Photo above from the Whicita Art Museum cafe
I had the great joy of visiting Marjory Goldsmith-Clymer last week. She was my high school art teacher who now lives in Wichita, Kansas, where most of her family resides. Marjory has been a dear friend and confidant since I was 15 years old. On Feb 16th it was Marjory's 91st birthday!
She is still as beautiful, charismatic and bejeweled as she was when she commanded the attention of a classroom full of students at Madison High School in the 1970's when I attended.
Marjory's nieces and nephews rolled out the red carpet to celebrate Marjory's birthday and to show me a good time!!!
It was wonderful to tour the Wichita Art Museum with my mentor/ art instructor! Dale Chihuly knows how to make a statement and did just that in the museum's entrance, with this hanging chandelier. I took my shoes off to walk across the glass covered well filled with Chihuly's work. It felt like you were looking at tide pools filled with treasures.
From the Whicita art museum website: "A Couple of Ways of Doing Something" was one of the main exhibits. The exhibition, on view featured arresting daguerreotype portraiture as well as tapestries and photogravures created by Chuck Close.
After receiving his MFA from Yale, Close gained recognition in the 1970s for his massive-scale portraits which were painted using a photorealist style, making them nearly indistinguishable from their photographic equivalent. Close chose to create these paintings with tools considered more difficult to manipulate than brushes and paint in order to create a breakthrough for himself as an artist. Among these unconventional implements were razor blades, rags and even a stamp pad and the artist's own fingerprints.
A Couple of Ways of Doing Something proves to be no exception, as Close, confined to a wheelchair since a spinal artery collapse in 1988 left him paralyzed, creates portraits using one of the most arduous and archaic photographic processes, the daguerreotype. If you make it to the museum, stop in the cafe...we had a delicious lunch in the museum's cafe.
We also toured the Allen -Lambe House designed by Frank Lloyd Wright
From the Allen-Lambe house museum website: The HISTORY OF THE ALLEN-LAMBE HOUSE MUSEUM below:
The Henry J. Allen House designed by Frank Lloyd Wright was sold, September 20, 1990 by the Wichita State University Endowment Association to the Allen-Lambe House Foundation.
The residential structure located at 255 N. Roosevelt, Wichita, Ks. was designed for the prominent journalist and Statesman Henry J. Allen and his wife Elsie J. Nuzman Allen, who was active in local art organizations. The design concepts date from 1915 and the House was occupied in 1918. The Allens continued to live in the house until late 1947. The House, that Frank Lloyd Wright considered "among my best," is considered the last of the Prairie Houses. Stylistic exterior features include a horizontal carthage marble "water table" as a transition design element between the prairie floor and the house, raked horizontal brick joints and flush head joints, expansive clay tile roof with emphasis on horizontal lines and a unique ridge, hip ridge and lower starting course with a Japanese flavor.
Interior features include the continuity of the exterior brick which is a blend of ocher and tan colors with all horizontal joints gilded. This detail was only used elsewhere at the Martin House in Buffalo, New York and the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. The living and dining room wrap around a sunken garden with a large water garden. The other two sides of the garden are defined by a garden house and wall capped by large concrete vases.
The quarry tile terrace extends into the living room and dining with access from both rooms through glass doors to the terrace. This continuity of floor material along with the brick, plaster colors, etc., establishes a strong indoor/outdoor design relationship.
Views to the exterior are through "light screens" which consist of clear glass doors and windows with terminal windows or side windows framing the views to nature with art glass. Exterior window flower boxes raise the prairie floor up to establish a strong visual relationship to nature. Lighting is integrated into the environment with the living room ceiling lanterns, wood and mulberry paper and also in the art glass dining room ceiling. Radiator grilles, built in furniture, bookcases and moveable furniture are all interrelated designs for a harmonious whole. 23 pieces of original furniture have been loaned back from The Wichita State University Endowment Association. Also, several pieces of art work collected by Elsie Allen have been acquired from Baker University and The Wichita Center for the Arts. The furniture was a collaborative effort between Frank Lloyd Wright and George M. Niedecken who worked with Frank Lloyd Wright on 12 projects over a 15 year period, which included the Coonley House, Robie House and the Meyer May House.
Marjory has had an immeasurable influence on my life...she is still vibrant, quick to laugh and filled with faith and love. She helped me to feel that I had a gift. She fostered that gift with encouragement. Marjory shares in my success as an interior designer because without her belief in me, I know that I would not have followed my bliss into the creative world in which I earn a living. Thank you Marjory!
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