TALIESIN WEST SCULPTURES

Geri and I toured Taliesin West last week.  We really enjoyed the tour, as the guide was knowledgeable and engaging.   Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural heritage is familiar to us as Wisconsinites, and we have toured both Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin, as well as various other Wright-designed structures in the Chicago area.  So Taliesin West felt very familiar and to my eye appears dated as well as a bit run down.  (One of the issues with his architecture is its high maintenance demands.)

Rather than focusing on the architecture itself--and I did take a fair number of photos of the buildings--I decided to feature the many interesting sculptures that graced the Taliesin West grounds.

Frank Lloyd Wright had acquired a number of pieces of ceramic Oriental art which have been largely restored and are scattered throughout the grounds.  Here are a couple of examples.

Many of the balance of sculptures are bronze works by Heloise Crista and most are very interesting.  Unfortunately, I did not have much time to try to capture those pieces because I had to keep up with the tour and discovered that I could not just wander the grounds following the tour to take more shots.  So this was all I could get.

In reviewing my photos, I realized that the more effective photos were those featuring close-ups rather than attempting to capture the full sculpture.  In some cases I found myself in post processing cropping down the shot to feature what I considered to be the most dramatic aspects of the work, as in the following shots.

In reviewing these images, I am beginning to realize that my interest is in capturing the emotion contained in the sculpture's key details.