Vanna Venturi House

So here's a sneak peek at some of the documents that will be in my final presentation next week. These are the first and second floor plans of the Vanna Venturi House by Robert Venturi. I still have to draw up the elevations and sections for the house as well as build the model, but I'm proud of my start!!

 

A Surrealists' Bathtub

For class this week we had to design a bathtub, made out of any material for any individual. I designed a conch shell that a Surrealist could bathe in, perhaps on the veranda of their Riviera retreat.



The shape and color of the shell is exquisite, but its scale makes it more absurd than aesthetic. The drawings are done in 1" = 1' scale, so the actual structure would be about 5' by 5'.

A Peek Inside Grad School

Right now I'm taking a 5 week class in Architectural Drawing (and model making) to get ready for starting my MFA in the fall at Pratt. For one recent assignment we had to represent a song with a 3 dimensional model, so this is my visual interpretation of Charles Mingus' "Tensions":

Close to the Sun in Lonely Lands

I think that I've finished this painting! I just put in the schooner and the bridge, and I'm especially happy with the sketchy impressionist feeling of the bridge. I think that the rest of the painting looks a little too labored, but I'm my own harshest critic. What do you think?

What I'm Working On Now

I've started working on a new oil painting over the last week or so, from a picture that I took on the Fourth of July. I love to paint sunsets because they are the perfect opportunity to use all the fun pinks and oranges and yellows with the freedom of the entire sky to play in! This scene eventually will have the Newport-Jamestown bridge in the far right (just behind the sailboat) but both it and the sailboat itself will be final touches.



In searching for a title I'm definitely leaning towards a poetry reference. I entitled my favorite sunset painting "Be Literal A Moment" after a line in Seamus Heaney's "Squarings". For this painting, I'm enamored of the title "Close to the sun in lonely lands" (from the Alfred, Lord Tennyson poem 'The Eagle').



He clasps the crag with crooked hands
Close to the sun in lonely lands
Ringed with the azure world he stands

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls
He watches from his mountain walls
And like a thunderbolt he falls

Grad School Beginnings

I am starting a MFA in Interior Design at Pratt Institute this fall, and I just started taking an architectural drawing class to prepare. We are covering basically how to draw blueprints and how to build models! Everyone has a famous building from the twentieth century that we are re-creating the blueprints of and then creating a model of. I have the Vanna Venturi House, and I'm getting nervous about having to build a model of it really soon!!