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Arts and Events
11/5/2008

VENICE, by Winston Close

Landscape Archetypes
After Winston Close, professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Minnesota, died in 1997, his children discovered his sketches. “He had designed and built the beds in our house, which had storage compartments underneath,” says his son Bob Close, a Minneapolis-based landscape architect. In one compartment, he recalls, “We found a cardboard folder with his drawings from a 1930 bike trip, primarily of France and Italy. We thought, wouldn’t it be nice if Dad’s drawings could be seen somewhere?”

This fall, the University of Minnesota Libraries and the College of Design are exhibiting Close’s sketches, along with the artwork of two other professors emeriti whom Close hired in the 1960s to teach in the U’s growing department of landscape architecture.

“Journeys: Travels Far and Travels Near” showcases these artist-architects’ unique powers of observation, rendered during their personal time. Close’s drawings—in pen and ink, pencil, and pastel on colored paper—were executed during a four-month bicycle trip

WINTER WHITE IS ALSO RED, Clemence Farm, Wilson, Wisconsin, by Roger Clemence

across Europe in 1930, when he was 24. Roger Martin’s pen-and-ink drawings were created during trips to Italy with graduate students when he was a senior faculty member. And Roger Clemence’s photography records nature through the seasons at his Wisconsin farm.

“I firmly believe that careful observation clarifies the essence of place and gives one the basis for creatively solving design problems in the environment,” says Martin, who adds that his sketches “illustrate a process by which I try to absorb a place and make sense of it.”

Clemence’s interest in photography began as a graduate student during his first trip to Europe in 1959. He later began shooting slides to record and share design ideas with his students at the University. When he purchased his farm in the 1970s, he returned to print photography as a way of observing the changing seasons. “This exhibition really captures a sense of collaboration across the generations,” Clemence says.

Last year, Martin and Clemence showed their work at the First Unitarian Society in Minneapolis.

IL CANOPUS HADRIAN'S VILLA, by Roger Martin

They were eager to exhibit again when Joon Mornes, librarian in the College of Design’s Architecture and Landscape Architecture Library, asked them to remount their work in Rapson Hall. Martin also takes notes, jots down reflections, and draws diagrams in his sketchbooks. So Mornes will exhibit pages from Martin’s sketchbooks, as well.

“I thought it would be wonderful to show students, faculty, and the community these more personal works,” Mornes says. The drawings and photography of all three professors “demonstrate a creative impulse that’s maybe even sacred for them, to have time on their own to really observe. It’s an encouragement to students, when they travel and study places or objects, to think of photography and drawing as different ways of looking at things.”

“Journeys: Travels Far and Travels Near” runs through December 19 at 210 Rapson Hall, 89 Church St., on the East Bank of the Minneapolis campus; 612-624-1638, http://arch.lib.umn.edu.
—Camille LeFevre

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