Projects

In my career at the Turner Foundation, I have been blessed to work on a variety of projects and programs with several organizations. While some are onetime events, like the Lillian Gish Film Festival, many are offered annually. Of course none of these programs would have been possible without the hardwork, passion, and support of my many fantastic co-collaborators and volunteers. Some of these people are listed below, but it is unfortunately not possible to list everyone who has helped bring a project to fruition. To learn more about a specific project or program, click on the "More" link to visit their website.

Greater Springfield

Summer Tour Series

The Summer Tour Series examines the architecture, design, and history of the built environment in the Greater Springfield Region. It started back in 2004 with eight walking tours of historic Springfield districts and neighborhoods. Today, the series totals 17-20 tours each summer, including regular and extended walking tours, bicycle tours, and site tours. Architects, curators, historians, and local professionals guide each tour. This is a program of the Westcott Center for Architecture + Design. The Summer Tour Series has offered over 175 tours in the Greater Springfield Region since its inception in 2004.

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Hartman Rock Garden Interpretation Plan

The Hartman Rock Garden is one of the nation’s most intriguing and revered works of in situ folk art, an outsider art phenomena where self-taught artists construct fascinating worlds out of concrete, metal, stone, and whatever else they can find. Working with a team of experts, including folk art historians, historian, horticulturalists, and geologists, we have recently been developing an interpretative framework and plan for this visionary environment. This project has resulted in a self-guided tour book of the garden (now in its second printing), and soon the Friends of the Hartman Rock Garden will begin offering regular docent-led tours on weekends.

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LILLIAN GISH FILM FESTIVAL

 

In September 2007, a host of local organizations, including the Turner Foundation, Springfield Symphony, Westcott House, Little Arts Theater, Heritage Center, and Wittenberg University, joined forces to celebrate the life and career silent screen superstar – and Springfield native – Lillian Gish. This festival assembled a top-flight list of Gish enthusiasts, live musicians, and film historians to participate in a lively tribute to the screen's first great actress. The festival concluded with a screening of Gish's 1928 masterpiece "The Wind" with a live musical accompaniment by the Springfield Symphony Orchestra. Plans for a second festival are in the works!

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Westcott Lecture Series

 

The Westcott Lecture Series, a program of the Westcott Center for Architecture + Design, offers a series of academic lectures each fall in the fields history, architecture, design, architectural history, urban planning, and preservation. These lectures are free for members and offered at a small charge to non-members. Past lecturers include James F. O'Gorman, Jack Quinan, Barbara Powers, and Richard Guy Wilson.

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Architecture House Museum:

Museological Typology

In 2010, as part of my studies at the University of Liecester, I began a project to classify the Architecture House Museum as a new museological typology. This museum is a residential work of architecture, usually designed by a noted architect, whose primary function is no longer for habitation, which is open to the public on successive occasions, and whose interpretation focuses primarily on aesthetics, analysis of style, and the biography of the architect. As walk-through works of art, these houses are presented and understood in primarily aesthetic ways. To date, I have identified 78 of these museums worldwide.

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Westcott House

Interpretation Plan

The Westcott House is Frank Lloyd Wright's only Prairie Style house in Ohio. Designed and constructed between 1906-1908, it was the home to progressive leaders Burton and Orpha Westcott. After a nearly 6-million-dollar restoration, the house opened as an Architecture House Museum in the fall of 2005. For the museum's 10th anniversary in 2015, a team of architectural historians, cultural historians, docents, and museum professionals have been working on a new interpretation plan for the museum. A volunteer training and relaunch is scheduled for the first quarter of 2016.

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Pecha Kucha Nights:

Springfield Ohio

PechaKucha Nights are informal and fun gatherings where creative people get together and share their ideas, works, thoughts, holiday snaps, etc. Anyone can present - this is the beauty of PechaKucha Nights. The idea was devised in Tokyo in February 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. Since then it has morphed into a massive celebration with events in more than 800 cities around the world. Drawing its name from the Japanese term for “the sound of chitchat,” it rests on a simple and momentum driven presentation format: 20 images x 20 seconds.

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Westcott House

Furnishings Plan

In an effort to improve the visitor experience at the Westcott House, the museum has established a new furnishings plan for the house, which will be implemented in January 2016. This plan has been developed after extensive research using historic photographs of the house, historic photographs of period homes by Wright and like-minded architects, local newspapers and periodical ads, a 1910 Gustav Stickley furniture catalog, and auction catalogs from across the country. The new plan identifies period furnishings that will help the museum share the history of family and house, as well as interior design and decorative arts from the 1908-1924 period. Furnishings will include period Rookwood pottery, a Tiffany lamp, broadloom rugs, and Gustav Stickley furniture.

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Victorian Society in America

Chicago Summer School

I was honored to be part of the team that create the new Chicago Summer School, a program of the Victorian Society in America. This school focuses on the American roots of Modernism. After the Great Fire of 1871, progressive architects and patrons propelled the city to the forefront of technological and aesthetic experimentation. Through expert lectures and guided tours, this summer school surveys mid 19th- and early 20th-century architecture, art, design, history, landscape, and preservation. Participants will visit private and public buildings, parks and landscapes with access to some of the era’s most iconic spaces.

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