Frank Harmon: Bauhaus Meets the Farm House

Architecture is the triumph of human imagination over materials, methods, and men, to put man into possession of his own earth.

Frank Lloyd Wright, 1930.

Architecture is certainly the most unforgiving of the arts. A painting which we’ve grown tired of we can sell or put away until it pleasures our eyes again; a dance persists but for the moment of its actual movement, and there’s no way to revisit the actual event, whatever media we might have brought to bear on it. Good or ill, it’s gone, ephemeral as dawn. But the artworks of the architect are the very spaces in which we live, labor, and play. If they’re unlivable, well … As Frank Lloyd Wright said, “The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.” (New York Times Magazine, 4 Oct. 1953) Vines, unfortunately, won’t do much for poorly designed interior space. There, the remedies are more radical – and far more dear.

True confession: way back in the 1960s, when I was a teenager trying to decide what to do with my life, I seriously considered becoming an architect. It seems like a curious consideration, looking back; there were no buildings in Charlotte that I knew of that excited me with their redefinition of structural dynamics. I had encountered, though, the work of Frank Lloyd Wright through his writings on the “natural house” and through photographs of his structures in the books I sought out about the man. I think I recognized in him, however little I knew about the field in which he worked, a great auteur, a creative original. Part of my psyche has been fascinated by architecture ever since. When I went to Buffalo, New York, in 1968, one of the city’s several attractions was that it was home to Black Mountain College poet Robert Creeley, but another was that it was also the location of several of Wright’s prairie-phase homes. The State University of New York, in fact, had just the year before acquired the Darwin D. Martin House Complex, built between 1903 and 1905; the University used it as its president’s residence. The president often opened it for receptions and parties, so several times I had the pleasure of visiting and exploring, between glasses of wine and conversations about the topics of the day, that magnificent old building, which still contained, if memory serves, some pieces of the original furniture that Wright had designed for it.

That active interest in architecture had been dormant for some years, as creative energies found other channels, but the new Thinking Ahead exhibit at the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center has certainly roused it again. The show offers tantalizing glimpses of the work of a few of the modernist architects associated with the college, men who worked in the same era as Wright to reshape our experience of lived space, and create a new architecture, one freed from classical traditions. On the 26^th of this month, Raleigh architect Frank Harmon, FAIA, whose firm was selected by Residential Architect Magazine as the 2005-2006 Residential Architect Firm of the Year, journeys to Asheville to speak on the subsequent development of Modernism in our own era, in the south of farmhouses and traditional vernacular structures. It’s a subject he should know well, since his own work clearly takes the Modernist project as its initial premise.

Given that Harmon’s firm has been selected to develop the new UNCA Crafts Campus north of town along the French Broad River, his presentation should spark significant interest in our fair mountain city.

I’ve not yet set foot in a Harmon building, but his firm’s website offers an extensive collection of photographs of his projects through the years, both small projects (there’s even a dog house, or dog box, as the site qualifies it) and large – as in the very attractive 70,000 square foot renovation and addition to the NC Farm Bureau in Raleigh. It’s an impressive body of work, a unique blend of Modernist aesthetic and vernacular values. It manifests decent respect, even affection, for the materials of structure (especially wood, often exposed to great effect). The Farm Bureau project, with its emphasis on open space and its artful use of interior columns, reminded me (given that Frank Lloyd Wright’s work is still an important point of reference for me), for all the apparent difference of scale, of Wright's office projects, such as the Johnson Wax building in Racine, Wisconsin, with its graceful columns and cantilevered ceiling. Asheville architect Jim Samsel was impressed by another Harmon project, the Iron Studio at Penland School, and says it's a good example of the way Harmon integrates

function with structure. It has great a connection to outdoors via views & daylight, as well as very appropriate and well detailed materials for the given use.

His work at Penland and elsewhere conveys a thoughtful integration of the building's purpose and clear, expressive structure. It portrays a contemporary language that's in harmony with the local architectural vernacular of the South. His buildings appear always carefully sited and respectful of the natural environment.

