Marcia Stone, a resident of Victoria, BC, whom I met not long after I first arrived in Vancouver in 1964, lived/worked at Cosanti in 1968-1969. When I went to AZ in 1968, primed to finish the UBC course I had been given permission to complete in absentia for my BA, Marcia was the last friend I saw before I left the city; we'd both taken the same bus across Kitsilano or maybe down Granville.
So I found it simply amazing, sitting in Paolo's drafting room with a bunch of the guys, talking about a work-related problem, to gaze absently out the windows behind P's long drafting table and see a pair of feet clad in flat-heeled Mary Janes I was dead certain I knew. I excused myself instantly from the meeting, went outside and - sure enough, there was Marcia. My pal had come to see me (I'd told her about the place, of course, long before our chance encounter on the bus) just in time to get involved with the intricate preparations for the giant exhibition of Paolo's work that Jim Harithas was planning for 1970 at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC. The topic under discussion in the drafting studio was how to build all the models of P's designs for "arcologies" - 3-D cities that do not sprawl at all. The guys seemed pretty sure the models had to be made of cardboard but I was able to get my 2 cents in while saying goodbye to Jim out by the bell molds after the meeting ended; I slipped him a plug for my thought that plexiglass would be a suitable model-building material.
Aha! Happens, Jim said, Rohm and Haas had approached him not long before, thinking/wondering if he knew any artist(s) who might be able to come up with some innovative way to use plexiglass. Talk about serendipity - or synchronicity...
Jim took that ball, ran with it - straight back to R&H, which anted up all the plexiglass needed for all the models that the gang (Marcia included) built for the Corcoran show, "Arcology - City in the Image of Man." The show was a smashing success, one of the best-attended exhibits the Corcoran ever mounted. Marcia, unfortunately, did not get to DC for the exhibit; but her model-making skills certainly did help make it possible.
The painting here has been earmarked for me; if you peer carefully into the heart of it, you'll see my 1950 Chevy 1/2 ton, Fast Green Emma (after Emma Goldman, the anarchist called Red Emma) waiting for travelers. The truck is no longer in my possession and the painting does not yet hang on my wall; but for the latter, I daresay all I need is the right wall to hang it on.
So I found it simply amazing, sitting in Paolo's drafting room with a bunch of the guys, talking about a work-related problem, to gaze absently out the windows behind P's long drafting table and see a pair of feet clad in flat-heeled Mary Janes I was dead certain I knew. I excused myself instantly from the meeting, went outside and - sure enough, there was Marcia. My pal had come to see me (I'd told her about the place, of course, long before our chance encounter on the bus) just in time to get involved with the intricate preparations for the giant exhibition of Paolo's work that Jim Harithas was planning for 1970 at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC. The topic under discussion in the drafting studio was how to build all the models of P's designs for "arcologies" - 3-D cities that do not sprawl at all. The guys seemed pretty sure the models had to be made of cardboard but I was able to get my 2 cents in while saying goodbye to Jim out by the bell molds after the meeting ended; I slipped him a plug for my thought that plexiglass would be a suitable model-building material.
Aha! Happens, Jim said, Rohm and Haas had approached him not long before, thinking/wondering if he knew any artist(s) who might be able to come up with some innovative way to use plexiglass. Talk about serendipity - or synchronicity...
Jim took that ball, ran with it - straight back to R&H, which anted up all the plexiglass needed for all the models that the gang (Marcia included) built for the Corcoran show, "Arcology - City in the Image of Man." The show was a smashing success, one of the best-attended exhibits the Corcoran ever mounted. Marcia, unfortunately, did not get to DC for the exhibit; but her model-making skills certainly did help make it possible.
The painting here has been earmarked for me; if you peer carefully into the heart of it, you'll see my 1950 Chevy 1/2 ton, Fast Green Emma (after Emma Goldman, the anarchist called Red Emma) waiting for travelers. The truck is no longer in my possession and the painting does not yet hang on my wall; but for the latter, I daresay all I need is the right wall to hang it on.
