Ten Things I Learned from Taliesin West

Last month my family and I went to visit my friend Ruth, who is currently the graphic design fellow for the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation at Taliesin West. (Yeah, I'm proud of her, too.) It was a lovely weekend where we were continually in awe that such a place could exist and that we had the privilege of being there. I've been trying to write about it for a couple weeks now, but while I've seen more of Taliesin West than most people ever will (it's only open to the public through tours), I feel like I've just barely scratched the surface. Listed below are a few things that struck me, thoughts that sparked other thoughts; in short: ten things I learned from a few days in a fascinating place.

Some background: Taliesin West near Scottsdale, AZ is the "western" campus of the apprenticeship-turned-architecture-school Frank Lloyd Wright founded in order to shape a new generation of architects. The original Taliesin is in Spring Green, Wisconsin. The word Taliesin means: "shining brow."

1. Be prolific. On our official tour of Taliesin West we learned that Frank Lloyd Wright designed 1,141 architectural works in his lifetime (the majority of which were late in life). 511 of these were actually built. I mean think about that. 1,000+ designs. 511 buildings. Imagine how fewer Wright buildings would be in existence if he'd only created half as many designs. Or a third of that. Those numbers reiterated my desire to be the kind of person who makes a lot of things. I want to find a way to bring creativity into my daily routine. I'm a long way out from that (a lot of thinking, not enough doing), but hearing those numbers made me inspired to start again, to make more than I ever have.

2. Help people see your work the way you want it to be seen. Wright is notorious for being unwilling to compromise his designs for a client's personal preference. His ceilings are often comically low, partly because he was short, but also because he believed that houses should be "human sized" and that they shouldn't tower over the people living in them. In the guest-house we stayed in on campus, you could really only see out the windows unless you were sitting down. As such, all the chairs were perfectly aligned so that when you sat down you were at eye level with the landscape. While it's not a good idea to be so uncompromising that you alienate your audience, I think artists can take cues from Wright when it comes to nudging people in the right (ha!) direction. His designs force you to experience the architecture in the way he wants you to experience it. I couldn't help but wonder if there's a way to translate this into other mediums.

3. The kindness of strangers goes a long way. Everyone we met at Taliesin was gracious and kind. Even though it's a close-knit community of students, teachers, and staff, we never felt like we weren't welcome, and everyone was happy to answer our questions and ask some of their own. That kind of openness seems like it's getting rarer and rarer, and it was a nice surprise to be surrounded by it, even just for a weekend.

4. There's nothing desolate about the desert. I'd forgotten how full of life the desert is. We chose the perfect time to go because the aloe and the bougainvillea were in full, astonishing bloom. It seemed like everywhere we turned there were flickers darting between the trees, flocks of quail skittering about, and flashes of hummingbirds among the flowers. One night we even heard the eerie sound of coyotes yipping in the distance.

5. Sometimes the greatest luxury is to do nothing in a beautiful place. Despite Ruth's best efforts to keep us busy, we spent a large chunk of the weekend doing nothing, and it was glorious. I sat in what little shade I could find and did watercolors or read. We went on walks, visited the gift shop and the cafe, and just generally watched the light change. The whole time I kept having to pinch myself that it was real, that the sunset and the mountains and the strange spiky plants weren't some sort of dream. What a luxury to just be in that place. What a luxury to be able to truly enjoy it.

6. Compress and release. Another thing we learned about on our tour was the concept of compress and release. Often we'd enter a building through a dark hallway, or some tight, cramped space, before it opened up into a long, light-filled room, usually with a view that stretched on for miles. I'm not really sure what the takeaway here is, except that I've been thinking about and noticing this concept ever since. Maybe it's that you appreciate things more right after they've been taken away from you.

7. Life-long friendships are rarer than you think. Every time Ruth introduced me as "my friend Laura, who I've known since the second grade," the most frequent response we'd get was "Wow. That's amazing!" It's far too easy to take really good friends for granted. They've always been in your life, so there's no reason to think they won't continue to be. I've been lucky enough to have several friends like this, so it often doesn't occur to me that not everyone has kept the friends they made in elementary school. Their reaction reminded me to cherish the friendships I have and not to grow complacent about them.