Samsel has high expectations for the new Crafts Campus:

I expect [it] to convey many of these same principles, and to be inspiring to all who appreciate design excellence, as well.

Harmon seems to be able to make even compact buildings feel open and expansive, and yet his work (as revealed at least in the photographs) can convey also a sense of shelter, something sometimes hard to come by in a typical Modernist structure. It’s that rare combination of qualities, the tension between the vernacular and modern, that led a juror in the AIA North Carolina competition in 1999 (when Harmon won three out of the four Honor awards for which he was entered) to remark, “I don't who this guy is, but he's either a genius or a schizophrenic.”

In an interview for a recent article in Residential Architect, Harmon attributes his approach to his mentor of many years, Harwell Harris. “What people thought was cold and threatening modernism, he made warm and approachable,” Harmon says. “Harwell was a big influence on me in this way: he taught me that every client and every situation is different and new. And it is the architect's job to understand the needs of every situation and every client. He loved to say that the house is a portrait of the client. He was a very important person to me – still is.”

Harmon seems to have mastered that art of portraiture, and to be able, as Wright had it, to put his clients in possession of their own earths. I doubt that he’s had to advise many of his clients to plant vines.

What: Frank Harmon, The Bauhaus + The Farmhouse: Reflections on the Modern Movement in the South. There will be a reception and silent auction to benefit BMCM+AC. Co-sponsored by AIA Asheville and the UNCA Office of Cultural and Special Events.

When: Thursday, October 26^th, 7:30 PM

Where: Broadway Arts Building, 49 Broadway, downtown Asheville.

Admission: $12/$6 Students with ID. Free parking for the event at Home Trust Bank.

Thinking Ahead, & Experimenting to Get There

It'’s everywhere. In the world of the arts, there'’s just no escaping Black Mountain College. That's especially true this month in Asheville. Both the Asheville Art Museum and the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, one of the best small museums in America (yes, I know, I am on the board, but I'’m just quoting the Wall Street Journal there), host shows highlighting the important contributions of the small, obscure, persistently impoverished local college to the larger world. Long after it closed in 1957*, the work begun there rippled through American culture and, indeed, the cultures of the other advanced industrial nations, right on up to our own time.

The impact of the painters and visual artists has often been acknowledged; they helped change the face of American art. The importance of the poets and writers has likewise been celebrated, and likely will be for decades to come; they stood at the defining edge of the New American Poetry that emerged in the nineteen-fifties and -sixties. Not so well known, though, is the impact some of the artists at the college had on the texture of everyday life through their work in design, from furniture, to textiles, to ceramics, and to the graphic arts, and in architecture. It'’s the goal of "“Thinking Ahead"”, hosted at Asheville's Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, to explore these areas of influence for the first time in a comprehensive way.

What made Black Mountain College important in the world of design "began at the Bauhaus, with its merging of the fine and applied arts,"” says Kelly Gold, who curated the show with her husband Bobby, referring to the famous school of art and architecture founded in Weimar, Germany, in 1919.

When the Bauhaus was ousted from Hitler's Germany in the 20s & 30s, a few prominent Bauhaus figures came to Black Mountain, while some headed to Chicago. The German architect Walter Gropius, widely considered to be the Father of Modernism, had been Director of the Bauhaus, and was held in great respect at Black Mountain; he was even invited to design a Studies Complex there. It wasn'’t built, since the beginning of World War II made fund raising impossible. But the tenets of the Bauhaus were at the core of the curriculum at Black Mountain. And one of the primary tenets of the Bauhaus was to bring good design to the masses. You can still see Bauhaus influence every time you drive down the street -– just look at traffic signs! Could you imagine a fussy, Victorian-inspired, probably illegible, stop sign?

The Golds' ’ interest in Black Mountain College came, Kelly recalls, "“from our love of Modernism."

