Washington DC Cherry Blossoms: VISION vs REALITY

The Washington Monument marks the National Mall and the District of Columbia from miles afar. During April each year, the cherry blossoms bloom all around the Mall and the Tidal Basin. This gift of hundreds of trees from Japan frames the Washington Monument and the national monuments in white and light pink blossoms. The drawing/watercolor is soft and light like a Japanese floral painting. 
https://www.etsy.com/listing/154112112/washington-dc-national-mall-art-print

https://www.etsy.com/listing/154112112/washington-dc-national-mall-art-print

https://www.etsy.com/listing/154112112/washington-dc-national-mall-art-print

Postcards, too!
https://www.etsy.com/listing/154235065/national-mall-cherry-blossoms-of

Ahh...so lovely. I imagined I would float along the Tidal Basin to the scent of cherry blossoms, beneath their bountiful boughs of pink petals....

If you prefer the VISION over the REALITY, find your Washington DC Cherry Blosoms Print HERE

STATE ARCHITECTURE Map-Drawing

What if, in addition to the State Tree, Flower, Bird, etc...there was a STATE ARCHITECTURE? An emblematic, vernacular cottage nestles into the topographic folds of each of the 'Lower 48' States.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/178521286/state-architecture-small-houses-map

 This Map can be framed, or just hung like a poster. It's printed on thick archival epson paper.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/178521286/state-architecture-small-houses-map

The Southern States and beyond.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/178521286/state-architecture-small-houses-map

The Great Lakes and the Eastern States.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/178521286/state-architecture-small-houses-map

The East Coast!
https://www.etsy.com/listing/178521286/state-architecture-small-houses-map

The Western States and beyond.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/178521286/state-architecture-small-houses-map

NYR 2014

I love the clean slate and fresh start and longer perspective of the NEW YEAR - and making goals! This year, I plan to make a lot of new drawings of places I love.

CITIES (and States and Countries) TO DRAW in 2014!

I've thought carefully about the places I've loved and want to get to know better, through drawing. Places I have visited and photographed with an eye to make drawings. Drawings emblematic their unique and ubiquitous qualities and evocative of the senses they conjured in me.  
CITIES (and States and Countries) TO DRAW in 2014 Mapped (above) and Listed (below)

CITIES (and States and Countries) TO DRAW in 2014!

Woodrow Wilson's House in Washington DC

We're on a Woodrow Wilson tour this week, it seems! After a crippling stroke in office, and at the end of his term, Wilson and his second wife, Edith, lived here on S Street, near Embassy Row. Wilson lived here 1921-1924. Edith lived 37 more years and gifted the house to the National Trust in 1961. The house is furnished largely as it was when Wilson lived here. (photo on left by Todd A. Smith Photography.)

Welcome to the parlor, a memorial to Wilson's family (his three girls' portraits on the piano) a "museum" of international gifts to the former President.

The grand piano, played by his eldest daughter, and a huge wall tapestry, a gift to the President.

A painting of the Spanish Steps in Rome, and portraits of King George V and Queen Mary, mother of the current Queen Elizabeth.

Wilson's office includes, among the books and treasures, a film projector (right) and screen (left). Cutting edge.

The neighborhood and the beautiful terraced rear gardens.

Woodrow Wilson's dressing and bed room. What a gentleman.

Edith Wilson was a 9th generation descendant of Pocahontas and proud (left image: Pocahontas, and Edith). Here is her bed and dressing room.

Built-in cabinets and cupboards are found throughout the house (love them!) and proudly house the Wilsons' china collections here.

In addition to an elevator that was powered by the S Street streetcar, the house was equipped with an intercom!

The kitchen is a large bright space, with a "modern" stove and wooden icebox.

The Woodrow Wilson House is a treasure trove of curious gifts from around the world by admirers of the President who negotiated the end of the horrendous World War and an interesting glimpse into life at the high end of Washington in the 1920s.

The Washington DC Temple in the Clouds

A commission to draw the Washington DC Temple gave me an opportunity to use pencil on nice thick paper, and I really enjoyed it! I appreciated the inherent qualities of pencil in layering and shading which I did solely with vertical freehand lines in varying densities and pencil weights. The sheet size is 12" x 15".

This view, from the 495 Beltway, is so elegant as the building spires punctuate and extend so tall above the tree line. In graphite, it appears to be reaching from clouds. Heavenly.

The GOTHIC SPIRIT of John Taylor Arms at the National Gallery of Art

The Gates of the City, John Taylor Arms

I was enamored by Arms' images of New York, where he began by about 1916 to transition from working as an Architect to an Architectural Artist, re-presenting the gothic structures that fascinated him with the precision and understanding of an architect. I've just finished reading The Great Bridge.

Cobwebs, John Taylor Arms

An American Cathedral, John Taylor Arms

But, he moved on...
"I can admire the skyscrapers of New York, that unbelievable city which is a very gold mine for the architectural etching but I do not love them and I cannot etch what I do not love."

...to GOTHIC Europe.

Towers of San Gimignano, John Taylor Arms

Stockholm, John Taylor Arms
Venetian Mirror, John Taylor Arms

I was not too disappointed my friend was late to meet me at the National Gallery of Art because I needed a lot of time to absorb the drawings and etchings of John Taylor Arms. I had to stand two or three inches from the work in order to even see all of the miniscule lines that create such depth and texture in Arms' compositions. I can't fathom how he drafted/drew the Grand Canal on site in Venice with such accuracy and precision at such a small scale.

Helen Keller visited Arms' studio and, in his guestbook, wrote of the "Luminous and artistic minds" she encountered there. Light to the blind.

