The Bachman-Wilson Is Saved!

Frank Lloyd Wright designed more than 1,000 structures, but only 532 were built, 430 during his lifetime.  Ten Wright buildings, including LA’s Hollyhock House, have been nominated for UNESCO World Heritage status.   About 120 of his designs were Usonian homes, simple structures for the middle class.  By 1936, the depth of The Depression had passed and Wright was ready to create houses that less-than-wealthy folks could afford.  One of his Usonians was the Bachman-Wilson House.

Four families lived in Bachman-Wilson in New Jersey before it was moved.   The first, the Wilsons, really wanted a commission to build it and wrote to Wright.   Marvin Bachman, Gloria Wilson’s brother, had been a Wright apprentice, so they included his name in their bid.   It worked.   Wright wanted $60,000 to build their Usonian. The Wilsons had $20,000. They settled for $30,000.

The 4th owners were architects Sharon and Lawrence Tarantino.  They bought Bachman-Wilson in 1988 and completely restored it.  However, it was adjacent to the appropriately named Millstone River and was prone to flooding.  The house was under water 7 times. Some floods were hurricane related.  The Tarantinos soon sought a buyer and contacted Alice Walton, daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton, who had recently opened Crystal Bridges, her new American Art museum in Arkansas.   Alice bought Bachman-Wilson and moved it 1,235 miles to Bentonville.   

Some changes were needed.  The original home, for example, didn’t have a basement and wasn’t air-conditioned.   The reconstruction, however, does retain the home’s Usonian character. The front door is still somewhat hidden. The New Jersey approach to the home has been recreated.  Its windows face woods.  It has a carport like many Usonian designs. Wright hated the clutter that garages encouraged and invented the word “carport” to name his new concept.   The house is lean and low and looks embedded in the natural landscape just as Wright intended.   Most Usonians don’t have a 2nd floor.  The Bachman-Wilson does, but no tours are allowed upstairs.

If you want to see the recreation’s best space, its sensational living room, join a tour.  Due to Wright’s open concept plan, all of the furniture in the living room is on one side and all seats, including 2 almost-comfortable-looking Origami chairs, face windows and crowd together.  The windows are tall and fine. Cherokee red is, of course, among the many natural colors used. Call for tickets, which are free, well in advance because only 8 people are allowed on any tour since interior spaces tend to be small.   Guided tours have been very popular.  Ruth & I booked months in advance and there were exactly 8 people with us in a house where I had to sidle sideways in one hall and disliked the fact that I could not take interior photos.

This project was a challenge worth accepting and the result is an excellent. rescued Usonian.

Hank

 

 

A Great Lincoln Attraction

Ruth, who is not a quilter, often tells the story of the bug quilt.  Her friend Sue created award-winning quilts and decided to make a special one for each of her nieces and nephews.  She considered their main interest and used that for the quilt’s theme.   One of her niece’s chief interest was entomology.

On our way back to the Northwest between Omaha and Lincoln, Ruth was driving and I was looking at upcoming local attractions.  “There’s something called the International Quilt Study Center & Museum on one of the University of Nebraska’s campuses in Lincoln,” I noted.  “I had no idea such a place existed,”Ruth said.  “Let’s check it out.”   It turned out to be both a 5 Compass facility and a major allurement tied to a hobby of American origin.

In an innovative glass and brick 2008 building that suggests the 3 layers of a quilt, the International Quilt Study Center and Museum (IQSC&M) is home to the world’s largest publicly-owned collection of quilts. It’s holdings are so vast that they span 4 centuries, represent 50 countries, and come from 6 continents. Hardly a week goes by that new quilts aren’t added to the 4,500+ already in its huge storage facility.    None of them are on permanent display. IQSC&M, instead, incorporates some of them into almost every show it creates.

Ruth and I saw several: Quilts of Southwest China, Mountain Mist, Favorites from the Dillow Collection, etc.    Amish Quilts is coming October 7.  By the time you visit, probably none of the quilts we saw will be out.  Light is their enemy.   The oldest quilt in the collection was made in 1796 by Anna Ruggles in Gloucestershire, England.  Its most famous & valuable quilt is a Civil War Era “Reconciliation Quilt”.

The 2 Quilts shown above and below were my favorites.   Above is Sara Rhodes Dillow’s “Sunshine in the Garden”.  She sewed it in 2006.  Below is Sheila Frampton Cooper’s 2013 “Lair of the Amethyst Den”.  Its description says it was  “free-motion quilted”.  Indeed.

Hank

Lowriders Gaining Respect in Santa Fe

I don’t usually write about exhibits that are temporary, but I’m making an exception today because of Orlando Martinez.  The temporary show’s in Santa Fe’s New Mexico History Museum.  It opened May 1, 2016, and will close on March 5, 2017.  It’s paired with another exhibition on the same subject, “Con Cariño:  Artists Inspired by Lowriders” that will continue until October 9, 2016, at the New Mexico Museum of Art across the street.  It and “Lowriders, Hoppers, & Hot Rods: Car culture of Northern New Mexico”, which is currently at the History Museum, are both under the title Lowrider Summer.

I saw my first Lowrider in New Mexico several years ago but still knew nothing about them, so I asked Orlando to explain a quote on a wall in “Lowriders, Hoppers & Hot Rods”.  Olivanna Rael said, “When he first told me he was going to be a lowrider, I cried.  I went to my prayer-book leader and said, “I need prayer.  My son’s going to be a lowrider.”  Orlando told me that when the craze began it was associated with gang members and drug dealers. Hence Olivanna’s concern.  But no more.  It’s now an obsession for many Hispanic males. “It’s part of our culture here,” Orlando  explained.  After he complained about the cost of Lowrider magazines, he took me over to meet his baby.  It took him 6 years to transform the 1983 Monte Carlo below into a stunning Lowrider.   Orlando Martinez was exceedingly proud that it was included in the show.  The biography by his dream car noted that he bought a set of gold Dayton rims for $4,000 before he even owned it.   I told him about Houston’s Car Art Museum and encourage him to contact them for a possible future display of it.