We used to own Orbit, a modern shop in downtown Asheville; Bobby still deals in vintage modern design, but in larger markets like Chicago and New York. While we were doing research on fine art items by Black Mountain alumni and instructors, we started finding that quite a few of them also produced commercial designs. Josef Albers, for example, one of the most prominent figures at Black Mountain, and in the art world at large, is best known as a painter, printmaker, and teacher. At Black Mountain, though, when they needed desks for students, he also became a furniture designer. Necessity being the mother of invention, he developed a design for a desk and had them fabricated by a local carpenter. One of these rare desks, made from local chestnut, is included in this exhibition. Later, after the college closed, Albers also designed a series of LP album covers around 1960 -– early stereophonic stuff, with titles like "Persuasive Percussion". So, if you ever wanted to own something done by Josef Albers, but couldn't afford it, here's your chance!

As we worked toward the exhibit we realized we wanted to show the college in a totally different, fresh light. Instead of focusing on fine art pieces, the show focuses on things that are a bit more utilitarian or production-oriented. Instead of showing a one-off piece of pottery by Karen Karnes, for example, we're showing one of her iconic casseroles, designed to be used, and not just shelved for viewing -– a model of functionality, as well as beauty.

There are two categories of "designer" represented in this exhibition, those who are known as designers, and those who are known for other work, who did some design work along the way. Some of the most influential architects and graphic designers of the 20th century were involved at Black Mountain. The designer Alvin Lustig is a good example; his work, though executed decades ago, manages to look very current. I've seen graphic design on book covers published in the 21st century that resemble Lustig's work. I don't mean that these new works by young designers are derivative, necessarily, but rather that Lustig's work is timeless. It'’s obviously continuing to influence designers today.

While the exhibit includes work by some of the best known of the Black Mountain faculty, like the Albers, it also presents the work of a number of less well-known faculty and students who made important and interesting contributions to 20th century design. In the graphic arts, in addition to Josef Albers and Alvin Lustig, the show includes work by Ben Shahn, Robert Rauschenberg, Leo Lionni, Ati Gropius Johansen, Vera Williams, Cy Twombly, Jonathan Williams, Xanti Schawinsky, and Ray Johnson.

In furniture design, in addition to Josef Albers, the show features work (or representations of work, when original pieces are no longer extant or weren'’t available) by Marcel Breuer, Lawrence Kocher, Mary Gregory, and Robert Bliss.

In the field of textile design, the show includes work of Anni Albers, and Lore Kadden Lindenfeld.

In ceramic arts, work by Walter Gropius is included, in addition to the work of Karen Karnes that Kelly mentions.

In the field of lighting design, the show features the work of Nicholas Cernovitch.

Last but not least, in architecture, the show highlights work of Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Lawrence Kocher, Buckminster Fuller, Claude Stoller, and Herbert Oppenheimer. All of the works shown are accompanied by text explaining their designers'’ connection with the college and their careers beyond Black Mountain.

It's a fascinating collection. Viewing it, I couldn't help but feel that it could be expanded into an even richer experience in each of the directions it opens, given resources, space, and time. What a good beginning, though.

In conjunction with the exhibit, the Center will be presenting a public lecture series that will include presentations by Frank Harmon, award-winning Principal of Frank Harmon Architect of Raleigh, NC, on modernist architecture, and Brenda Danilowitz, Chief Curator at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, on the couple'’s work at Black Mountain, and on their design legacy. The latter is scheduled for September 21st. Harmon'’s lecture is scheduled for October 26th, and I'’ll post more information about it here between now and then.

Just two blocks up Broadway, the Asheville Art Museum is hosting "“Black Mountain College: Experiments in Materials and Form"”, the second of the exhibits in its three-part Black Mountain College: An Exhibition Series. The show explores the emphasis on experimentation at the College, and the ways in which the experimental spirit led artists to discover new directions for their work through explorations in new materials and forms.

