Month: February 2016

screenshot of “Full Circle” Exhibition page on the Frost Art Museum website

This has been an amazing journey with Andrew with the Frost Art Museum. As some of you may have read in my prior posts, this building has a very personal meaning to Andrew and I. This was Andrew’s last building as an architect before his spine disease took over and left him disabled.  Andrew was project architect and assistant designer to Yann Weymouth on the museum with HOK Architects.  At the time while working on the museum, Andrew would never have imagined that he would have a solo exhibition and have his work in the Frost’s Permanent Collection in the building he helped design.

Three of Andrew’s works were acquired by the Frost for the permanent collection after his solo exhibition at the Frost in 2008. The exhibition titled “Full Circle” happened at the inagural opening of the museum. It was one of six opening exhibitions along with “Modern Masters from the Smithsonian American Art Museum”, which was the first stop of the blockbuster exhibition that would travel to other museums in the U.S. The Frost has updated their website and has a page devoted to the exhibition. Also on this page you can view the catalog that accompanied the show.

click here to see the “Full Circle” exhibition page on the Frost art museum website

This is a student project that my spouse Andrew Reach did at Pratt Institute. I marveled at his focus and creativity when he was creating it. He looks back and reflects on it, realizing that it was not only a poetic statement translated in architectural form, but also an early example of art therapy to escape his pain.

Andrew says:

I find a kind of freedom in my art that helps me escape pain. As I look back on a project I did at Pratt, I realize that I was doing the same thing with my architecture. The curvature in my spine in my twenties caused intermittent episodes of pain. The conception of this house, about the desire to escape gravity, TO FLY, TO BE FREE, but not being able to, always tethered to earth, was a metaphor for the human condition. But perhaps subliminally, it was a metaphor for my deformed spine, wishing I could escape it.

I was honored when I was notified in 1987, a couple of years after graduating, that this project was selected to be in the book published by Rizzoli FORM; BEING; ABSENCE, Pratt Journal of Architecture

click on images to enlarge

Site Plan & Floor Plans

Axonometric, Section & Elevation

Model

From the Book “Form; Being; Absence – Pratt Journal of Architecture
Published by Rizzoli 1987

Front Cover of “Form; Being; Absence – Pratt Journal of Architecture
Published by Rizzoli 1987