Just found an old Polaroid photo of a large acrylic painting on canvas (8 ft. wide if I recall right) done in art school — I didn’t think I still had a record of it. As a third-year student I had put it with other still-life paintings in the end-of-year student show at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and have a vivid memory of the gentleman who purchased it laughing as he removed it from its spot at the end of the gallery’s main hallway, since he knew it was probably too big to fit in his car or his home. I wonder where it might be hanging now.
At that time I was staying at my grandmother’s place in West Chester, Pa., and commuting to my studio at the Baldwin School — my high school art teacher had arranged for me to use a vacant room on the third floor of the Residence, a grand building (formerly the Bryn Mawr Hotel — see below) designed by the architect Frank Furness, who also designed the Academy’s main building on Broad Street. The painting reveals a side of the Residence, out the window.
Later, when I taught middle school art at Baldwin, I lived near other teachers in a series of converted hotel rooms on the fourth floor of the Residence. All my time there, it seems I lived and breathed art (and Frank Furness).
