Architectural Stories

The sad news is that Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Art Nouveau masterpiece, the library of the Glasgow School of Art has been destroyed by fire.  The rest of his building - and the art collected there - have been damaged, but it sounds as if heroic salvage efforts are underway and plans for restoration are already being developed.

I particularly feel for the final year students whose work (at the very end of the semester! of their school career!) has been damaged or lost.  Imagine losing your whole portfolio...

Read HERE for a good BBC article on the status and HERE to donate funds or help towards restoration.

Glasgow School of Art library - believed public domain photo

On a brighter note (in every sense), HERE's a terrific website about the neon signs of Hong Kong.  Gorgeous!  They influence, among other things, the film Blade Runner... which inspired these LEGO artists  to build an apocalyptic cyberpunk city - see it HERE.

Isn't it amazing what can come from imagination?

Runnin' Crazy, Or, Scenic Design as a Profession

Nutsy busy here.

Since I got back from vacation (very nice, thank you), I've been running to catch up with my career... which seems to have been careering off without me.

Monday and Tuesday were spent, in part, helping scenic paint the next show at Kitchen Dog Theater, Barbecue Apocalypse.  Its out-of-town designer hadn't known - until late - that KD has no in-house scenic painter.  Hence my volunteerism.  Lucky he packed his painting clothes, huh?

(It's amazing the teeny little bits of info any theater can forget to mention to new designers...  No existing drawings?  No pay?  No help?  Hot n' cold running rats?  Etc.)

Anyway, I helped with that plus catch-up on my stuff and Lotso Meetings.  In one o' those I picked up two shows at WaterTower Theater next season: one is a joint production with Stage West which will move from Fort Worth to Addison, The Explorers' Club (sounds like good fun! and a challenge) and the other is the classic All My Sons.

Then the first production meeting for Circle Theatre's Hope and Gravity.  I arrived late (darn DFW traffic!) with scribble-y sketches, ugly 3D computer sketches, and a duck-chewed looking model that was once the model for a different show on the same stage, ruthlessly reused.  Some designs are just hard to represent, you know?  This is a nice script... of the sort that calls for many fast changes of setting to which the director's desire for "ethereal" added another level of puzzlement.  Once I got my head around it all though, ethereal is exactly the way to go.  I'm looking forward to seeing this design, not in model or sketch, but for real.

Some good sets are impossible to show-n-tell, you just have to build and light the darn things.

One perk of helping paint was that I got treated to a nice lunch by Kitchen Dog's visiting designer.  He was kind enough to explain what work at the next level up is like - the traveling-between-bigger-regional-theaters gig.  In trying to balance family and work, he's set limits to how long he stays away from home.  Sensible.  The Big Regional Circuit pays better than the Stay At Home Regional that I'm doing... with travel as both part of the fun and part of the price of that gig.

We talked about the struggle to earn a living as a set designer.  His take is that it's not possible, but that it IS possible to create a living as a more general Creative: to stitch theater design with other creative work to make (quilt?) a viable living.  Of course, there will be good years and lean years.  I believe he's right.  In my case, last year's tax records proved to me that I need to make more money.  So time to stitch in more non-theater, better-paying creative work!  Sigh.  I'm not sure I really want to travel as much as he is - even if I could get the out of town gigs, of course.  Decisions, decisions.  

I can't over-stress how helpful it is it have another designer to talk to sometimes.

So... I think I'll go finish unpacking my suitcase.

Public domain image from http://www.publicdomainpictures.net

Back In Town... And There's a Sale!

While you've been impatiently wondering where the next post was (you were weren't you?), I was in California vacationing.

But today I'm back and there's notice of a book sale in my inbox:

The last hours remain of a Flash Sale on my how-to set design book Alice Through the Proscenium at its publisher, Lulu.  

More about Alice?  

Read about it at its Lulu site HERE or on its Squidoo book site HERE.

More catch-up posts coming soon... and more theater sets in the works: this week a meeting to discuss one theater's new season (and presumably a show for me to design for it), the first production meeting on the next show at Circle Theatre, some help-out painting on another designer's set, and...

Wear Your Coat to See David Bates, Even If It's Hot

A pair of art museum shows - one in Dallas at the Nasher and one at Fort Worth's Modern - showcase the 2D and 3D work of artist David Bates.

I've been a fan for a while.

I'm not sure if I'll be able to catch the painting exhibition in Fort Worth (it only runs through the 11th), but the (mostly) sculpture show here at the Nasher is terrific!

Bates blurs the line between painting and sculpture until it almost disappears.  His paintings often sprout into the third dimension, becoming assemblages of canvas and wood and sometimes wire.  His assemblage style sculptures are often painted.  Sometimes the same still life of flowers and fruit will appear both as a painting and as a free-standing sculpture.

Still life?

David Bates Magnolias: the Painting

 at the Nasher Sculpture Center

The museum kindly allows photography, 

but the art's copyright belongs to the artist, of course.

 David Bates Magnolias: the Sculpture

 at the Nasher Sculpture Center

The museum kindly allows photography, 

but the art's copyright belongs to the artist, of course.

That's an unusual subject for modern sculpture.  They are beautiful.

 David Bates Irises, at the Nasher Sculpture Center

The museum kindly allows photography, 

but the art's copyright belongs to the artist, of course.

