Candice & Todd's blog: Summer is officially over....breaking this into multiple posts. Part 1

Summer went by way too quickly.

The majority of my summer was spent driving Isabella across town to a program 4 days a week called Embark in a town that is northeast of Atlanta. It's about an hour drive each way. Most people dropped off their kids and picked back up, but since we're so far away, I would wait in Alpharetta during her 3 hour program. I found a nearby Greenway trail system and would usually work on something on my computer for about an hour, then drive over to the trail parking lot and walk for about an hour.

There's a section of the trail that I liked best - the part that was NOT next to the commercialized areas. This part is expansive and looks like wetland with cypress knees in some areas and other swampy things growing in the standing water. I'd listen to podcasts or books through my ear buds or make calls and talk with people while walking.

Sometimes, I would go shopping during the 3 hour sessions -- especially when I was getting Mercer prepared for his trip to Asia (that will be in another blog post) or getting him geared up for college dorm life (another blog post... I'm SO BEHIND!)

Isabella and I usually had 3 day weekends away from the program at Embark (unless she needed to use Friday as a make-up day).

Here's how some of those long weekends were spent:

- Candice - solo trip in Opelika AL.

- Family trip to Tuscaloosa AL for a baseball tournament that was during Todd's birthday.

- Trip to NC to visit mom (and go fishing)

- 4th of July stuff

- "Girls trip" to north GA

- Mercer & Todd had numerous other trips to AL for baseball tournaments.

- Family trip to Gulfport AL area for another baseball tournament.

There was a LOT of time spent in Alabama!!

- Weekend 1, I went to the Adoptive mom's retreat -- but this time I stayed in a home in Opelika Alabama.

The house was nice / historic.

I hung out with some of the other ladies....

But the majority of the time, I went exploring around the area - not relaxing or sleeping like the other ladies!

I was either going for a long walk in the historic downtown.... or going on another excursion farther afield.

this was my favorite house!

and some others near where I was staying that I liked too....

I was close enough to walk to downtown Opelika.

The Lee County Courthouse - construction started in 1867.

(the sign out front said the architect got a commission of $1000 to design it and it was $35,000 to build!)

One of my excursions from the house in Opelika included visiting friends at their nearby lakehouse (and visiting their puppies!)

But my biggest adventure on this trip was to a famous collection of buildings and structures around southern Alabama.

This is something I've always had on my list of things to do... drive around and look at the work of Rural Studio (an initiative that a professor of architecture at Auburn University started to serve underserved communities). The architecture students live in this house. Not sure where the lectures are?? maybe the living room?

Maybe on this back porch (really big) extension??

Rural Studio is a design-build architecture studio course to learn about materials and construction - the campus is a teaching tool -

(this greenhouse is on the Newbern AL campus)

Rural Studio projects were infamous for reusing reclaimed materials. Part of their property was for researching of materials and how they could be used -- so there were random installations around the campus.

Experimental materials testing

The mission of the founder (now deceased) professor Sam Mockbee was to help / give back rural residents in the "black belt" of Alabama.

Part of this adventure was to see if I could find the houses / the projects.... it seemed sort of like a lot of driving on a scavenger hunt to really really rural places! I had a hand-drawn map that the college emailed me that was marked up / things that were not there anymore + I did some research on my own. I hit many of the stops... the "highlights"

Honestly it was a shot in the dark to find most of the places. There were a handful of stops that I couldn't find, but found a dozen or so sites. I think I got the flavor of the work of Rural Studio.

The earlier work that Sam Mockbee did - some of the more famous pieces - were unfortunately in disrepair. (The top 3 photos are from the Rural Studio website.)

When I was driving to one of the sites I really wanted to see -- the glass chapel -- I had to drive down a long dirt road. There was trash on either side of the road. Some residents were sitting outside of their homes. They seemed like they were used to strangers driving onto their road and waved as I passed.

in Mason’s Bend, the Glass Chapel serves as a transportation stop, community gathering space, chapel for the local choral group, and distribution center for children’s summer school meals. Car windows salvaged from a Chicago scrap yard provide striking roofing material on the north side atop rammed earth walls.

And these photos are from my visit.Many of the windows were missing. The structure was overgrown.

It's sad to see that this structure was not maintained.

But, I am still glad I went to see it. Now I won't wonder.

