Blogging Rationale: The Abrams Archive

There are a few rules of blogging that have been proscribed during the recent history of the form. One of the cardinals is "avoid apologizing for blogging". This stems from the sullen voice inside our heads that shouts "nought is reading you and you're a pure egotist to spew your excretion into the interweb."

In contrast, I've had great confirmation of the power of blogging before but this instance combined subject, circumstance or context and result in a miraculous way and with extra juicy karma. I've been thinking about how to present it. I may be circumspect, because the experience is a work in progress.

It boils down to this; I have an old friend, who I love dearly and is truly rare among souls of women or men. I've written about Nancy Abrams several times on Rarenest. She is a journalist, photographer and spent a big chunk of her middle life living in small towns in West Virginia, which is contrasted by her early life as the daughter of charming, upward hoteliers in St. Louis.

To paraphrase an old Apalachian coloquial - she looks fabulous in evening wear at an art opening in Manhattan and she can piss in the woods. Or put chains on a Subaru. Or light a kerosene stove. Or make mouthwatering borscht, etc.

In her post grad years she participated in several photographic internships and fellowships - some as part of U.S. Government programs including DOCUMERICA. This was in the early part of her career which led to her settling near the Uptop Farm, which is where we met. She worked on small, microscopic newspapers in the hills and hollers. This is where we met twenty something years ago...

Here's where I put my thumbs under my arms: as a result of my blog entries and amazingly, while I was at the farm, a representative of the U.S. National Archive {National Records and Archives Administration (NARA)} emailed me to find Nancy. They have a group of her studies from the 70's. It seems they have been looking for her for awhile to develope a complete biography and to help contextualize her work.

It's at this point that the rationale for blogging becomes clear for me.

It's a great thing for a photographer to have any level of integration into the digital and literal documentary NARA empire. A casual search on the farm's locus parenti (nearest town - in this case - Terra Alta, West Virgina) only provides 4 photographs by one other, minor American documentarian: Walker Evans.

What the National Records and Archives Administration (NARA) doesn't realize is that what they possess now is a tiny fragment of a chip of a crystaline vision of three decades of rapidly shifting Allegheny culture because...get ready....

The unpublished Abrams Archive contains 30 to 50 thousand photographic negatives of everyday life, work, celebrations, society, landscapes and in small towns and valleys of northern West Virginia along the Appalachian Trail. Nancy has them in boxes.

I'm going to update this entry as things progress but I just wanted to get this down tonight. I'll provide more images and biographical text as they come along.

Nancy's life reads as the great American text. I am so glad she is starting, dawning toward some small recognition and integration. And this is only the beginning...She has always been a flourescent source of inspiration for the people around her.

Finally, the timing of this must have a personal and cosmic purpose. I'm as always filled with regret and longing when I leave the farm. I checked my email from a hotel room in Ohio on the endless highway home. For my first meaningful message to be so referential to the farm, such a positive message for someone I love and to be about images of a world I love, well it gives me hope in blogging.

Incidentally. most of the other blogging rules include apologizing too much.

Julie Thoma Wright - In Memorium

Martha Graham to Agnes De Mille in a private letter:

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening
that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.

If you block it - it will never exist through any other medium and be lost.

The world will not have it.

It is not your business to determine how good it is; nor how valuable it is; nor how it compares to other expressions.

It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.

You have to keep open.

You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.

You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you.

Keep the channel open.

NO artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time.

There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others…

From the New York Times:

Julie Thoma Wright, a founder and co-owner of Wright, the Chicago auction house that helped create the market for 20th-century modern design, died on Monday in Chicago. She was 49.

The cause was colorectal cancer, her husband, Richard Wright, said.

Ms. Thoma Wright, an interior designer, founded Wright in Chicago in 2000 with Mr. Wright, who was at the time a private dealer in collectible 20th-century postwar design. Ms. Thoma Wright’s vision for promoting the still-nascent field at auction contrasted with and eventually helped transform the traditionally dry approach at the large international houses like Phillips de Pury, Christie’s and Sotheby’s.

