With Mark

With Mark. Mark Anderson, that is. A really crummy shot (with my Motorola flip-phone) but I like very much the way it shows the shape of his a head. A shape you get to know when you spend two years teaching with him, as I did. It was Mark's initiative--come do the graduate Thesis Prep with me. I'd never have dreamed. But it was 2007, and I'd had the big New York show, and it seemed time to be a little adventurous. Plus we liked each other. Hard to explain--I think it was a kind of mutual understanding. That each of us would go in absolutely our own directions, but the other would somehow find it interesting, or pay attention. Pay attention--not everyone does that.

It has all kinds of benefits. Especially when the goal is encouraging a class of architecture grads to really open up. That being the goal. And both Mark and I valued it. Let the professional studies follow (they were never far behind, in any case). Like the guy from Alabama who got so immensely involved in the psycho-history of Birmingham. That history made spacial. Which resulted--over the course of several wonderful months--in a set of giant drawings that were almost invisible. Not that you couldn't see anything--and the drawing per se was beautiful--but the subject was impossible, it had disappeared in time, and the attempt here was to retrieve it. Revive it, perhaps. A beautiful and and valient effort--that's what both Mark and I thought, although I don't think we'd ever have said that to each other.

Came the day of the review, everyone on the second floor lobby, and the jury--a row of severe design-office types in black, with square-toed shoes. I knew it meant trouble. But they were true in a way--they didn't see anything in the drawings.

I wish I'd spoken up, even if it was ten to one. But it wasn't my place, in the way those things worked. But I wish I'd spoken up.
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Also with Mark: You can trust him to be the most adventurous. Worn with a kind of subtle Norwegian-American pride, and an extremely understated sense of humor. I remember when I was trying to decide on whether to do that first studio with him. I'd asked one of the grad students (maybe one of my GSI's?) His answer was what convinced me: Mark will always be enthusiastic about someone's project--encouraging, too. But he won't praise it unless he really thinks it's good."



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