Echo
Date of Sketch: October 3, 2015
Upon entering Cornell’s school of architecture in 1961, I remember seeing an exhibit of Erich Mendelsohn’s yellow-trace sketches drawn while he was listening to music.
After that, from time to time, I closed my eyes while listening to see if I could also see music’s form. I was surprised that, in my mind’s eye, it not only took on form, but color and movement as well, not unlike the aurora borealis which displayed spectacularly one cold night at Cornell.
Sometimes I would try to draw what I saw, but like a dream it was hard to catch the moving image. It takes practice, and I’ve been practicing from time to time ever since.
This “echo” may have been generated by the music that night, or possibly by a house that I was designing, bridging a ravine.