Eva Diaz, one of a new generation of Black Mountain scholars, curated the show. Despite its emphasis on works in black, white, and grayscale, which lends a certain visual austerity to its presentation, it includes some striking and seldom-seen work by the artists she includes -– like Robert Rauschenberg'’s experimental photographs, and Josef Albers'’ woodcuts. Clemens Kalischer'’s photographs port us back to the historical moments they preserve in gelatin and silver, John Cage at the piano, for instance, and Albers teaching in his Black Mountain class. I'’d read about, but never seen, Rauschenberg'’s White Painting (simply, as they say, a stretched, gessoed canvas), which John Cage beautifully termed an "“airport for dust"”, and the richly textured Black Painting. Cage'’s scores of his own work move far beyond conventional musical notation, and have circles and diagonal lines converging in an angular dance across the staves. Two of his motico panels represent Ray Johnson here, exploring graphic abstraction in commonplace materials, such as corrugated cardboard.

Both shows remind us what an amazing, sustained, confluence of energies took place just up the road, in the pastoral acres beside the lake named for the mythical home of paradise, however beleaguered the college might have been.

Both shows run through the end of the year. Resistance is futile, so catch them both.

The Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center is located at 56 Broadway, in downtown Asheville. It'’s open Wednesday through Saturday, 1:00 - 4:00 PM More Information at the website, or call the Center at 350-8484.

The Asheville Art Museum, at 2 South Pack Square, in downtown Asheville, is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 AM -– 5:00 PM, and on Sundays from 1:00-5:00 PM. More Information at the Museum's website.

* Some accounts give 1956 as the closing date, and that date has certainly been the most commonly cited - even by materials produced at the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. The eminent Mary Emma Harris prompted me and the Center board, though, to re-examine the facts and conclude that the college actually closed in 1957. But more about that in another post.

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Portions his post appeared in different form in the September 2006 issue of Rapid River. Thanks to Kelly for taking a moment to pose the evening of her show's opening; I'll have to get Bobby later.

An Afternoon's Adventure with Minerva

It’s so easy not to see what is close at hand. Like most, I sometimes fall back into the sense that I know the world in which I live and move, and become anaesthetized to surprises it might offer. We are estranged from that with which we’re most familiar. Sometimes it takes the eyes of someone new to the particulars of the city to open my own eyes to what has changed, to new phenomena in the landscape. I didn’t really expect an adventure when I agreed to meet a friend for lunch downtown, but got one regardless. And a fine adventure it was.

My friend had seen an ad for a gallery in Rapid River, a local arts magazine, and wanted to check it out, so we walked over to Church Street to locate Gallery Minerva. Having been under a rock for the last three years, I hadn’t even realized there even existed a gallery on Church Street. “Are you sure it’s on Church Street?” Sure enough, that’s what the ad said – and there it was, just past the parking lot at the intersection with Patton, at number 12.

Asheville’s blessed with galleries, of course, but this one offered some types of work I hadn’t often seen locally, like the fine figurative surrealist work of Clayton Anderson, the rich tensions of form and color of Kate Worm’s landscapes, still lives, and nudes, and the large-scale mythic enigmas of Chris Sedgwick – and several striking recent limited edition prints by photographer Judith Angel, an old friend, native of Candler, who now lives and works in New York.

Perhaps as interesting as any of these, though, the gallery also offered the affable intelligence of its proprietor, art consultant Anna Parker-Barnett. And the gallery, it turns out, as good as it is, is merely the small visible facet of her activity in the arts.

