America 2020 Print

John Adams arrived on scene in November 1929, about the time of the market Crash and the Great Depression. First memories are those of Horatio Street in Greenwich Village, New York City where a blacksmith shoed horses at one end and the Communist Party dis business at the other while just beyond lay abandoned piers and the Hudson River. Rich Art colors stacked to a shop's ceiling, visits to a Village artist's studio, and exposure to a mother's fashion illustrations filled out New York's visual excitement. Much later, in the Seventh Grade in Connecticut, a manual arts teacher abandoned the syllabus to demonstrate his passion for watercolor painting with a stretch of 300# hand-laid watercolor paper, a sash brush, and color which he applied wet on wet. I was sold. That impromptu lesson, together with instruction in a life drawing class in late middle age constituted my formal education in art. In due course came two years of study at Trinity College, Hartford with courses in art history, musical structure, and other eye-openers which led to unrequited wonder. Five years of the professional study of Architecture at North Carolina States School of Design followed the time at Trinity, and these years included not only the techniques of architectural practice but exposure to a wide range of very accomplished people in the arts, in philosophy, the social sciences, history, and engineering. Although never a student in his class, Matthew Nowicki, co-designer of the UN headquarters, was an inspiration to make use of delineation in the design process as well as for presentations. In the middle of these years of study came a sabbatical of sorts, two years of active duty in the Navy where I learn something about problem-solving and treating with people who were not necessarily attentive to my needs. For my purposes of artistic expression, I have found architecture to be limited, and so over the years I have resorted to drawing and painting to respond to observations and feelings about my surroundings, and there has been feedback to the architectural work. I have never worked for a market, never consciously pursued a style or a brand, never adopted the precepts of anybody's school of expression, or followed a master. I have adopted whatever medium that seemed to do the job and meet practical needs. The "job" is, to my mind, a design problem that requires a solution, often with surprising study and rehearsals.