“She basically brought the concept of auctions into the 21st century,” James Zemaitis, director of 20th century design at Sotheby’s in New York, said of Ms. Thoma Wright. “From the first, the catalogues looked like fashion or lifestyle magazines..”

Auction prices for modern design now keep pace with prices for contemporary art. Ms. Thoma Wright was something of a design object herself, dressed in vintage Chanel or Hermès.

Julie Christianne Thoma was born Feb. 25, 1958, in Le Mars, Iowa, one of eight children. After graduating from Iowa State University with a degree in interior design, she moved to Chicago, starting a design firm, Julie Thoma Inc., in 1985. She met Mr. Wright in 1992; they were married in 1995. Returning to residential design that year, she started a new firm, Thoma Wright Ltd.

Her marriage to Joseph Pagoria ended in divorce. She is survived by her husband, Mr. Wright; a son, Nicholas, from her first marriage; her sons with Mr. Wright, Emerson and Adler; her mother, Gladys Thoma; her sisters, Gloria Ohlendorf, Barbara Espeland, Janet Higgins, Nancy Groetken, Glenda Lockard and Kelli Thoma; and her brother, Roger Thoma.

End New York Times

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I met Julie only a few times but the character and beauty of her discourse were consistent and simply extraordinary. The first time I met her was in the fall of 2002 during the third week of my tenure as director of Unity Temple Restoration Foundation. The separate, congregation had full control of some furniture and an important vase that had been sold well under market value by another auction house (than Wright). It was controversial and created a conflict and led to considerable bad press for the Restoration Foundation including a full page 3 article in the Washington Post. The historic preservation community was ‘up in arms’.

I didn’t know about it, but a former employee had authorized Julie to do photography of a Frank Lloyd Wright barrel chair on the east terrace of Unity Temple for a sale. This was a conflict with the idea of historic preservation we were trying to brand.

When I arrived at work I met the photo crew on the east terrace – the light was beautiful and the objects were perfectly lit and I thought, “Dear lord this is a conflict with what we are trying to do…”

I asked who was in charge and was referred to a leggy blond in Prada. Her fashion was subtle and present – a cream blouse, black pants and chunky shoes - like your best girlfriend from high school with some fabulous couture sponsorship. A turquoise necklace and just frank simple beauty.

I said, “We need to talk.” And we sat down on the steps. And here’s the extraordinary part and this is consistent with all my dealings with Julie and Richard; she said, “Oh my god – I understand this COMPLETELY.” Her ethical base and Wright's idea is about truth and beauty.

They spent serious money on setting this photo shoot up and she had the right to do it and she just just cut it off. She whispered to the handlers and they loaded up and left.

And I felt it so deeply. It was a tough time for me and after they had packed up I went to a corner of that masterpiece church and I really thought about her kindness – and her ethical approach to her work.

The next time I heard from Wright20 was a sort of safety check and they wanted to help with the restoration. They had sent some good money and it was my first check. It underwrote a tour of Seymour Persky’s collection so it was money that grew. The photo at the top is Julie and Richard in a common, happy pause.

I had just asked Julie if Richard was happy with the event and she walked across the room and put her head on his shoulder. I asked her to stop ‘necking’ and she turned around.

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Postscript: I published this entry and I received an email within 20 minutes from a collector

saying that he is heartbroken and he asks the question about fairness and I say that we all share that grief and that question.

Mrs. Huxtable

Photo Copyright Harry Heleotis

She Knows Moses...

Ada Louise Huxtable wrote a great Wall Street Journal article on the Robert Moses exhibits currently – and appropriately - scattered through Manhattan. If anyone knows from Moses....it must be Mrs. Huxtable.

For the majority of the 20th century and on, she defined the language relevant to architecture, urban development and planning which also informed the whole direction of contemporary historic preservation while saving important landmarks of old New York.

She continues to make us feel that she shares our pain when great buildings are annihilated and stands firm when mediocrity is proposed or executed.

And she negotiated a tricky course with grace; Mrs. Huxtable helped Americans to reconcile the idea that modern architecture must replace the old - even if this includes durable examples of a vernacular. Cities change - lets make it good change.

