Blog
2023 Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy Conference
Reading Time: 4 minutes Next week, the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy is holding their 2023 conference. The conference will be in Minneapolis-St. Paul and its theme is “Colleagues & Clients: Women’s Roles in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Architecture”. Due to my connection to Taliesin and my life in the Wrightworld, they’re awarding me the “Wright Spirit Award“. So I’m […]
I am not drunk; I have MS
Reading Time: 6 minutes An image of Annette Funicello with Frankie Avalon from a movie poster from one of their beach blanket movies. Funicello was a person with MS that I grew up knowing about. I added the sharks in homage to the “Sharknado” film series because the absurdity seemed to fit the life I’d just discovered. This past […]
Labor Day: Time to Walk the Mackinac Bridge
Reading Time: 4 minutes A photo I took of the Mackinac Bridge on a day when there wasn’t a Walk. I spent three Labor Day weekends in Mackinaw City, Michigan with my old boyfriend, his mother, sister, and brother-in-law. Michael’s sister and BIL had a summer home up there. FYI: “Mackinaw” in Mackinaw City is pronounced the same as […]
Here’s another change at Taliesin:
Reading Time: 5 minutes Maynard Parker took the photo at the top of the post. It’s Taliesin’s Living Room and he took it 1955 for House Beautiful magazine’s issue devoted to Wright. In this post I’ll be writing about the horizontal wood shelf in the center of the photo. FWIW: if I haven’t told you already, I’ve never tried […]
Gertrude Kerbis – an architect because of Taliesin
Reading Time: 5 minutes Photographer (and apprentice) Mat Kauten took this photograph looking at Taliesin’s Garden Room in 1944. I think Gertrude Kerbis might have seen Taliesin at the same time of year that Kauten took his photographs. Here’s the story: a while ago, I received an email from Elizabeth Blasius, an architectural historian and co-founder of Preservation Futures.1 […]
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 […]
