Masterpiece: Tree of Life (Art Glass Window), 1904 by Frank Lloyd Wright for the Darwin D. Martin House

Transcription

1 Masterpiece: Tree of Life (Art Glass Window), 1904 by Frank Lloyd Wright for the Darwin D. Martin House Keywords: Shape, Line, Repetition, Structure Grade: 4 th Grade Month: November Activity: Light Screens TIME: 1.5 hour This Frank Lloyd Wright Tree of Life art glass pattern is found in several variations in Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin D. Martin House. The four-panel variation shown is found on the central landing of the Martin House stairway. Meet the Artist (taken in part from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation website): Frank Lloyd Wright was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin, on June 8, 1867, the son of William Carey Wright, a preacher and a musician, and Anna Lloyd Jones, a teacher whose large Welsh family had settled the valley area near Spring Green, Wisconsin. His early childhood was nomadic as his father traveled from one ministry position to another in Rhode Island, Iowa, and Massachusetts, before settling in Madison, Wisconsin in Wright's parents divorced in 1885, making already difficult financial circumstances even more challenging. To help support the family, eighteen-yearold Frank Lloyd Wright worked for the dean of the University of Wisconsin's department of engineering while also studying at the university. But he wanted to be an architect and in 1887 he left Madison for Chicago, where he found work with two different firms before being hired by the prestigious partnership of Adler and Sullivan, working directly under Louis Sullivan for six years. In 1889, at age twenty-two, Wright married Catherine Lee Tobin. Anxious to build his own home, he negotiated a five-year contract with Sullivan in exchange for the loan of the necessary money. He purchased a wooded corner lot in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park and built his first house, a modest residence reminiscent of the East Coast shingle style with its prominent roof gable, but reflecting Wright s ingenuity as he experimented with geometric shapes and volumes in the studio and

2 playroom he later added for his ever-growing family of six children. Remembered by the children as a lively household, filled with beautiful things Wright found it hard to go without. In 1893, Wright left Adler and Sullivan and opened his own architectural firm and began his quest to design residential homes. Over the next 16 years, he set the architectural standards for what became known as the Prairie style. Some of his most important works of the time are the Darwin D. Martin house in Buffalo, New York, among others. The window you are studying today is from the Martin house. In 1911, Wright began construction on the first Taliesan near Spring Green, Wisconsin which became his home, office and refuge. The years between 1922 and 1934 were both architecturally creative and fiscally catastrophic with many of his commissions not going into construction. In 1928, Wright married Olga Lazovich (known as Olgivanna) and in 1932 founded an architectural school at his beloved home of Taliesin. Unlike other architecture schools, the Taliesin Fellowship was an apprenticeship program to provide a total learning environment, integrating not only architecture and construction, but also farming, gardening, cooking, and the study of nature, music, art and dance. To escape the harsh winters in Wisconsin, in 1934, the Wrights and the Fellowship rented space in Scottsdale, Arizona and in 1936, he acquired some unwanted acreage of raw, rugged desert in the foothills of the McDowell Mountains where he and the Taliesin Fellowship began the construction of Taliesin West as a winter camp, a bold new endeavor for desert living where he tested design innovations, structural ideas, and building details that responded to the dramatic desert setting. Wright and the Fellowship established migration patterns between Wisconsin and Arizona, which the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture continues to this day. He was still actively involved with all aspects of work when, in April of 1959, he was suddenly stricken by an illness which forced his hospitalization. He died April 9, two months shy of his ninety-second birthday. During his seventy-year career, Wright created over 1,100 designs nearly half of which were realized. These included commercial buildings, apartment towers, recreational complexes, museums, religious houses, residences for the wealthy and those of more modest income, furniture, lighting features, textiles, and art glass. In creating what he called architecture for democracy, he redefined our concept of space, offering everyone the opportunity to live and grow in nourishing environments, connected physically and spiritually to the natural world. In 1991, the American Institute of Architects named Wright the greatest American architect of all time and Architectural Record published a list of the one hundred most important buildings of the previous century. Twelve Frank Lloyd Wright buildings appeared in this list, including Fallingwater, the Robie House, the Johnson Administration Building, the Guggenheim, Taliesin, and Taliesin West. In 2000, the A.I.A. selected their top ten favorite buildings of the twentieth

3 century: Fallingwater topped this list, with the Robie House, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Johnson Administration Building also among the select few. Discussion: Shape: an area which stands out from the space next to around because of a defined boundary (line) or a difference of value, color or texture. Shapes are geometric or organic; two or three dimensional. Repetition: occurs when lines, shapes or colors are repeated regularly or irregularly. Repetition creates balance and rhythm in a work. Structure: in art refers to how lines and shapes work together in a relationship to form a coherent whole. Stained glass is a visual definition of how structure needs to work to maintain integrity of the piece. Possible Questions: o Do you know what this piece is? A stained glass window from one of FLW s homes he designed for Mr. Darwin Martin. o What is the first thing your eye goes to? Why? o What shapes do you see? o Are those shapes repeated? Where? o What do you find most interesting about it? o How do those shapes hold the piece together? o Do you think this window is beautiful? What parts make this window such a beautiful work or art? o What is the space? Answers may vary.but looking for the use of clear glass o How did the artist bring structure into this piece? Interconnecting lines. o What did the artist emphasize? The wheat. o What do you think Mr. Wright is trying to communicate? o What would you title it? Activity: Light Screens Materials Needed: 9x12 vellum paper, ruler, 9x12 drawing paper, colored sharpies, student s own pencils, circle templates, masking tape, black glue. Process: 1. Give each student a drawing paper, vellum paper and ruler. Place a circle template and a couple of packs of colored sharpies on each workstation. 2. Have students sign their name on back of drawing paper. Use the drawing paper to sketch out designs for their window using freehand (i.e. not with the ruler or template). As they sketch, have them think about their color palette and what shapes they will fill in. Remind them to think about the structure of their window

4 and keep their designs simple with geometric shapes similar to Frank Lloyd Wright. 3. When finished with their sketch, have them overlay it with the vellum paper and tape both pieces to their desk. Now, using their rulers and circle template, students trace over their sketch with a darker line. 4. Next, use the sharpies to color in selected shapes. Remind them that not all areas need to be colored; they can be clear. 5. Finally, outline the lines with the black glue and let dry. Note: If possible, talk to the teacher about laminating these pieces so they could be displayed in the classroom window.

5 Photographs of Frank Lloyd Wright and other works Teaching architecture students at Taliesin

6 Detail of Window

7 Darwin D. Martin house, 1905, Buffalo, New York

8 Fallingwater, Kauffman House, 1935, Mill Run, Pennsylvania Solomon Guggenheim Museum, 1959, New York

9 Marin County Civic Center, opened 1962, Marin, California Gammage Theater on ASU Campus, opened 1964, Tempe, AZ