It takes courage to be the first at anything in a public discourse but imagine – a woman writing in the New York Times and getting in the public faces of thuggish developers, politicos (like Moses, himself) and perhaps even colleagues. She received a Pulitzer Prize in criticism because she carved such an impressive niche.

Huxtable's work is infused with a sublime sense of irony and Yankee wit. It’s not hyperbole to rank her zingers about design with Oscar Wilde’s. One of her book titles is “Kicked a Building Lately?”

Last year, it was my privilege to have cocktails with Mrs. Huxtable at her club - the Century Association. She was a fantastic hostess with incredible warmth and kindness. I could have spent days there – just the two of us - in those leather chairs sipping a special Amontillado.

The Club’s identity is wrapped up in the creative history of New York. Every surface seems encrusted with artworks and books - all produced by its members which have included the building’s architect Stanford White, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Winslow Homer, Morse, Dove and on and on. It was heaven. We laughed like crazy.

Stanford White

Samuel F. B. Morse

I asked her if there was an architect working today that she would compare with Frank Lloyd Wright in terms of originality and influence and without pause she declared, “Gehry. No doubt. Because you know – Gehry has a program.” We talked about his line of jewelry that had just been launched by Tiffany & Co.

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In terms of her career (1963 – 1982) at “the paper” she stressed that Clifton Daniel was a heroic mentor - and she expressed a tremendous gratitude to him which proved a general point again - even the best acknowledge help.

She knows such incredible people and has seen such enormous change. When I brought up the idea of an autobiography she was completely dismissive in an authentic self-effacing manner. A tender light of shy vulnerability flickered in her eyes.

Here I must objectify. For any age - she has a gorgeous head and bearing. She reminds me of a Roman empress or a lady in a portrait by Ingres.

We lost track of time and left the club much later than planned. Some aspects of Manhattan will never change. Getting a cab on a Friday night remains a crap shoot. Throw in an oncoming rain shower and we rolled snake eyes.

I remember watching the cars zip by on 42nd Street, Grand Central Terminal behind herself and I was amazed that this woman, for whom every New Yorker owes a debt of gratitude, was going to hop a city bus. Just then a gorgeous gypsy town car pulled up. We negotiated two stops for thirty dollars – Mrs. H. to her Park Avenue awning and me back around to the site of another bloody preservation battle - Penn Station.

As we drove back to Park Avenue, patrician limestone façades rolled by mixed with newer glass walls the color of cheap sunglasses. Mrs. Huxtable gave me brief lessons about a few of the buildings. When we arrived she said something with such wistful sincerity that I’ll never forget it; “You must come back soon. There’s no place in the world like New York.”

Postscript: I read this over and I have to say that my awe produced a slightly memorial tone. Mrs. H. is still very much alive, kicking and writing a new book. She is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal (which should make us all want to subscribe).

June 2007 Addendum

OH OH OH Another Brilliant article.

A moment in time and some stuff (Although the National Trust is a capital sucker) that just makes ALH the most vital voice.

Mrs. Huxtable wrote independently on the Glass House and clearly after the NYT Celebutant treatment that appealed to those who would like to envision white powder and backward sexses in a portable petri dish.

She did this great treatment and overcame it all so to speak. I just think she gets better as she gets better. The glue is the idea of Johnson and Huxtable cocktailing and absorbing the view of the flora and fauna.

IN THE GLASS HOUSE.. IMAGINE; They're laughing the whole time. Think about the acoustics in a glass house.

I remember I asked Mrs. Huxtable why she hasn't published a biography and she just sort of fizzled kind of like "that's not what 'they want' or maybe what I would I do"? I don't think she thinks we want it. And we do.

Very, very much. I really think the BIG story is Mrs. H life - the span and scale and romance. It's not about structure - it's about language. I'd buy it in a book or a movie or a download on youtube. Good Lord. Give us the low down, nitty gritty love we deserve! Sign a heavy upfront contract and research the hell out of it but give us your pure overview.