a globe-shaped object. Spinning the material fixed to the pipe can have an effect like that of a spinning pottery wheel upon wet clay. In both cases, the material can be formed into a symmetrical mass. But it can also be spun out of shape into a mess.

Whereas hands are used in ceramics to do the primary shaping, with molten glass a number of tools are employed to achieve various effects. These include assorted molds which Chihuly and his assistants may use to produce the rippled edges in some of his finished pieces like those depicted below. Wooden paddles, tweezers, cutting shears, and a variety of other tools are used in the process of shaping the very hot glassware while it is being formed, sometimes pulling and stretching it, at other times changing its orientation by causing parts of a piece to turn in on themselves. All the while the glassware artist must periodically reintroduce the work in progress into the open end of the furnace, or apply a torch to its surface, so as to keep the material hot and malleable.

Lower image: A portion of Chihuly’s Persian Ceiling, lit from above

In recent years, Chihuly has become known for his sometimes massive installations of glass. These often involve a seemingly uncountable number of objects linked together by an upright frame, suspended from a rack, or cradled from below. Viewers might encounter these installations indoors where they are displayed as a chandelier might be hung, or placed in an outdoor setting.

With his artistic exploration of the possibilities inherent in the manipulation of molten glass, and by pushing the parameters of what conceivably may be accomplished through working with this medium, Chihuly has created a huge portfolio of truly remarkable work. Of note is the way that so many of his pieces simultaneously have a sophistication that appeals to specialists and collectors, while at the same time being works of art that bring delight and wonder to children as well as to those who may not credit themselves with being aesthetically aware or sensitive. Dale Chihuly has effectively devoted his career to helping others encounter and perceive beauty in new and unexpected ways.

Another Chihuly installation, Fire Amber Herons, at Frank Lloyd Wrights’ Taliesin West

The Beauty of the Seth Peterson Cottage

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Frank Lloyd Wright, Cottage for Seth Peterson, 1958

The last commission completed by Frank Lloyd Wright before his death was a small cottage for Seth Peterson. While diminutive in scale, this architectural gem incorporates many of the design features we associate with the Wright’s visionary work. A native of the region near Taliesin, Wright’s home and studio, Peterson had once sought to become one of the student-apprentices there. He later sought to commission Wright to design a personal cottage, sending a check in advance. After declining Peterson’s request more than once, Wright, having already spent the fee, was obliged to fulfill the request to provide the plans. Admirers of FLW’s architecture can be glad for Peterson’s persistence and that this small project was completed with impressive results.

Sadly, Peterson did not live to inhabit the cottage. Yet subsequent owners and devotees of Wright’s legacy helped preserve this small treasure. The fully restored cottage sits on land that is now part of a state park, and it became the first Wright home later available for guest rental (and remains so).

Attention to the relatively simple floor plan of the cottage helps orient those newly acquainted with it to identify some of the principal characteristics of Wright’s many home designs.

The entryway on the upper left side of the plan is in many ways typical of Wright’s preferences in that the structure is approached from the rear and then from the side. Slender double doors open into the compact interior which at the same time appears expansive due to the raised roof and ascending ceiling, which provide shelter over a wall of glass punctuated by warm cedar or redwood uprights. Complementing the beckoning view to the left, over a valley and lake, straight ahead the visitor sees more windows and double doors that open onto a side terrace. This prompts an initial sense that the primary orientation of this small home is toward the natural beauty of the landscape just beyond.

Passing beyond the dining table and chairs (Wright designed, of course) and into the main part of the living space, a second principal point of orientation for the cottage emerges. This is as it is with most FLW-designed homes, where one finds a massive fireplace featuring the same stone work evident throughout the structure and its surrounding terraces. While fireplaces of this kind and scale provide a central anchor point for so many of these domiciles, the plan helps us perceive something more. Wright typically grouped the kitchen (what he termed the workspace), utility room, and bathroom(s) together with the central fireplace in a practical way. Yet, visually and experientially, the fireplace always took pride of place and tended to obscure attention to those other spaces and their functions.

The relatively diminutive scale of the bedroom and bathroom in this cottage befit that of the cottage as a whole, and yet a study of many of Wright’s other house plans reveals a similar result. Just like his designs for kitchens, Wright’s apportionment of space for nighttime rest and personal hygiene was at best modest. It is as if he strongly believed that the greatest amount of waking time for a home’s residents should be in its common areas, where – beyond personal needs – one might pursue learning, social interaction and an experiential connection with the natural world.

In my view, the following photographs show the cottage at its best.