Archive for the ‘Architecture’ Category

2017 Photographs: Mooning in NYC

Monday, January 8th, 2018

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Early in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s stage musical, Hamilton, during a scene set on the streets of Colonial New York City, the Schuyler Sisters — Angelica, Eliza (and Peggy) — sing an exuberant song in praise of the city. Among the song’s lyrics are these joyful words:

“[H]ow lucky we are to be alive right now! History is happening in Manhattan and we just happen to be in the greatest city in the world!”

The three young ladies dare any of their listeners to deny that theirs is indeed the “greatest city.” The challenge they issue to dissenters is a simple instruction, repeated over the course of the song a total of 16 times:

“Look around!”

Over two centuries later, look around is still good advice to anyone who wants to experience New York City in all of its fullness. I would add one amendment to the guidance of the three sisters. If you find yourself on the streets of present-day NYC, remember this:

There are moments when looking around also calls for you … to look up!

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New York City, 157 W. 35th St., September 23, 2017 at 11:45:33 AM

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The Tobacco Barns of Calvert County – No. 1

Sunday, April 9th, 2017

If you travel the country roads of southern Maryland’s Calvert County, you are sure to come upon many tobacco barns. They are remnants of a once thriving tobacco-growing industry. While a few barns survive in good condition, most are falling victim to disrepair and the ruinous forces of nature.

I’m intrigued by these large wooden structures. There is beauty in them. Character, too. Large and simple in form, they command the landscape with a presence somehow both rustic and majestic.

From time-to-time I plan to post photos of favorite examples.

First up:  A tobacco barn located in northern Calvert County at the meeting of Vanous Road and Jewell Road, photographed April 8, 2017, shortly before sunset. The second photograph catches the rising moon, in its waxing gibbous phase, trying to touch the apex of the barn’s western facade.

Click on the photos to enlarge.

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WONDER at the Renwick Gallery

Monday, September 5th, 2016

The 2015 reopening of the Renwick Gallery in Washington, DC, was celebrated with an exhibition featuring the work of nine contemporary artists. Five women and four men created site-specific installations that occupied and transformed the museum’s refurbished gallery spaces. Over a period of 8 months, visitors found themselves immersed in wonders indeed. Official photographs of the event can seen at the online gallery, here.  Below are photos of three of the nine rooms that I took during my visit in April, 2016. Descriptions of the artists’ works quoted below are borrowed from the Renwick Gallery’s wall texts, found here.

 

Maya Lin, Folding the Chesapeake (installation, 2015)

“Growing up in Ohio in the 1960s, Lin watched her father participate in the fledgling studio glass movement then gathering steam in nearby Toledo. The marbles used in this installation are the same industrial fiberglass product Henry Huan Lin and other glass-blowing pioneers experimented with then, which were soon abandoned by artists as technical knowledge matured. Folding the Chesapeake marks their first use by Maya Lin and a new chapter in her decades-long investigation of natural wonders. By shaping rivers, fields, canyons, and mountains within the museum, Lin shifts our attention to their outdoor counterparts, sharpening our focus on the need for their conservation.”
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Gabriel Dawe, Plexus A1 (installation, 2015)

“Dawe’s architecturally scaled weavings are often mistaken for fleeting rays of light. It is an appropriate trick of the eye, as the artist was inspired to use thread in this fashion by memories of the skies above Mexico City and East Texas, his childhood and current homes, respectively. The material and vivid colors also recall the embroideries everywhere in production during Dawe’s upbringing.”

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Tara Donovan, Untitled , 2014, © Tara Donovan, courtesy of Pace Gallery

“Employing mundane materials such as toothpicks, straws, Styrofoam cups, scotch tape, and index cards, Donovan gathers up the things we think we know, transforming the familiar into the unrecognizable through overwhelming accumulation. The resulting enigmatic landscapes force us to wonder just what it is we are looking at and how to respond. The mystery, and the potential for any material in her hands to capture it, prompts us to pay better attention to our surroundings, permitting the everyday to catch us up again.”

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The White House: An Evening Tour during Christmas Season

Saturday, December 12th, 2015

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Just returned from an evening tour of the White House, now decorated for the Christmas season.

The entrance to the East Wing is guarded by stalwart Penguins — volunteers, one imagines, from Santa’s polar region.

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Penguins guard the West Wing entrance

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Once inside, your journey down a hallway turns magical under a canopy of paper snowflakes:

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White House hallway with paper snowflakes

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When you reach the White House proper, a succession of public rooms greets you. One of these is the Green Room, which displays a spectrum of American art, including paintings by John Marin and Jacob Lawrence (for a daytime photo of the Green Room, click here):

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The White House, Green Room

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The White House, Green Room, with paintings by John Marin and Jacob Lawrence

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Of the many Christmas trees on display, this one in the East Room is my candidate for best (neither the fellow in the lower left nor the one on the back wall expressed an opinion):

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The White House, East Room

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Gray Day in Washington, DC

Sunday, July 26th, 2015

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Washington, DC, July 2, 2015, 2:06:45pm.

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Two Centuries, Two Halls, Two Ceilings

Saturday, June 27th, 2015

These are photographs I took this month of the interiors of two notable buildings in Washington, DC — the grand halls and ceilings of the Library of Congress’s Jefferson Building (Great Hall, 1897) and the U.S. Institute of Peace Headquarters (Jacqueline and Marc Leland Atrium, 2011).

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View from the floor of the Great Hall, Library of Congress, Jefferson Building

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Six large skylights above the Great Hall, Library of Congress, Jefferson Building

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Ceiling decoration of the Great Hall,  Library of Congress, Jefferson Building

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View from the Great Hall’s second floor west corridor, June 15, 2015

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U.S. Institute of Peace, Leland Atrium, which one critic lambasted for its “lazy glass wing dangling rather drunkenly over the main atrium.”)

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The space, regimented with chairs, is chilling. It reminded me of the assembly hall filled with gray seated prisoners featured in Apple Computer’s notorious “1984” TV ad.

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Yet there’s no denying the ceiling is intriguing optically and as a feat of engineering.

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