On the adjacent site, was the butterfly house. It (according to photos on the Rural Studio website) has a well-designed / unique interior....something that folks in the rural area are not accustomed to.)

Here is a deluge of photos of the other structures I found along the way. The work in the actual town of Newbern were nice and intact - mostly.

This public building is next to the fire station.

This building is in a park and had an interesting exterior (stacked logs) - probably placed outside the main enclosure..... maybe used for thermal mass?

Shade structure in the park

There were a couple of playgrounds designed by Rural Studio in the community. This one using old barrels. I went shortly after a rainstorm. There was water dripping on the metal - which made a neat sound.

The sun also was coming out and the metal was expanding. The sound was a little haunting... but also interesting.

It does not look like this park was well-used. It was connected to a baseball park - which also looked like it did not have much use.

But there was an unusual design to the gates and dugouts.

Concessions?

And a skate park - with some humor ?! designed in....

There was more, but this collection of the buildings in the community was representative of the work that the studio is doing.

And... I'm a curious person. Mason's "Bend" -- reminded me of the Gee's "Bend" quilt exhibit I went to years ago at the High Museum. What is a "Bend?!" (from an internet search) -- a hamlet.... located at the oxbow (bend) of a river!

Mason's Bend and Gee's Bend are both impoverished, tight-knit rural Black hamlets located in Hale County, Alabama, tied together by the architectural work of Auburn University’s Rural Studio and founder Samuel Mockbee. While Gee's Bend (Boykin) is globally famous for its historic quilting community, Mason's Bend is a nearby rural community where Rural Studio students built experimental, low-cost homes and the famous Glass Chapel (constructed using salvaged car windshields). [1, 2, 3, 4]

Connection Between Mason's Bend and Gee's Bend

Geography & Context: Both are isolated, rural settlements in Alabama’s historic cotton belt region shaped by generational poverty and strong community ties. [1, 2]

The Rural Studio Impact: Led by Samuel Mockbee, the Auburn University architecture program worked extensively in Hale County communities, building innovative sustainable homes (such as the Carpet Tile House and Butterfly House) and gathering spaces in Mason's Bend. [1, 2]

Artistic and Material Resourcefulness: Just as Gee's Bend quilters improvised masterpieces out of scrap fabric and old work clothes, the Rural Studio architecture projects in Mason's Bend famously relied on adaptive reuse and unconventional discarded materials—like rammed earth and junkyard Chevy Caprice windshields

One thing I was not expecting but was sort of on my way back to Opelika that was on the Rural Studio Map.... they helped re-assemble (piece-by-piece) an old gothic church that was moved away from the water & low land to higher ground in order to protect it.

I was expecting something shack-like to have been designed and built, however, this was a different mission of Rural Studio in helping the community of Cahawba.

Alabama's first permanent state capital from 1820 - 1825 (and a famous ghost town). The state capital was moved to Tuscaloosa due to seasonal flooding in Cawhaba. Located at the confluence of the Alabama and Cahaba rivers, it evolved from a rich antebellum cotton port into a brief refuge for freed slaves during Reconstruction, before being reclaimed by nature.

It was powerful in it's simplicity and weathered wood which showed us visitors of it's history and resilience to the south Alabama weather and storms.

These are off-center because I was sticking my phone inside through a crack in the door!

This was a beautiful way to end my day-long tour of the Alabama Black Belt.

Then... back home.

"Back to life... back to reality"

~~~~~

From architecture to art. The Botanical Gardens offers an annual pass to the garden for educators. A friend and I went. I had to look up if the artist was inspired by Matisse. She was. no explanations here, just images that tried to capture the bold 3-dimensional sculptures of Niki de Saint Phalle (a French-American sculptor and painter).

I was not familiar with her large, joyful sculptures. I've seen one of her "Nana" sculptures in photographs (celebrating womanhood), but never in person 'til this summer.

It was the largest collection of her work in North America - many pieces on loan for this exhibit.

The mosaic and the bird on top of this one reminds me of Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona Spain designed by Antonio Gaudi. She was influenced by him as well.

His [Gaudi's] organic, fluid architectural forms and use of broken-tile mosaics heavily shaped Saint Phalle's approach to large-scale public and garden installations.

(Of course I had to look it up!)