Side note: It's amazing to me how Ruth and I can fall right back into normal routines, even in a completely different setting. One of my favorite things we did that weekend was hang out at a bubble tea place in Phoenix and chat about our creative projects. It's something we do all the time when we're in the same city, and it's nice to know that some things never change.

8. Never underestimate the importance of a good hat (and sunglasses). Both the hat and sunglasses I took on this trip were last minute decisions. I almost couldn't find my sunglasses before leaving, but I discovered them on the kitchen table literally moments before walking out the door. The sun hat had been sitting unused in the car for the past month, and I made my dad grab it as we were loading our stuff into the shuttle that would take us to the airport. Both were completely invaluable and made being in the hot, bright desert WAY more pleasant.

9. Environment matters. One of the most amazing things about Taliesin West was that most of the architecture students live in structures called desert shelters. The shelters are built by previous students and current students can choose to design or modify a shelter for their final project. Most of them are completely open-air with a platform for a bed and place to build a fire on cold nights. What's amazing though, is how different each one is, and how they are tailored to the environment. Each one takes into consideration the heat of the day and the cold of the night, the way the breeze flows through the space, elevation from the ground, and how a person might spend their days in this tiny piece of the desert. While it takes a special kind of person to want to spend an entire semester in a desert shelter, I love the idea of being so connected with the environment around you, and of building structures that allow for that connection. These structures are built for the uniqueness of the desert, rather than in spite of it. I feel like there's all sorts of metaphors here for creativity that I haven't quite figured out yet. Something about tailoring your creative practice to your environment rather than trying to muscle through all the time. Or maybe just about paying attention to your surroundings and bending to them, rather than expending so much energy trying to shut them out.

10. Details, details, details. And lastly, what would Frank Lloyd Wright be without details? Everything in his buildings is meticulously planned. No piece of decor is out of place. I try to imagine living with that kind of cohesiveness and intention. Honestly, it sounds exhausting. But I can't help but admire someone with that kind of vision. And when you're surrounded by it, like I was for a few short days in March, it feels like the most natural thing in the world.

"As we live and as we are, Simplicity–with a capitol S– is difficult to comprehend nowadays. We are no longer truly simple. We no longer live in simple terms or places. Life is a more complex struggle now. It is now valiant to be simple: a courageous thing to even want to be simple. It is a spiritual thing to comprehend what simplicity means." - FLW

**This blog post would not have been possible without Ruth: For being an awesome human being, and a wonderful host! **

New Year Thoughts

So I always seem to have a lot of thoughts around the beginning of the new year: resolutions and goals and lots of wishy washy feelings around my birthday and what I want my life to look like in 2018 and all those fun existential questions. I've been working on a blog post about people who inspire me and who I think are going to do really great things in 2018, but that post just isn't going to happen yet, because I want to it to be as concise and well-written as possible (and there's a lot of people to profile!). So you're getting this instead, which I'm sorry to say is just a snapshot of my brain right now. Here goes.

1. Reading slumps. Ironically, I've been in a bad reading slump ever since I started working at a bookstore. I think it's because I've gotten so used to describing books to people that it makes me feel like I've already read them. Trying not to put too much pressure on myself and let myself fall back in love with reading when the time comes.

2. Days off. Since starting a full time job my attitude toward days off has completely changed. I used to think that I had to use my weekends to DO things - I had to be productive and go on adventures. I still want to go on adventures sometimes, but I don't feel quite as guilty for sleeping in or spending an entire afternoon reading. Today I literally wrote in my planner that I wanted to spend at least 2 hours curled up with a book. Now my days off feel like this magical, special time that's just for me to do whatever I want with. And it's a really nice feeling.

3. 2018 Bucket List. Okay, I know I just said that I feel less guilty about using my days off to actually relax, but one of my goals for 2018 is to do more activities that I love but don't get to do very often. Mostly things like kayaking, roller skating, and being outside. Some other things on my list are: become a regular at an establishment (coffee shop/library/bookstore), go rock climbing (nerve wracking because I'm not sure how I feel about heights, but it also looks really fun), and visit a museum/gallery I haven't been to yet. So yeah, I think I'll be happy if my days off are about 60% recharging, 40% putting in that little bit of extra effort in to go somewhere and do something new.

