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Archive for the ‘School Work’ Category

  ‘Habana is very much like a rose,’ said Fico Fellove in the movie The Lost City, ‘it has petals and it has thorns…so it depends on how you grab it. But in the end it always grabs you.’ “One of the most beautiful cities in the world. You see it with your heart.” Enrique [...]

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Nets To Rietta Wallenda Tightrope acrobats dance above safety nets (or not) Nerves taut like violin chords Pulsing on neck, tendons stiff. / The fisherman spreads his father’s nets Repaired a thousand times, damaged again He sews his wounds on the beach Fastens the corks The old man with the young eyes who listens to [...]

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Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional. From Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers Charles Simonds began building clay villages, ruins and what he termed ” dwellings for imaginary civilizations of little people” in the [...]

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Well, this is no good! August is almost here and once again balmy summer days flew by with traveling, urban escapades and some R&R…while the postings have been mighty sparse. I have been a curious tourist in my own city and state, and, in between summer courses,  the roamings included a visit to Joshua Tree National Park, Much [...]

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Today I want to stray from the visual and go back to words (even though visual work is piling up by the scanner, waiting to be shared.) The visual permeates every aspect of a designer/artist life…it is the expected outcome: something that all can see. Here in sketchbloom I share works and progress/process in form [...]

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  On April 08, 2011 I attended Till’s  provocative  lecture on his new book ‘Architecture Depends’. Here is a review from The Architects’ Journal (UK). Here are some quotes from that day, from my notes, which i hope to be as faithful as possible: The book was initially titled ‘Architecture and Contingencies’. The publisher made [...]

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  As designers, architects, artists, we use the ability to first visualize then communicate  a desired outcome. Implementation means having the courage, discipline and perseverance  to  bring that vision into the physical realm. I love to write, and to write lists, but this year I am doing something different with my 2011 resolutions. I am drawing them. It [...]

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Bjarke Ingels came to speak to our school Friday night. The venue was the Museum of Natural History in scenic Balboa Park. I am still blown away by the lecture and, more importantly, the message. It was truly (r)evolutionary.  The fact that BIG’s insanely brilliant concepts not only get built but a) give back to [...]

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The Flâneur: A Radical-Chic Icon

” There was the pedestrian who wedged himself into the crowd, but there was also the flâneur who demanded elbow room and was unwilling to forego the life of the gentleman of leisure. His leisurely appearance as a personality is his protest against the division of labour which makes people into specialists. It was also [...]

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One more post before the month is over. I still have a lot of sketches to share and  am working on finding time to do some more collages (wow, the previous sentence needs to have more conviction to it!). Lots of changes going on around the world…. I am just sitting and seeing it all turn. [...]

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This has started to be a weekly blog, and I am not too happy about it. This Quarter has been so intense in a stupendous way: I am involved in a myriad of exciting projects at the school and became involved in new committees – and that has meant less free time, but an overall [...]

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  John Hejduk has been called one of the most influential architects and educators of our time.. He was also a poet, an artist and the Dean of the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of the uber-prestigious Cooper Union in New York. I am reviewing couple of his books, Vladivostok and The Mask of [...]

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My second board for the faculty display wall. I now have a list of new art to add to my portfolio tabs, as this was a great opportunity to curate my artwork. It feels great to be done (for now). Happy Halloween!

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The board is done and up on the faculty display wall. In the process, I refined my skills with Illustrator, pondered philosophy, practice, pedagogy,and  crystallized what I am, do, stand for — in a tangible format. A welcome tall order.

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From my Friday’s History Class. The Beginnings of Architecture covers Stonehenge, the caves at Lascaux and Altamira, and what we consider the beginning of the urban revolution in our hemisphere, the proto-cities of Catal Huyuk and Jericho. I will share weekly  my History powerpoints, well, okay, the ones I consider complete…next I want to sharpen [...]

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I have been thinking and wanting to explore collages again since this summer, when I was so inspired by Hector Perez and his students’ work with SoCal Ex–but not until today I finally acted on that impulse. I have two works done and one almost complete. Two to share, and one part of a larger, [...]

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Choi+Shine, a Massachusetts-based design studio has recently received the Boston Society of Architects Unbuilt Architecture Award for their creative concept Land of Giants™, transforming the generic steel-framed electricity pylons across the Icelandic landscape into unique, individual humanised forms. Read the World Architecture News article here. In contrast to the poetry of the unbuilt, and whenever [...]

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All images are from a research project completed by my student, Mariam Thomas, on Architects as Artists and their rendering/design techniques. The relationship between architecture and art, and the study of practitioners who are also artists (with the mindframe of artists), whose design process transcends design practices and pragmatism to include enlightment, discoveries and art- wonderings [...]

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Happy September. Post coming late today, but it is a new month and I hope this, my birthday month (yay) will be better than the last- and all summer for that matter.  Lots of challenges and growth but…they don’t call them growing pains for nothing. In my classes today we shared links on artists, visual notes, [...]

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From yesterday’s Rendering and Delineation Class. So proud of my color-wary students. Read the story of the mythical Queen Califia. California is named after her! See Niki St. Phalle Sculptural Garden ‘ Queen Califia’s Magical Garden’ in Kit Carson Park, Escondido, California. Previous posts on the subject: California and Califia Listening to Baroque Music in [...]

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Lately, I’ve favored the watercolor and pencil technique, but want to get back to working with markers. I found these two great tutorials on marker renderings from my blog friend and Urban Sketcher extraordinaire Suzanne Cabrera at An [Open] Sketchbook: can’t wait to share them with my students! { Tutorial 1: Furniture/Fabric } { Tutorial [...]

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Do you remember Niki St. Phalle’s ‘Queen Califia’s Magical Garden’? Well, I went back with my students for some loose watercolor and pencil renderings.

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After some meetings today I stopped by the library, Futo coffee in hand, and indulged in my favorite Architecture periodicals: Domus, Architectural Review and Harvard Design Magazine. An article on Surrealist Houses launched an expansive search on the Architecture of René Magritte; will share some of the findings here. I am also thinking about watercolor [...]

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Another exercise with  ‘Drawing on the Righ Side of the Brain’.  By drawing the space, not the chair, the proportions were incredibly accurate in all drawings.  The drawings can be read as Nolli Maps of imaginary cities, we can see piazzas, palazzi…we can see perspective, spatial configurations/plans, abstract paintings… I love the ambivalent water medium, [...]

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The Man with Many Pens by Jonathan Wells With one he wrote a number so beautiful it lasted forever in the legends of numbers. With another he described the martyrs’ feet as they marched past the weeping stones and cypresses, watched by their fathers. He used one as a silver wand to lift a trout [...]

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I hope everyone’s having a fabulous beginning of August. I am really trying. I plan to go to some movie under the stars, or at the park, or on a roof, like Cinema Paradiso. A good black and white movie, preferably a noir Hitchcock, would be the cat’s meow. I am officially suffering from wanderlust.  [...]

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The image above aptly illustrates the process behind diagramming, which is one of summarizing and and rendering a concept more abstract, more immediately communicable. Abstract in this sense is intended as ‘ reduced to the essential’.  Diagrams are, according to Joe Nicholson: 1. a simple drawing showing the basic shape, lay-out, or workings of something [...]

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I spent the better part of last night ‘curating’ and putting up a small show of my students’ work. Last quarter I promised my Neoclassic to Modern Art students I  would organize an exhibit of their art in the main foyer of our school and I am happy to announce that that’s one promise kept:) [...]

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