Blog
I looked at stone
Reading Time: 5 minutes A stone wall on the north side of Taliesin’s entry foyer. Based on the red wash across most of the stones, the bottom of the wall survived Taliesin’s 1925 fire. Sometimes, while working at Taliesin (as I wrote once before), my answer to the question, “What did you do at work today?” was, “I looked […]
“We like the way you write the history of Taliesin”
Reading Time: 5 minutes My photograph of the two signs that my coworker made for me Well, yes, of course. But in this case I’m paraphrasing what someone said to me after they’d read my submission for a preservation plan of Wright’s Taliesin structure. In this post I’m going to look again at some of my writing; in particular, […]
Exhibiting Patience
Reading Time: 4 minutes Taken in Taliesin’s Garden Court on September 10, 2008 looking toward Taliesin’s east façade. I recall that, around the year 2007, a discussion began: stage an exhibition for the 50th anniversary of the completion of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. 2009 was also the 50th anniversary of Frank Lloyd Wright’s death; concentrating on […]
“I’m just a tour guide”
Reading Time: 6 minutes A photograph looking (plan) northwest in Taliesin’s Living Room. Wright’s Bechstein piano is in the background. There’s a photo of him at this piano, here, at the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation website. In 1994, when I was 26, I started giving tours at Taliesin. But, “I’m just a tour guide” is something I usually never […]
Post-It Notes on Taliesin Drawings
Reading Time: 5 minutes This is a roundabout story that comes to a simple conclusion: I found a Taliesin drawing. Over 12 years ago I worked on a Comprehensive Chronology of the Hillside Structure on Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin estate with Anne Biebel, the principal of Cornerstone Preservation (she was the person who suggested I read the local newspapers, […]
David Wojnarowicz
Reading Time: 7 minutes Looking at Untitled (Hujar Dead), 1987-88. “Hujar” was Wojnarowicz’s mentor & dear friend. The piece has writing silk screened over photographs of Peter Hujar (who had just died from an AIDS-related illness). The writing, in part, says, “I’m a thirty seven foot tall one thousand one hundred and seventy-two pound man inside this six foot […]
In Return for the Use of the Tractor
Reading Time: 4 minutes Photograph taken in 1943. From Taliesin’s Breezeway looking (plan) south at Wright’s apprentice, Curtis Besinger. He’s in Taliesin’s Garden Court, sorting through flagstones that would later be put on the ground in the courtyard. In my goal of researching Taliesin’s history, I examined Wright’s correspondence looking for anything that might give information about changes Wright […]
“Keiran: don’t try to correct the Internet”
Reading Time: 4 minutes That’s what a former boyfriend once told me. I believe that came after I’d spent feverish, anxious hours trying to change every incorrect utterance online to Frank Lloyd Wright’s birth date: June 8, 1867. What was wrong? People wrote (and still sometimes write) incorrectly that he was born on June 8, 1869. What can I […]
“This will be a nice addition…”
Reading Time: 5 minutes A drawing of Taliesin, executed in June 1911. This drawing is accessible from https://library.artstor.org/#/asset/28509365;prevRouteTS=1621879846896 110 years ago, on May 25, 1911, the Weekly Home News (the newspaper of Spring Green, Wisconsin), noted on page 4 that: “Mrs. Hannah Wright is building her home in Hillside valley, adjoining the old homestead, a little north and west […]
“Treat him well and love him as I do”—Frank Lloyd Wright on Mies van der Rohe
Reading Time: 4 minutes Two pictures of the Midwest in Spring: the top shows the Farnsworth House, by Mies van der Rohe, in Plano, IL in early April. The bottom shows Taliesin, and was taken in early June. Taliesin, in Wisconsin, is 3 hours north of the Farnsworth House. I looked into architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) […]
