When I lived in Florence, Italy for a semester in college, the Leaning Tower of Pisa was about an hour’s train ride away. Every weekend I would put it off in favor of other adventures, thinking, “I’ll get over there eventually.” I never made it to Pisa and have always regretted it.
My local “Leaning Tower” has been Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin outside Spring Green, just west of Madison. It is one of Wisconsin’s most famous architectural sites and every year I say I’m going to visit, but this past weekend I finally made the 2+ hour trip and it was worth every freezing minute.
The reason I mention all of this is because it is important to take advantage of art in your own “backyard” and as an artist, designer and business owner it is necessary to constantly nurture your creative spirit and evolve with the trends and the times — a skill that Frank Lloyd Wright superbly honed.
A few Taliesin takeaways:
- It truly was freezing. Wright removed the furnaces from all of the buildings. (Go in the summer.)
- Accordingly, the Hillside Home School of architecture based there spends its winters at Taliesin West in sunny Phoenix. (Go in the winter.)
- Ceilings in Wright buildings can be claustrophobically low — so that you don’t linger in inconsequential areas. (Control your space purposefully, but practically.)
- After each of several fires, Wright took the opportunity to re-design and re-build the structures even better. (Capitalize on catastrophe.)
- Wright designed amazing furniture and fixtures using cheap plywood. (Make beauty on a budget.)
Wright’s brand of Prairie Style architecture grew out of the Arts and Crafts movement in the early 20th century. However, when that fashion passed due to the Depression, he moved on to his utilitarian Usonian houses in the 1930s and, perhaps most notably, finished his career in the 1950s with the Guggenheim Museum in New York — a Modern masterpiece.
FLW’s personal life was full of tragedy and scandal even after his death in 1959 at 91. Wright briefly lived outside Florence with his mistress, Mamah Cheny, who was later murdered at Taliesin in 1914 with her two children and four others. In 1985, his body was covertly exhumed from it’s nearby resting place, cremated and the ashes secretly scattered with his third wife’s ashes over Taliesin West.
If it all sounds like it could be a movie… in a “you-heard-it-here-first” moment of our tour, the guide informed us that Lionsgate has purchased the screen rights to “Loving Frank,” an historical novel by Nancy Horan and that supposedly Brad Pitt wants to play Frank Lloyd Wright. If Pitt wants to bring his love of all things architecture, Ayn Rand and acting to Spring Green, it would be a huge boon for a Wisconsin landmark badly in need of repair. Let’s hope. There were more than a few things leaning there, too.
So you heard it here second. Who really knows about Brad Pitt? However, you can always check out Taliesin‘s beautiful Prairie Style structures on the Web. As for me, I think there’s a tower in Tuscany with my name on it…
Tyra Baumler
Owner, Tessera Design
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