Though these are arrangements of flowers - perhaps in tribute to his mother's passing, according to the museum label - there's something almost Picasso-macho about the bold brush strokes.  And the textures!  The rough grain of wood, the gnarliness of wire, the shards of old steel, the corduroy-striping of corrugated cardboard... all transmuted into cast bronze... and then, startlingly, painted.  Fascinating work.

 David Bates Vine Detail, at the Nasher Sculpture Center

The museum kindly allows photography, 

but the art's copyright belongs to the artist, of course.

I liked the portraits too, very much, but it is the still lives I want to carry home under my coat.

 David Bates Sunflowers and Thistles, at the Nasher Sculpture Center

The museum kindly allows photography, 

but the art's copyright belongs to the artist, of course.

If only I'd worn a coat...

Darn this warm spring weather!

 David Bates Magnolia, at the Nasher Sculpture Center

The museum kindly allows photography, 

but the art's copyright belongs to the artist, of course.

Monsterpiece Theater

I just saw this great little Muppet masterpiece and thought you might enjoy it: the Monsterpiece Theater rebuttal to Godot... "Waiting for Elmo."  HERE

What else has been going on?

Well, Fun House's brilliant version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is over... hope you caught it.  A great experience.  Gidion's Knot at Kitchen Dog was struck this last weekend - it took 30 times as much time to strike all that classroom set dressing as it did to strike the two walls!  Venus in Fur is now open at WaterTower Theater and The Other Place is about to open at Circle Theatre in Fort Worth.  

Now for me theater design is just simmering, while architectural things are boiling.  I've been very busy with continuing ed sort of stuff.  First came the yearly ADA seminar (that's the Americans with Disabilities Act), which is always amazingly persnickety.  Don't get me wrong, I'm entirely for the goal of removing architectural barriers... but is it really sensible that the government mandate emergency flasher alarms and roll-in showers for all those deaf, wheelchair-bound firefighters?  Or that the rule is that, if a company's breakroom has no stovetop or oven and only a countertop microwave then that food prep area need not be wheelchair accessible (i.e. kneespace at sinks, limited reach ranges etc.) but if that microwave is built-in then it MUST all be accessible?  ADA rules are filled with such logical... idiosyncrasies.

Also a front burner project for me right now is learning to use Sketchup - a very cool, free, 3D modeling program (with its own amusing idiosyncrasies).  I'm researching CAD classes too, as it seems time to improve those skills.

3D Sketchup model of Circle Theatre: non-commercial, self educational use!

Here you can see my first ever 3D CAD (computer aided design/drafting right?) project, a little Sketchup model of Circle Theater's stage.  Those fat tubular columns at the corners gave me an extra tool to play with.  Just don't look too close at the klutzy construction, huh?  I've since started a much more complex model of  a hypothetical architectural project which also has cylinders - tilted at weird angles, sloping surfaces, cut-in windows....  And I'd thought making this little stage was a bit of a monster!

But I can see that, once I get practiced enough with it, Sketchup is going to be rather fun.

So...  Think AutoCAD is going to be a real hoot then?

Earth Day 2014

I'm working on a make-your-theater-greener ebook.

It's progressing!  I'd say it was "gathering steam," but how old-tech, coal-fired, big-carbon-footprint is that?  No.  It's gathering, um, "solar power."  That's it.

More news soon.

Get Yer Tickets!

I've got four (count 'em 4!) shows worth seeing right now or very soon:

At Kitchen Dog Theater, Gidion's Knot, which has been getting really good reviews, running just through the 26th.  (Get tickets fast.)  This script raises some fascinating questions.

At Fun House Theatre and Film, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, opening tonight!  With only a short run also through the 26th.  It's going to be terrific, I think.  The kids (who are 99% of the cast) are amazing!  An Escher-ish set that I'm proud of.  (Still digging gray paint out from under my fingernails.)

Escher arches - believed public domain image

Opening soon at WaterTower Theater, the Dallas restaging of Circle Theatre's steamy-good Venus in Fur.  Opens the 27th and runs through May 18th.

And opening May 1st at Circle Theatre, The Other Place, which runs through the 24th.  An intriguing how-much-is-in-her-head? kind of piece.

Tickets! Tickets!  Get yer Tickets!

Yeesh

Sorry for the arid desert between posts here... it's Tax Time.  'Nuf said.

There's something about going through last year's mileage records (really?  I drove to Fort Worth again that day?) and old pay stubs (really?  that little?) and badly folded receipts (really?!  that much!) that makes me feel all jaded and Wordsworthian:

"The world is too much with us; late and soon / Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers..."

I love my theater design job, but annual tax up-gathering sure can suck the juice out of it.  Like a bad review.  (Not much like W's "sleeping flowers," all these shekels.)   

Meanwhile, actual reviews have been good: Gidion's Knot at Kitchen Dog Theater is getting good press.  A tremendous clash of actress power in this show!  (The set's getting nice notice too - "meticulously executed."  I'll take it!)

Here's the full Wordsworth piece for Today's Poetical Pleasure:

         THE world is too much with us; late and soon,
          Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
          Little we see in Nature that is ours;
          We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
          The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
          The winds that will be howling at all hours,
          And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
          For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
          It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
          A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;                        
          So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
          Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
          Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
          Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

A moonlit sea by Carlsen - a public domain image from Vintage Printable