Christmas 1994 & the Cistercian Chapel by Gary Cunningham

Christmas 1994 found me alone (but not lonely) in Texas, where I was then living, in Fort Worth. I gave myself a local road trip for Christmas. The day started with Christmas morning mass at the Cistercian Abbey Church on the outskirts of Dallas, designed by Gary Cunningham and completed not long before. The low winter sun was bright on the facade of the church.

I went on to the Solana office park, designed by Legorreta Arquitectos. The campus was adorned with bright red decorative balls in reflecting pools and across the landscape.

Next stop was Decatur to add to my collection of county courthouses. There was recorded seasonal music playing around the courthouse square. This was Texas so the temperature was plenty warm for Christmas, compared to upstate New York.

It is nearing Christmas 2022, twenty-eight years later. Today's mail brought the November-December issue of Texas Architect, one of the magazines I index for the Avery Index. Imagine my delight to find that the Cistercian Chapel has won the 25-Year Award from the Texas Society of Architects. There are more professional pictures in the article, including one with a healthy layer of snow and three interior views.

Life and reading always chase their own tails. I am presently reading Lotharingia by Simon Winder. We are in the 15th century so it is lots of Burgundy and plenty of Cistercian stuff.

I brake for chipmunks

This morning on my morning walk, I noticed a chipmunk was crossing the street about fifteen feet ahead of me. I stopped walking, just about as the chipmunk stopped moving. It seemed to be listening to see if those approaching footsteps were dangerous. It turned around, ran back in the direction it had come, and went almost up to the pine trees and stopped again. I didn't move. It reassessed the danger. Turned around again and ran across the street when it determined the footsteps were no longer approaching.

When I lived in Texas, I had a bumper sticker on my Isuzu pickup that said "I brake for Greek Revival." I think it came from the preservation society in Providence because Texans don't have quite so much Greek Revival as they have in Rhode Island. Bob drove the truck to work one day and one of his coworkers thought it said "I brake for Geek Revival." Not the same thing.

P.S. because it's a small world. I was looking for a picture of a chipmunk running across the street and one of the Google responses was from Dickinson, North Dakota, the destination of the road trip in Breakfast with Buddha.

The Modern, Fort Worth

This fine building, housing the Fort Worth Community Arts Center, was across the street from the Amon Carter Museum when I worked there. The building then housed the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth which later moved to a Tadao Ando building not far away. This building was designed by O'Neil Ford & Associates and is connected to the Scott Theater designed by Herbert Bayer.

Today I got to try to disentangle the authority record for Arts Fort Worth which is the new name of the merged Fort Worth Community Arts Center and the Arts Council of Fort Worth. But, more importantly, I got to think about this wonderful building.

Now the Modern looks more like this.

I was quite disappointed when I first visited Fort Worth after this building was open. I approached it from Allen's house and what you were greeted by was the loading dock. Not very pedestrian friendly. It is Sunbelt U.S. of A. Oh, well, you also get loading dock when you approach the Art Institute of Chicago from Monroe Street, a little more disguised.

armchair traveler: biking to Terlingua or Antwerp

Sherry Volk does an amusing column in the local paper, The Alfred Sun, called "Scene about Alfred." She does one or more pictures from around town with a story or theme. She and Bob go down to Big Bend for a while during the winter and they're down there now so the "scene ABOUT Alfred" is not a scene IN Alfred. This week's paper had some pictures of bikers on the Big Bend Run, stopped in Terlingua at the Alon gas station on Route 118, at the intersection with 170.

Sherry and Bob stay in an RV camp near the intersection. There's a motel there too and Arno and Marvin and I spent a few days at the motel in 1995, very happily, while we hiked (aka walked) in the beautiful arid mountains, drank margaritas, and ate yummy Tex-Mex food.

Sherry's pictures took me to Antwerp as well. When I was there in 2014, there were a bunch of bikers in the Old Market Square.