You cannot see the luminous detail online, so you MUST go to the John Taylor Arms Exhibit at the National Gallery, west wing, and bring your magnifying glass.

Lewis Baltz PROTOTYPES at the National Gallery

"Architecture, real architecture, always life is reduced into 2-D representation...I've avoided this dilemma in my own work by using only sub-architecture." Lewis Baltz

Baltz's images are modern building facades encorached upon by natural elements of decay. They translate to two dimensions readily and elegantly in the way he has framed them and in the minimalist medium of black and white photography. They are largely flat. A view beyond the plane of the wall is rare and conscientous. So, at least banal buildings are good for black and white photographs.

The Renewal of St. Elizabeths Hospital

We could not enter the Kirkbride Building - just these glimpses through the front entry - but photographs by Ethan McElroy capture its pallid spirit. The GSA is documenting each room prior to renovation with HABS format photographs, we learned during an extremely interesting tour by DC Preservation League, with GSA and a Project Architect.

The Government Hospital for the Insane was instituted on this bucolic site in 1855 with the completion of this, the main building and stellar example of the popular Kirkbride plan designed by Thomas Walter, then architect of the Capital. Founded by mental health reformer Dorothea Dix, the hospital aimed to provide the "most human care and enlightened curative treatment of the insane of the Army, Navy and District of Columbia." In the mid-1800s the architecture of this approach called for individual rooms, dorm-style. The campus grew with the times, adding cottages and communal living quarters, eventually housing about 8,000 patients and 4,000 staff over 300 acres by 1940. Civil War soldiers treated here referred to it as St Elizabeths, the name of the area rather than the more ominous official name of the facility and the name was changed by Congress to St Elizabeths (no apostrophe) by 1916. Chipped concrete remains of tennis courts and walking paths that meandered among specimen trees with spectacular views back to the city. The rural life in view of the city and civilization was deemed ideal for convalescence. The still-bucolic campus is within the District boundaries, on the east side of the Anacostia River. One can look across the river, scan the landmarked skyline and imagine the residents of St Elizabeths convalescing here, taking walks, writing (like Ezra Pound who spent several years here - second story, second window left of main entrance), tending their gardens, and - perhaps less bucolic - submitting to treatment for their ills. The "excited" patients were segregated within the Kirkbride building, as were men and women, as were the races. A separate building on the western edge of campus housed the criminally insane.

A daughter of a wealthy family lived in this large house built for her, with her own staff, on the grounds a short walk from the main building. Streets or lanes named "Raintree" typify a healing by nature ethic of the institution.

The western edge is the site of the massive new Coast Guard headquarters, currently under construction. A bald eagle nests in the forest on the left and is known to fly down and watch the workers on occasion.

While St Elizabeths continues to operate as a much smaller mental health facility on the eastern portion of the campus, the western 176-acre campus was abandoned in 2003. The site is a National Historic Landmark District. The buildings were stabilized by GSA and are now beginning renovation to house the consolidated Department of Homeland Security, with about 14,000 employees. It's a massive undertaking in Preservation and Renewal and the process is documented HERE.

I would like to take you to Fairlington

Fairlington is well-documented, not only on its historical marker signs, but HERE and HERE and HERE, thanks to dedicated residents who really love this historic community.

So, I'll focus on my perceptions, as a (transitory) resident.I've been planning to write about Fairlington for a while; as is often the case with something close to home, I finally will, now that my time here is drawing to a close and I've learned a little more about this epic 1940s planned community by living here for eight months. I inhabit a small top-floor bedroom in a three-story brick townhouse. I call it the baby's room; envisioning the young families moving to the area at the onset of WWII, it's the only bedroom beside the master. It is a cozy perch from which to work, with two windows and the constant white noise of I-395. I can check the traffic in a glance while sitting at my desk. Fairlington is equidistant from Old Town Alexandria and the District. I can drive into the District in less than ten minutes, depending on traffic, and bike there in about 45 minutes via the excellent trail network that converges on Shirlington. Good restaurants abound in Shirlington, as well as my favorite local paper shop, and groceries and post offices are within a ten minute walk here and on King Street. The neighborhood has a friendly, relaxed which is nowhere more apparent than strolling above 11 lanes of highway on the Abingdon Street Bridge.
Noted architects Franzheim and Mills used high-quality materials, employed architetural variety and got the traditional details right.

Two schools, a fire station, and a church in matching neo-colonial red brick and white trim round out the 3500 dwellings in the Fairlington community.

Fairlington's homes, in almost thirty different varieties, are built on the hills, on either side of 395. The high-density mixed-use development at Shirlington is in the distance, across 395 (photo above). The architects took advantage of the topography to maximize capacity and dwelling entrances. Take your eyes from the house at right (above) to house at right (below, same house) It's a two-story duplex townhouse. Walk down the steps to the left and another dwelling occupies the basement. A duplex cottage is attached at the rear. Below the cottage, another entrance from the side. That's one building, about six units. But it does not look like a typical 6-unit apartment building at all.Traditional townhouses moulded to the landscape. It is seldom that the front door actually fronts the street to which it is addressed which makes for interesting directions when inviting friends over to your house. My door fronts a lovely wooded path (above)

I would not have been inclined to choose a home that did not have a proper street address or a neighborhood whose street network was so circuitous and "suburban." But my first impression was lots of big leafy trees and well-designed dwellings. I've enjoyed calling Fairlington home for the curiosity of its era, 1940s wartime, as well as it location. The whir of helicopters so common over Fairlington is a result of its proximity to the Pentagon and a reminder of its origins as WWII Defense Housing.

Enjoy the "Reminiscences" of older folks who called Fairlington home throughout the decades.