4. Writing. I had a bit of an epiphany the other day. I realized that writing itself, putting words on the page, isn't difficult. The hard part is everything that surrounds writing: the self doubt. The stress over deadlines. The wrestling with one idea over another. Every day we come to the page with all of this baggage, and every day we have to wrestle it to the ground just to even begin. It's exhausting. As soon as I embrace this fact that the physical act of writing is easy, the fear and self doubt don't have as much power over me. *Disclaimer*: That's not to say that figuring out story and character and revision isn't mentally strenuous, because it is, but in the first draft putting words on the page is so much easier if you don't have to deal with all the mental angst. I've been trying to focus on just putting one word after the other, and so far it's been working.

5. Turning 23. My birthday is the day after tomorrow, and I'm honestly surprised about how calm I feel about it. 22 was a weird birthday for me. It felt like the year I was "officially" a twenty-something, no turning back. I know there's never any turning back, but 20 and 21 still felt like a part of teenager-dom, you know? Anyway, I'm looking forward to a relaxed birthday surrounded by the people I love most in this world, and really, what more could you want?

6. This blog. I've had a lot of thoughts about where I want this blog to go in 2018. I want to post more, obviously. I want to write more about my writing process, and hopefully give some advice that might be helpful. I want to write less rambly and thought-dumpy posts and more thoughtful essay-like posts. (With obvious exceptions, because sometimes you just need to write down everything that's in your head. Case in point.) I want to share more photos of places I've been, and find more creative ways of conveying information. I want this to be a warm space, a comfortable space, a space for feeling and thinking and being curious. That's really what I want for 2018 in general.

Today was the first day in two weeks that the sun came out. Even though it was colder than most Texans would think possible, it was a beautiful, clear-eyed day. The kind of day where the sky is so bright that it doesn't look real and the air so cold that it bring tears to your eyes. The kind of day where you look at the sunset, a smear of pale yellow and rose petal pink, and can't tell if you're crying because of the cold or because of the beauty or both. Here's wishing you many more days like that in 2018. (Maybe a little warmer.)

London Patchwork: Museums

London Patchwork is a series of posts dedicated to some of my favorite experiences in London (Spring 2016).

Let me get this out of the way first: I love museums. I love their vastness, their history, their quietude. Since going to London I've also become enamored with the concept of the Victorian-era museum, with its crowded, floor-to-ceiling picture galleries, its taxidermied animals, its crowding of diverse objects into the same glass case. One of my favorite things about London was its museums, and one of my favorite things about its museums was that stepping into them felt like going back in time.

One of the classes I took in London was a museums studies class, so I got to discover quite a few places that I might not have known about otherwise. In addition to learning about their history, we also talked a little bit about the role of museums today and how modern conventions such as gift shops and cafes change the museum-goers experience. Overall, it was a great experience, and the best part? Most of the major museums in London are free!

So, without further ado, here is my list of favorite museums in London:

1. The V&A
The Victoria and Albert Museum is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design. In addition to painting and sculpture, it has rooms for furniture, tapestry, dress, iron works, glass, and metalworks from all over the world. It's a huge, stately complex built in the 1850s, and I could definitely have spent several days here.

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2. The Petrie Museum
This little gem turned out to be one of my favorite museums we visited, and it also happens to be the smallest. Tucked away on the second floor of an unassuming brick building on the University College  London campus, this museum houses the archeological collection of Flinders Petrie, a British archeologist who excavated thousands of Egyptian artifacts during the 1880s. I've seen quite a few of Egyptian exhibits, but none have captivated me much as this. I've always been able to appreciate Egyptian art to a certain extent, but it's hard to make the leap from admiring the objects of ancient civilizations to actually imagining them as belonging to living, breathing human beings. The museum is only a couple of rooms, but it is packed with rows of glass cases that are full of everyday objects Egyptians would have used, from pottery to glass beads (I had no idea the Egyptians worked with glass!). The whole experience felt a little more like walking through a yard sale than a museum, and the result is a museum experience that feels profoundly intimate and personal.

3. The National Gallery
Who can visit London without seeing The National Gallery? It's basically a staple. This is a place you could get lost in. Think giant, gilded frames, walls hung with silk, and maze after maze of galleries. My favorite thing about it is that a lot of the paintings are hung on traditional colored walls instead of the modern white ones, so it feels both historic and decadent.

