Category: Artifacts

I snuck out of Berkeley with an architecture degree even though I only completed one architecture studio (while dropping out of a second architecture studio, taking three visual studies studios and one landscape architecture studio).

The landscape studio consisted of a series of quick projects, including this exploration of remediating an abandoned rail line using plants to pull heavy chemicals out of the soil.

It seemed fitting to share this long buried project for Earth Day.

This studio was as much an art studio as a design studio, which isn’t a surprise when you check out Professor Chip Sullivan. This piece was an homage to old science fair presentations, with infographics and drawings, using oil pastels and ink.

With the re-discovery of my old fountain pen late last year, I am now finally finishing the very last of that red ink, twenty three years later.

Over a cup of coffee, my friend defined a group of design students who are basically art majors. There is much appeal to straddling both worlds. What can be better than savoring a creation with no “ifs” about how it might actually be in “real life”? To make is the most primal human activity. Yet “to make” also encompasses “to imagine”. To think a drawing represents a viable space 57,600 times its size, to believe “these” certain lines will best direct the movement of hundreds of people over the next fifty years — that demands imagination. A design education challenges and refines raw imagination. For those who cannot rise above the flatland of pure art or refuse to descend from a theoretical ivory tower, let them remain trapped. While the opportunity remains, I will precariously attempt to scale both worlds high on caffeine.

It’s a bit cringe to read what you wrote as a 20 year old.

~

Hindu thought includes a roadmap of life with four stages. These college drawings were the climax of my work as a Student.

In their system, I should be wrapping up my time as a Householder, but I’ve got another fifteen years before Retirement (I doubt the ancient system expected folks to be making babies in their late thirties…or Social Security age limits).

Even though I might be late on the ancient Hindu time schedule, I’ve noticed that my attitude has changed towards work in the past eighteen months. I’ve lost appetite for business books. I still think about my role as a project manager, but I no longer study “leadership”. I work a hard 40 hours, but I’m not turning that dial up to 11.

I wonder if that next stage in life will be in letters, as with my little library, or if it will be a return to making art.

If it’s the latter, I need to make some space to get messy. It’s been much too long since I’ve gotten my hands dirty.

I took my first studio in the spring of 1998. More than architecture, ED11A was about drawing and seeing.

This was the big midterm assignment.

It also coincided with the clock change, and we bemoaned the loss of an hour to complete this drawing.

It turned out that I didn’t need that extra hour. I finally got an “A” on this drawing. It was a brutal studio (architecture studios are half hazing), but something clicked on this drawing.

I expended an intense amount of effort on this piece, but one must also credit Fortuna, since nothing is guaranteed with art.

It’s been a quarter century since that long week in concrete caverns of Wurster Hall. Things that seemed cataclysmic are mere whispers in our memory.

Maybe I’ll return to this level artistry one day. More importantly, I hope my kids will push themselves to discover their art — my daughter is less than a decade away from her freshman year in college.

The graduate assistant for our section was Noga Wizansky who still makes great art. During my time at Berkeley, I developed close relationships with the professors Chip Sullivan and Joe Slusky in future studios. I loved their omnivorous approach to everything. It’s a shame that the Architecture program has become focused on architecture. There’s plenty of time for that silliness after college.