Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man

I donned the artist's beret late in my life, following a career as an architect, educator and administrator. But the seeds were planted early, and poked up like weeds through the cracks and along the edges of my other endeavors.

Not that the architect is not an artist. Architecture has been called the Mother of Arts, not only because it forms the backdrop against which all other arts are projected, but also because it is the most enduring and unambiguous statement of a civilization's aspirations. Yet, architecture is differentiated from the other arts primarily through its responsiveness to utility (functional requirements). [Roger Scruton, in The Aesthetics of Architecture, points out other distinguishing features of Architecture: localized quality (e.g., responsiveness to climate and terrain); dependence on technology of its time and place; public presence (which imposes responsiveness to public taste); and the ubiquitous presence of vernacular versions).]

The relationship of architecture to the other arts is akin to the relationship of applied research to basic research. The title Sine Utilitate (without function) of the series of constructions based on tensegrity, denotes my engagement with Sculpture through the circuitous route that took me through architecture.

These constructions and other pieces presented herein relate, to a large extent, to my education as an architect and my service as an educator. 

I believe that I became an architect because of an ingrained drive from early on to make things, with all that entails: invention, design, investigation of materials, assembly. My favorite pastime as a child was putting things together. The years after WWII, when I was growing up in Athens, Greece, were an excellent time to cultivate such interests, as toys were scarce. An early memory, from when I was about six years old, has me harvesting berries (from the Chinaberry tree that I could reach from my grandmother's balcony) and using them as the nodes for polyhedra, which I constructed with the aid of toothpicks. Is it possible that the design and construction of the first polyhedral building for our summer house, Mikro Horio, some 25 years later could be traced to that childhood discovery?

Summer vacations -- three months spent in the country -- afforded ample time for creative endeavors. When not playing with other children or reading books (another favorite pastime), I drew with colored pencils in a sketchbook; used a carving knife to entice boats or busts from the soft bark of Mediterranean pine; or dug out clay from the side of a hill to make whatnot. I was seldom, it ever, bored.

Through an uncommonly demanding art course in high school, I began to focus my creative urges. The curriculum at Iowa State University, where I earned the B. Arch and M. Arch. degrees (see c.v.) strengthened further my interests. It included a strong dose of Bauhaus philosophy taught by second generation modernists who had studied under Mies van der Rohe, Auguste Perret, and Bruce Goff. Every semester that we enrolled in an Architectural Design Studio we were obligated to be concurrently enrolled in an Art Studio, taught by the artists on the faculty. The idea that Architecture is in constant dialogue with the other arts was driven home through courses in drawing, color theory, painting and ceramics.

Overshadowing the curriculum was an attitude, residual from the founding days of the university some 100 years earlier as a land-grant college ("College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts"), that what we designed had to be buildable. "Paper architecture" was scoffed at. The idea of the importance of materials and construction served to reinforce modernist ideas of invention and originality.

In the six-year interval between degrees, I worked in architectural offices, where my unique contribution was the production of presentation drawings, in the form of large-size watercolor perspectives. At that time, I also fulfilled my obligation to the Greek Army, where, following a barrage of tests at the Officer Candidates Training Camp, I discovered that I possessed singular visual talents. I might never have known, for test results were not posted, were it not for the Army's propensity for suspecting conspiracies and looking for deceit everywhere: I was called in to explain my perfect score in a test of visual associations -- the so-called "matrix" test: "Who gave you the answers? No one has scored 60 out of 60 before!" (I was selected to become an officer anyway.) [P.S. In reading Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers recently (summer of 2011), where he discusses the said test and gives examples of questions, I discovered it is called "Raven's Progressive Matrices".]

At graduate school, I earned the stipend provided by my graduate assistantship by teaching freehand drawing to undergraduates. When, a year later, I started teaching full-time, I co-founded and soon became professor-in-charge for the next decade of a course titled "Systems of Visual Order," a second-year required course that I taught along with my fourth-year Architectural Studio. The course had a theoretical component that I presented in a weekly lecture, plus a studio component, and it introduced students to the principles of visual design through such topics as perception psychology, the language of visual design, methods of form generation, the mathematics of proportion, and the geometry of two- and three-dimensional space. The studio stressed craftsmanship, in addition to ideas, and strived to instill confidence in students' hands, and pride in their work.

Similar aims were adopted in the elective courses in furniture design that I taught later in my academic career, when I assumed administrative duties which, by necessity, reduced my teaching responsibilities. Students were typically challenged to design and construct a chair -- the smallest architectural object whose success can be tested against Vitruvias' triad of utilitas, firmitas, and venustas (functionality, structural stability, and beauty).

Furniture design and construction was one of the pursuits, during my three decades as teacher and administrator, through which I engaged in design and art, and through which I expanded my familiarity with materials and my expertise with tools. Some of the furniture was built in response to our household needs. (For example, I have built ten beds for the several houses my wife and I have occupied in 45 years of marriage -- a tradition for Greek husbands dating back to the bed, described by Homer, that Odysseus built for his nuptials with Penelope.) For several years, however, I pursued a design idea corralled in tightly defined conditions: the design of furniture -- mostly chairs -- utilizing off-the-shelf, standard 4 ft x 8 ft plywood as the primary material. Each object utilized a fraction of the sheet (e.g., one-half, one quarter or one-third); the only waste was sawdust (both sides of the kerf were used); and the object was assembled using ready-to-assemble (RTA) hardware. Several prototypes were built. (Examples may be viewed here: From Plato to Plywood.)

I accomplished this work in workshops outfitted in every house we occupied in the States (and now in our home in Vrilissia, in greater Athens. I have also installed a workshop, with a duplicate set of tools, at our second home on the island of Kythnos. Other parallel pursuits included the design of dwellings, or additions, mostly for family and friends; and the on-going project, during summers, of improving and expanding our summer home, Mikro Horio, in Greece.

Following our retirement from U.S. academic positions in 2001, and relocation to Greece, my wife and I focused our energies into bringing Mikro Horio into a state of completion that made it suitable for year-round habitation. As that project neared completion, I turned my attention to making the art objects that had been fermenting in the back of my mind for a long time.