It may be sacrilegious but there was a hymn this morning in church that had the words "'till traveling days are done." Nope, I'm not done yet.

road trip 2015: rockin' with Renzo

I am still mad at Renzo Piano and the Kimbell folks for intervening in the lovely lawn between the Kahn building of the Kimbell Art Museum and the Amon Carter. After my Thursday mid-day visit to the Carter, I did walk down Lancaster Avenue toward the Piano Pavilion of the Kimbell, probably the least lovely way to approach the new building as the not-yet-grown-in plantings on the roof of the western part of the pavilion scream loudest. I loved that lawn. Sam and I had lunch on the Kimbell porch dozens, if not hundreds, of times.

Here we are in a picture that appeared in the Kimbell members' newsletter in the early 1990s.

I did see the galleries of the Carter and Modern but, sadly and happily, didn't take enough time in the Kimbell galleries during the convocation reception. Sadly because I would have liked to spend more time with the art; happily because the band at the convocation reception was fine and a few dozen of us were dancing the night away which worked somewhat to allow me to forgive Piano for the intervention on "my" lawn.

Ronnie Self, architect, was the speaker at the membership brunch and he gave a nuanced and helpful talk on the Piano Pavilion. He shares some of my regret that the lawn is diminished but noted that the plantings will work toward a lessening of the visual impact of the pavilion. He also talked about the materials that Piano used which are an homage to Kahn's building.

The ARLIS/NA conference ended this morning (for me, with a great session on photobooks) and, after some repacking and down-time with Sam, I took off toward Little Rock. I stopped for the night in Hope, the hometown of Bill Clinton. It's the first time I've been in Arkansas for many years. Tomorrow I'll visit the Clinton Presidential Center (designed by James Polshek) and the Arkansas Arts Center and then work on progressing toward Fayetteville and Bentonville, probably via Fort Smith.

separated at birth: glass walls

The "remuddling" page of Old-house Journal (they've dropped the hyphen but I like it) is often quite dislikeable or obviously incorrect and distasteful. This month:

I know I've been thinking about Fort Worth recently because the upcoming ARLIS/NA conference is there but this remuddle looks like a domestic cousin of the new building of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, designed by Tadao Ando ... without the "trees" and reflecting pool.

http://www.thorntontomasetti.com/projects/fort_worth_modern_art_museum

thinking about a solo Christmas about 20 years ago

My family is supposed to gather for Christmas dinner at my sister Carol's house in Branchport. She and Barb will prepare the meat and the rest of us will fill in around the edges. My sack of potatoes and yams, with a pound of butter, is waiting in the front hallway. Barb had been in the hospital over the weekend but is home now. Jeanette is up there already, helping prepare space and food. Doug called a while ago to see when I was going up and reported that there was some weather concern. Doug and Ian will probably go up today. I don't especially look forward to the idea of being stuck in Alfred while they're all up there but thinking about that has reminded me of a Christmas I did very happily spend alone, probably 1994, when I was living in Texas.

I had been reading about Our Lady of Dallas, a Cistercian abbey on the outskirts of Dallas in Irving. The church was designed by Gary Cunningham, a Dallas architect, and completed in 1992. Built in that wonderful sandstone you see around Texas, I had wanted to see it and figured that I'd just go to Christmas mass and listen to the Cistercians filling that space.

It was lovely. After mass, I went off to visit the Solana corporate park designed in the mid 1980s by Ricardo Legorreta. It was decorated for Christmas.

And then on to Decatur, another of those great county seats with a central square and courthouse. Much has been written about the courthouses of Texas. When coming back from Albuquerque to Fort Worth one time, I did county seat-hopping across western Texas southeast from Amarillo and Canyon. It's mostly flat country, the counties are about equal-sized, and the county seat is often central and on the principal blue highway. The route therefore becomes rather like steps. Anyway, I meandered around the mostly empty Decatur, listening to the piped Christmas music around the central square.

I don't remember feeling the least bit lonely. Being alone does not mean you're lonely, just like being in a crowd doesn't necessarily mean you're feeling cherished.

So I'm not sure how this Christmas will work out if the weather turns crazy (wintry mix being the last choice) but I'm willing to try another solo if necessary.