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Tour guides and trust
Reading Time: 6 minutes A photo of me on Taliesin’s Hill Crown while giving the Loving Frank Tour in 2008. I’m wearing white pants. When people on tours would ask me how long I’d worked there, sometimes I’d say, “Since I dyed my hair for fun instead of covering up the gray.” I was definitely covering up the gray […]
A recommended book: At Taliesin
Reading Time: 5 minutes The graphic at the top of this page is one of the designs created by the Taliesin Fellowship for their weekly “At Taliesin” newspaper articles that ran from 1934 through late 1937. Architect Randolph C. Henning found these “At Taliesin” articles and put them into a book that I want to write about today. The […]
I found another Taliesin drawing
Reading Time: 6 minutes This is drawing number 4930.006 in the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Library, Columbia University, New York). Two years ago I wrote here about when I found a Taliesin drawing of bunkbeds for a room at Taliesin in 1911. srsly: someone needs to give me a commission for […]
Letters from Keith McCutcheon to Franklin Porter
Reading Time: 6 minutes A photograph looking (plan) northeast at, apparently, Keith McCutcheon (1904-1968) in the Garden Court of Taliesin. The stone wall to his right was built while Wright reconstructed Taliesin after its second fire. Wright removed it in 1933. Since we are close to Gay Pride Day, I thought I would write about: an employee of Frank […]
Was Mamah Borthwick the love of Frank Lloyd Wright’s life?
Reading Time: 5 minutes Drawing of Mamah Borthwick. People have asked me this question about Mamah former wife of Edwin H. Cheney, and the woman for whom Wright first designed Taliesin south of Spring Green, Wisconsin. And who was murdered on August 15, 1914. Since Mamah’s birthday is June 19, I am addressing this question in this post.1 Or […]
Frank Lloyd Wright’s birthday
Reading Time: 5 minutes Frank Lloyd Wright was born on June 8, 1867. If you’re in the Wrightworld you know this. Read my post, “Keiran don’t try to correct the internet“, about how people originally thought he was born in 1869. In today’s post, I’m going to write about traditions within the Taliesin Fellowship connected to Wright’s birthday. In […]
Memorial Day, Wafaa Bilal, and art:
Reading Time: 6 minutes This is a screenshot with yellow paint blots. I wrote “I support Wafaa” at the bottom of the photo. He’s the man I wrote a lot about, below. This post isn’t going to be about Frank Lloyd Wright. Today I want to write about a work of art and how it made me appreciate Memorial […]
Things I don’t know at Taliesin
Reading Time: 6 minutes In 1929, architect George Kastner (then, a draftsman for Frank Lloyd Wright) took the photograph at the top of this post. It looks west in Taliesin’s Garden Court while stonemasons lay the wall that separates this courtyard from the other courtyards at Taliesin. This wall insured that this courtyard would be free from cars. Today […]
What about the second wife?
Reading Time: 7 minutes Yah: what about Wright’s second wife? That’s who I’ll write about today. Years ago, a group of coworkers and I performed a comedy sketch for a friend who was leaving Taliesin Preservation. At one point in the sketch, we voiced common questions that folks ask when they take a tour. Among them were “how tall […]
What a Way to Begin
Reading Time: 5 minutes Have you ever fallen in love with someone, were blissfully going along, and then something crazy-bad happened outside of the control of either of you? It’s a test of your mettle. And you move beyond your fears and you are all there for that person. It’s a test and you’ve aced it, in this binding […]