Parker-Barnett opened Minerva two years ago. Born in Alabama, educated (in Interior Design) at the University of Texas and Parsons School of Design, she took a circuitous route to Asheville, one that led through New York (where she worked with fabric designer Jay Yang), Chapel Hill, Valle Crucis, and Hickory. When her cousin invited her to partner in a design business in the town of San Jose del Cabo, in Baja, Mexico, she decided to accept the challenge. Familiar with the world of well-designed, well-crafted North Carolina furniture, Anna found that she was able to provide resources otherwise unavailable in that part of the world. When a local gallery fell victim to the divorce of its owners, she made it an adjunct to her work as a consultant in art to designers and their clients in San Jose. She’d developed relationships with the artists who found themselves in her vicinity in Baja, including a contingent of those in the nearby arts-centered community of Todos Santos, and became an advocate for the work she found extraordinary, serving as its ambassador to a larger world.

One of her projects brought her to Asheville, and … well, you know the story. One thing led to another, she met her “fabulous” husband, found the Asheville designer community congenial, had a vision for a new gallery, and moved here, full time, early in 2004, and opened Gallery Minerva.

In the course of her peripatetic career, Anna has worked with hundreds of artists all over the world, and built a network that serves her, she says, well, no matter what her clients need. With her background in design, she can assist clients not just with the purchase of works of art, but also with development of interior color palettes, lighting, framing and other situational factors that will enhance their display. Given the considerable investment art can represent, she says, she always tries to help her clients find real values as they develop their collections, however modest or grand those collections might be. She feels she offers clients “unique connections,” and, given the unique creations in her gallery, I’d say she’s surely right.

But, not having been under a rock finishing a book by earthlight, you may already know Gallery Minerva. No? Well, it’s well worth the jaunt to Church Street.

Anna has promised to keep me advised as new work arrives and events develop, so I’m sure I’ll be checking back; I’ll keep you, as they say, posted.

If Gallery Minerva is an example of what I’ve lately missed, I’ll have to get out more. I look forward to the next such surprise. Even in Asheville, it seems, you never step into the same city twice.

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A version of this post appeared in Rapid River. Photo of Anna Parker-Barnett by myself.

Coming Attractions: Hazel Larsen Archer

This afternoon I helped take down the show featuring the work of Joe Fiore and his students that's hung at the Center* since last fall. Over the next week, a new show will go up, one that features the photographic work of Hazel Larsen Archer. "Who?" you might ask. Indeed. Go read the post about Hazel and her work over at Eden Hall.

The show opens April 21st with a reception that will also introduce the Center's beautiful new monograph on Archer, Hazel Larsen Archer/Black Mountain College Photographer. The Center's done fascinating and attractive publications before, but for this one it definitely took its publications game up a few notches.

The evening before, the Asheville Art Museum will host a special symposium on the contemporary relevance of Black Mountain College. The speakers will be scholars Mary Emma Harris, Eva Diaz, and Gwen Robertson. Mary Emma presides over the Black Mountain College Project, which provides historical material on the college, information on some of its faculty and students, a few memoirs, and other resources. The afternoon of the Archer opening, she’ll lead a tour of the college campus, now Camp Rockmont; call the Center at 350-8484 for more information.

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* The Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, of course.

The photo by Hazel captures Hazel and her daughter Erika; date unknown. The print is by Alice Sebrell. There are additional photos by Hazel Larsen Archer, printed by Alice Sebrell, here.

Back into the Light: Hazel Larsen Archer

The Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center will be opening a show this later month of work by the photographer Hazel Larsen Archer, one of the (mostly) unseen lights of the college - until now. I'll have another post about her work and career up in a day or two, but wanted to post some instances of her way of seeing now.

The first is one of her "motion studies" of Merce Cunningham, which had Cunningham improvising dance-like movements a few feet away from her camera lens.

Here's a shot of the Black Mountain College campus, looking across the western edge of the lake toward the Studies Building:












Here's another dancer, Katherine Litz, dancing in the doorway to the Dining Hall:


















And Charles Olson (center, with glasses) in a meeting. Olson was still in the early stages of his career as poet when he served as the last Rector of the college.



















The show opens April 21st, simultaneously with the publication of the Center monograph on Archer's work, Hazel Larsen Archer / Black Mountain College Photographer, from which these images are drawn.

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Original content © 2006.