Open Door Policy

 

Today is the day I would normally show my Advent Calendar pages.  Yes, I am current, but I want to make sure I get one last entry in at Try it on Tuesday.  I also want to  join my friend Valerie of Bastelmania, who is our host this month at Art Journal Journey.  Valerie's theme is When One Door Closes, Another One Opens. Therefore, my Art Journal Advent Calendar pages 13-18 will have to wait until Wednesday.

This is the famous Farnsworth home in Plano, Illinois in the U.S..

The sentiment reads "They have an open door policy."

 I created this page by first scraping red and yellow acrylic paints on a used file folder.  I added the house and photo corners, then wrote the sentiment.  

In reality, this is a very famous home.  It was designed and built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, one of the most important and well known architects of the 20th century.  Beginning in 1920, he designed and built glass skyscrapers in central Berlin, and in 1929, he collaborated with Lilly Reich, another prominent architect, on the German Pavilion for the Barcelona World Exposition. 

According to information provided by the Farnsworth website:

In 1938, Mies van der Rohe accepted a position as head of the architecture department at the Armour Institute of Technology, soon to be renamed the Illinois Institute of Technology. In 1939, he began preliminary designs for the campus of Illinois Institute of Technology on the south side of Chicago.

It was a few years after that when Dr. Edith Farnsworth hired Mies van der Rohe to build her home.

Here is where I found the home so fascinating, also according to the Farnsworth website:

Native Chicagoan Edith Farnsworth was born into the lumber and paper business, and was raised to be very well-educated. She studied literature and composition at the University of Chicago and violin at the American Conservatory of Music. Due to her talent on the violin, she studied further in Italy for several years during the 1920s with concert violinist and composer Mario Corti. She became fluent in Italian and French and spoke some German. She also had interests in the sciences as well as the arts.

Though it is believed that she contemplated a career in music, she eventually decided to pursue a career in medicine and graduated from Northwestern Medical School earning her MD in 1938. During World War II, Dr. Farnsworth rose through the traditionally male field to become an associate professor of medicine at Passavant Hospital specializing in Nephrology (the study of the kidney) and divided her time between private practice as a physician and research for the university.

Chalk one up for pioneering women. 

You really should take a virtual tour of the home. Farnsworth designed so many of the pieces in her home and you can tell there was as much a love of music (violin) as there was of her chosen medical profession.

Thanks for joining me today.  I hope to see you at Art Journal Journey with your own take on When One Door Closes, Another One Opens. 

While you're here, I have one final entry for Try it on Tuesday. 

Their theme this fortnight is Snowflakes and I am getting in just under the wire.

Santa, do these snowflakes mean we will have a colorful Christmas?

Is it true, Santa?

For this page, I started with a sheet of snowflake scrapbook paper to which I added this lovely Santa and child I found in my stash.  For the final element, I added German scrap along the top and bottom of the page.

Bleubeard and I are simply delighted you joined us today and hope to see you at both Art Journal Journey with your own take on When One Door Closes, Another One Opens and Try it on Tuesday with your interpretation of Snowflakes.