4. The Wellcome Collection
This one totally came out of nowhere as one my favorite places in London. We visited this museum during our "medical museums" unit, which meant we'd just spend a week looking at specimens in jars and pondering 18th century surgery.*shudder* This museum, however, was different. It's basically a cross between a modern art museum and a medical museum. Different artists are commissioned to do work on a certain theme related to health or the human body. While we were there there was an amazing exhibit on consciousness that had a room that used audio and video to explore the sensation of sleep paralysis, and a group of drawings meant to showcase how autistic children see the world differently.

5. The V&A Museum of Childhood
Okay, so this is a branch of the the V&A but it's worth mentioning on its own. This is not to be confused with your typical children's museum. Instead, this museum looks at the experience of childhood throughout history, as well as showcasing toys from around the world. While we were there they had an exhibit about Britain's children migrants, who were sent to Canada and Australia under the pretense that they would have a better life, and often never saw their families again. Not for the faint of heart, but definitely worth learning about.

"The Sarcophagus of Set I in Sir John Soane's Museum", Illustrated London News, 1864

7. Sir John Soane's Museum
This is an interesting one. Sir John Soane was a neoclassical architect whose life work consisted of collecting and displaying classical sculpture and architectural elements. He asked that his house be preserved as a museum from the time of his death, so stepping inside is like stepping into the past. After you walk through the parlor and breakfast room you come to an amazing three story atrium covered in Greek and Roman busts, architectural fragments, and even an Egyptian sarcophagus.

8. The Natural History Museum
This museum feels most closely related to the museums we have in the US. There are modern aspects to it, like a high tech dinosaur exhibit targeted at kids, and some more traditional exhibits on animals and biology. The real reason you should go though is to stand for a moment in the huge atrium at its center, which feels like it could be right out of Hogwarts.

Pitt Rivers Museum

9. Bonus! Oxford University Museum of Natural History + The Pitt Rivers Museum
If you want to make a day trip to Oxford, don't leave without visiting the Natural History Museum. This is classic natural history at its best, complete with skeletons and taxidermy (I have a weird fascination with taxidermy, okay?), plus it's super informative. Be absolutely sure you don't miss the Pitt Rivers Museum, which is in the same building. The Pitt Rivers museum is an archeological/anthropological museum which groups objects by type rather than culture or geographic region. The result is an insane grouping of objects from all over the world, where you can make comparisons between how different cultures solved the same problems.

Playing cards through the ages (Pitt Rivers)

Keys through the ages (Pit Rivers)

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10. Extra Bonus! Kew Gardens
But this is a garden, not a museum, you say! Well, not exactly. Built in the mid 1800s, the two oldest greenhouses in Kew Gardens functioned as a kind of botanical museum, showcasing plants from all over the world (mainly colonies of the British empire). Even the tulips that were blooming in front of the greenhouses were imports from the Netherlands. There is also a fantastic exhibit of botanical paintings that made me want to break out the watercolors.

ps. I'm hoping to do another post like this all about London gardens, so stay tuned!

Apartment Life and Other Ephemera

I've been having trouble figuring out what to post here lately. There are so many things I could write about, but none of them seem quite substantial enough for their own post. Here instead is a smattering of thoughts in list form, because lists are great. (Like I said, the blogger in me isn't doing so hot. Please forgive the dumb generalizations like "Lists are great." Right. Moving on.)

1. School has started, and I'm living in an on-campus apartment with my friends. It's the first time we've all lived in the same space and it feels right, like this was how it was meant to be all along. We drink iced coffee in the mornings and marathon animated kid's shows at night. I've scattered some pictures throughout this post, because I know you're all curious.

2. Projects, projects, and more projects. Luckily school hasn't gotten too hectic yet, so I've been focusing on making things. I'm revising a manuscript of short stories for my Manuscript Workshop class. I'm chipping away at a novel, fifteen minutes a day. I'm thinking of ways to spice up Letters to October. I'm working on my bookbinding skills. I'm trying to bring a version of Letters Live to my school. I love having lots of projects going at once. As Annie Dillard timelessly said, "How we spend out days is, of course, how we spend our lives," and I want my days to be a wild kaleidoscope of my multiple loves.