This show does a good job of explaining the low ‘n’ slow culture in the Southwest U.S. that involves “gender, family, religion and community”, according  to New Mexico’s Museums & Historic Sites Summer Guide 2016.  I didn’t fully understand what makes a car a lowrider or how the culture began until I saw this unique exhibit in Santa Fe.  After World War II Mexican American men took jobs in aircraft companies.   Car-customizing fans among them “began to take hydraulic lifters used to raise and lower a plane’s flaps and put them in the suspension of cars”.   Passion resulted.

Hank

 

Is Iowa’s the 2nd Best State Fair?

When I meet people from Iowa on the road, they almost always tell me that I have to experience their state fair, claiming it’s the best one.   So this year Ruth & I included  it in our summer itinerary.  We spent August 18 at the fairgrounds in Des Moines and had a blast from 10 am until 11 pm.   The fair actually ran from August 11 to 21.  The only real problems we encountered were parking and the heat.  It was almost 100º by early afternoon.

As it turned out, 10 am was a bit too late to arrive at the Iowa State Fair.  All of the parking lots were full.  This fair, after all, attracts about a million people each year.  The first question I asked at the information booth as soon as we gained entry was, “What time do I have to arrive to park on a fairground lot? ” “I arrived at 7 am,” said the smiling, fair-loving lady in the booth with 3 other female advice givers.   I told her that we seemed to have gotten lucky because we had parked only one and ½ blocks from Gate 10 on someone’s lawn for $6.   I asked her if that might be problem, and she said not to worry.   During fair time every year, Iowans in the neighborhood offer their properties for parking.  Our first activity was to take the fair-circling free tram to learn where things were.

We got a Nothing-Compares-to-my-State-Fair Guide listing every August 18 activity, read that day’s choices, and headed for the animals.   First were the horses, namely Clydesdales that were being better taken care of than most humans.  A horse show including them and draft ponies was scheduled for 6 pm,   Ruth & I watched lots of fifteen-and-unders groom and pamper their favorites for the 2 pm Sheep Show. We had missed the 9:30 4-H Rabbit Show. At 2 pm we stood in a long line to see the famous Butter Cow that has been sculpted here since 1911 to promote the dairy industry. Norma Lyon created it for 46 years.   It was a fair tradition but also a bit of a disappointment.

The other things that I found less than thrilling were the 2 pm Adult Whistling Contest, the Gantry Show, the entire Varied Industries first floor, and the food. The Whistling Contest was well-attended, but the performers lacked personalities and were shrill.  I was not sorry that I missed the earlier yodeling contest.  Someone told me to seek out the Gantry Show, said to be a wandering circus spectacular.  The problem was that it followed no fixed course in its 3-times-this-day ramble so we missed it.  The Varied Industries building was popular because it was air-conditioned; but the first level was full of vendors trying to sell grills, drain clearers, spas, etc.   The food was ever-present but not the type of stuff that folks in motorized chairs should be eating.  Deep fried mac & cheese?  Ice cream nachos?  Really?   We settled for one of the 26 new-this-year foods at Diamond Jacks, Hawaiian Pineapple Bowls, which were awful.  Lots of A&W root beer helped us cope.

What we really enjoyed were the 2 Sky Gliders, the entire Cultural Center, the unbelievable number of blue ribbons attached to projects, the 8 pm Jeff Dunham Show, the focused volunteers shucking corn for August 19th, Iowa Corn Day, the Ugliest Ice Cream contest, and more than I could ever record.

At some point Ruth learned that the Minnesota State Fair, also called “The Great Minnesota Get-Together”, rates even higher than the Iowa State Fair, so we vowed to include it in or 2017 travel plans.

Hank

The Enduring Palouse

According to Australian David Morley, “…if your road trips wind up anything like mine–by the time you get home, you’ll have had an adventure.”  This was especially true of our recent 27 day odyssey.  On our 2nd day, Ruth and I returned to The Palouse.

Ruth had a relative, great in every way, by the name of Aunt Ollie.  This great-aunt followed her husband to The Palouse, had 13 children, became the local midwife, and lived to be 103.  We visited her as often as we could.  Her sons, with one exception, became Palouse wheat farmers.  One year they let us help with the harvest.

The Palouse covers 4,000 square miles mostly in southeast Washington State.   On its east side are the forests of Idaho.  The Snake River is its southern boundary. North of it is the city of Spokane.  Walla Walla, a fantastic wine region, is in its western reach.  The Palouse is a land of steep hills and deep gulches.  Wind blown dust and silt formed them.  These hills look like vegetation-covered sand dunes when they are green in spring and early summer and gold in late summer and early autumn.  Wheat farmers have to use specially designed, self-leveling combines during harvest.   It’s a landscape like nowhere else I’ve been and can be a land of extreme heat and dust storms in summer. One time it took me 5 hours to drive from Lewiston, Idaho, to Walla Walla, a distance of 102.5 miles, because of blinding dust.  See the 2014 blog “The Palouse Mysteries” for more details.

It took Ruth and me most of a day to drive from Walla Walla to Boise.  In the morning we explored the quiet Palouse town of Dayton, and we were in the intensely busy and beautiful resort town of McCall, Idaho, by late afternoon.   A boat show was in progress.   Although we saw some distant combines around Dayton, most of the wheat harvest was already in.    The Palouse remains the world’s #1 producer of soft white winter wheat and memories.

Hank