AIA '18 - NYC

In New York for the National AIA Convention in June.  Revisiting some previously sketched sites.


Main Concourse at Grand Central


I met up with the NYC chapter of Urban Sketchers at Pier 17 and the South Street Seaport.  Initially had trouble finding anyone, but when I sat down to this view of the Brooklyn Bridge, I was joined by a half dozen other sketchers.  The funky cantilevered chairs shown here were well used during the lunch hour.  A great group on a beautiful day.

Below, Washington Square Park with Stanford White's triumphal arch.  Plane trees and ancient elms cool this public space on the hottest days of summer.

The first stop with a sketching tour led by Clemson University's Lynn Craig was the corner of 53rd Street and 6th Ave looking toward Jean Nouvel's swooping Tower Verre, now the MoMA Expansion Tower.

We made our way to Central Park.  I've always enjoyed the relics of old advertising schemes still in use, such as the Essex House Hotel's lofty letters along Central Park South.  The super skyscrapers are popping up like weeds around these old buildings, casting shadows well beyond the park.

The name of this diner was Eat Here Now, so I did.

I was notified of my flight cancellation while making this sketch at Grand Army Plaza.  I can't look at Sherman's tribute without thinking of the anonymous Southern wag who, upon its unveiling said, "Well ain't that just like a Yankee, letting the woman walk!" 

Two old hippies

150 Lex

Trinity Cathedral, Columbia, SC

Front Door

Our house, close to the middle of our street, built in 1934 for a mother and her daughter's family. An over and under double residence, it was designed by Swedish-born architect J. Carroll Johnson.

Roseneath Farm

The old home place, once a farm, now in the middle of the small town that grew around it. The house was built in 1919 by a timber man, who, from his tree farms, picked the pines to be used in its construction. My grandparents moved there in 1934. My mother lives there today.

My grandmother named the place Roseneath Farm after the peninsula in Scotland from which her g-great grandmother, Catherine Campbell had come. A highly romanticized account of Catherine Campbell's immigration and life in the New World is given in Gerald Johnson's By Reason of Strength. Johnson was a cousin of my grandmother's, and took a few liberties with Catherine's lineage. Though the book has Catherine as the daughter of the Duke of Argyle, in fact her origins were more humble, closer to those of the family into which my grandmother married, the McLeods. I told a bit of that story in a previous post titled Over the Sea to Skye.

Paris, the Dordogne, and Bordeaux 2017

Paris 

Hotel view overlooking courtyard

Hotel view overlooking Rue du Faubourg du Temple and Place de la République

From beneath the Eiffel Tower

Sarlat

Hotel view overlooking Rue des Cordiliers and Place de la Petite Rigaudie

          




Medieval buildings in Sarlat

Bordeaux

Hotel view looking northwest from Rue de Montesquieu

Statue of Francisco Goya in the Place du Chapelet

Roman Ruins at the end of Rue du Colisée

Almost Heaven

Went to Maryland/ Virginia/ West Virginia for a wedding this past weekend.  It is a beautiful area with an endless density of villages and historic structures.

Potomac River and Highway 15 bridge from Point of the Rocks, looking southwest. This is just east of Harper's Ferry and along the historic route of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.

From the porch of King Street Coffee in Leesburg, VA, looking north.

Wedding venue at The Barn at York Hill. The farm is still run by the same family that established it in the mid-eighteenth century. Originally a tobacco farm, it converted to hay production in the early nineteenth century. The barn sketched above was built in 1812 for hay storage. Vertical slits in the stone walls aerated the hay to prevent heat build up and spontaneous combustion. The wedding reception was held inside the barn, and the narrow slits letting in daylight had an almost modern effect.

The farm today is a productive apple and peach orchard and small vineyard.

  

Inside the barn during toasts.

Another flight home

Kirkin' and Brexit

Kirkin' o the Tartan this past Sunday. Thoughts on the meaning of the garish plaids, and feeling a bit of solidarity with the Scots.

Los Angeles

Eames House

Bel Air Bay Club

Lifeguard station at Venice Beach

LAX

Seated in front of us

Labor Day Weekend

The kids decided to put up their first lemonade stand. Below are brother and sister creating the sign:

A moderate success, $25 in 2 hours. 50 cents a cup.

Labor Day, walked down to our local cafe where our dog could join us on the sidewalk. My daughter painted the red tongue, lampost, and a few other additions:

RNC 2016

An attempt at polemics from the RNC:

The flatulent king, like a bad smell throughout the whole thing.

Luttrell, hero or not, this guy's nuts.

Rudy Giuliani, shillin' for a job.

D:  "Just this one speech, that'll be it. You won't have to do anything else."
M:  "Ok, I'll do it."

(Of all these, this one reminds me the most of a sidewalk caricature artist.)