3. While summer is still my favorite season, I have to admit I'm ready for fall. I'm ready to wear scarves again, drink apple cider, and curl up under a blanket with chilly rain drumming on the windowsill. I even made an autumn-themed playlist.

4. Currently Reading: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, The Mirror Thief by Martin Seay, Truth and Beauty by Anne Patchett, Uprooted by Naomi Novik

5. Something I wrote in my notebook recently: "Being a senior in college feels a lot like standing on a very long diving board. I'm safe as long as I stay firmly planted on the thin strip of aluminum, but I have to keep moving towards the edge, and once I reach it, it's into the deep end I go. It's the leap that scares me, that moment when you have to squeeze your eyes shut and plug your nose and step into thin air."

6. Writers I'm most excited to see at The Texas Book Festival in November: Amor Towles, Shanon Hale, Allison Amend, Francine Prose, Carl Hiaasen, Nick Offerman, and Jane Alexander

7. Little nuisances: Dirty dishes that seem to repopulate the sink every five minutes, the price of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, accidentally drinking too much coffee late in the day

8. Little joys: Sharing my favorite childhood films with my friends who are watching them for the first time, pancakes for dinner, meetings with enthusiastic professors, getting letters from friends and family

9. I miss London. Florence will always have a special place in my heart, but London captured my imagination. It's an amazingly vibrant city- constantly creating, moving, and altering your perception of it, even as you learn your way around. It's at once iconic and utterly unexpected and little old Cedar Rapids just completely pales in comparison. Some things quell my London cravings, so I thought I'd share them here: London in Fiction, Daughterland, Marion Honey's Blog, A Sketching Trip to the National Portrait Gallery

10. I'm going to leave you with this video chronicling two friends' trip to Norway. I don't know what it is about this little travelogue, but there's just something so calming and magical about it. It makes me think of Copenhagen, where they put candles on the tables in coffee shops, too. *sigh* Youtube can be really pretty sometimes.

Until next time.

Currently...

Photo by Indigo

Making: A lot!
-A slow, atmospheric music video to the song Artifact 3 by Ryan Teague
-A 6' by 9' canvas mural that's going to brighten up our patio
-A joint Tumblr with my friend, where we share our daily progress on our respective creative habits. Me with my favorite sentence from the day's writing, Indigo with the newest page from her sketchbook. (Our most recent post can be seen in the sidebar!)
-My first couple articles for the Houston Chronicle, where I'm lucky enough to be volunteering this summer
-Savory popcorn via Alisa Burke

Planning: 
-A bunch of future blog posts, including:
    -More recap posts about my trip to Paris
    -An update on my creative bucket list
    -Maybe some book reviews...
-A dessert cookbook based around my summer creative writing club, Words for Dessert

Pondering: What the words "growth" and "change" mean to me. It feels like I have a million plates in the air right now, but it also feels like this summer and all the creative stuff I'm doing might be a transformative experience.

Reading: The Girl Who Slept with God by Val Brelinski

Watching: I watch movies more than I watch TV shows, so here's some of the best films I've seen  recently:

Love and Mercy
This is the story of Brian Wilson, lead singer and main innovator behind The Beach Boys. Sometimes  films just come out of nowhere and completely blow you away. This was one of them. It is a beautiful, suspenseful, and heartbreaking look not only at Brian Wilson's life but his creative process as well. Also the sound design/soundtrack is absolutely superb.

Testament of Youth
Based on the memoir of Vera Brittan, this is the story of an extraordinary woman and her efforts to make sense of the relentless brutality of WWI. It's a tremendously sad story, but there are moments of beauty throughout. One of my favorite things about it was how close all of the cinematography felt. There were very few wide shots, and when they were used it was for a specific and powerful effect.

Listening: to Darlingside's new single, on repeat. It's that good. (Also, their new album comes out in September!)

Enjoying:
-Iced coffee with breakfast
-Stepping into the air conditioning after being out in the heat and humidity
-Long afternoon photo shoots with my best friend
-Driving at night with the windows rolled down, music blasting
-Sunrises and sunsets
-New dresses