#200: THE MYTH OF THE MULTI-HYPHENATE

January 31, 2025

(photo by Anthony Poon)

For my 200th essay (I congratulate myself for this achievement), I look inward: What does it mean to be accomplished, if one ever is?

J. Lo (as in Jennifer Lopez) is often called a “triple threat” or a more popular label, the “multi-hyphenate”—as in singer-dancer-actress, as in singer hyphen dancer hyphen actress. But I question her multi-use of hyphens.

left: J. Lo’s album cover, On the Floor, 2011; right: Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, 2006

Yes, she is successful as a pop singer, a “threat” to her colleagues and competitors. But as a dancer, is she a threat to other dancers? Is J. Lo taking away ticket purchases from Alvin Ailey and Martha Graham. Or for acting, does Meryl Streep feel threatened by J. Lo because she might steal away Streep’s next Oscar? The point is that J. Lo is more of a single threat, and the hyphens aren’t authentic.

Leonardo da Vinci (art by Aristal Branson on Pixabay)

A colleague once published a tiny article for a magazine. From that point on, she called herself an “author,” though she never wrote another article, let alone any books. But her supportive friends graced her with the descriptor, “Renaissance Woman,” in reference to the Renaissance legends like da Vinci, who hyphens identify him accurately as an architect-artist-scientist-sculptor-mathematician-engineer-inventor, and so on.

My LinkedIn handle states, “Architect-Author-Musician-Artist.” I don’t consider myself a quadruple threat, but I do consider my hyphens earned.

My 2022 FAIA Awards Ceremony, Chicago, Illinois (photo by Poon Design)

I aim to be an above-average architect. I have won many national awards and have been written about in hundreds of articles. I have the distinct honor of being deemed FAIA, the highest membership honor in the AIA, for “exceptional contributions to architecture and society nationally . . . awarded to the top 3% of the country’s industry.” I believe I am an above-average architect, but I don’t have the Pritzker.

My published books: Sticks and Stones | Steel and Glass: One Architect’s Journey, published by Unbridled Books, 2017; Death by Design at Alcatraz, published by Goff Books, 2022: Live Learn Eat: Architecture by Anthony Poon, published by ORO Editions, 2020 (photo by Anthony Poon)

I aim to be an above-average writer. I have published three books (here, here and here), with a fourth in the works. I have written over 200 industry articles. And I even wrote a screenplay about architects being murdered as they compete for a career-making project. I believe I am an above-average writer, but I don’t have the Pulitzer.

Playing Intermezzo in A Major, Opus 118, No. 2, by Johannes Brahms, St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Rancho Palos Verdes, California (photo by Grant Bozigian)

I aim to be an above-average musician. I have trained in all the classics, from Bach to Beethoven to Brahms. I have performed in regional recitals and engaged piano competitions, winning a few. I have taught my two daughters piano, and I have even attempted to learn Thelonious Monk’s, Round Midnight—a challenge for a classical pianist, like asking a ballerina to dance hip hop or an opera singer to rap. I believe I am an above-average musician, but I don’t have a Grammy.

I aim to be an above-average artist. I paint all the time. My work has been exhibited from California to Cambridge, from cafes to galleries. I have sold a number of my works, and recently won a prized ribbon at the annual Beverly Hills Arts Show for my mixed-media paintings. Drawing was my first creative endeavor as a child, placing a large piece of plywood on the carpet and using it as a makeshift drafting board. I believe I am an above-average artist, but I am not exhibited in the Louvre.

Me in Rome, Italy, 1985 (photo by Erik Chu)

What does it mean try to be above-average, to be accomplished? Perhaps if I didn’t fiddle so much, I could focus on one field and excel from above-average to truly great. But as I consider limiting my creative pursuits, I only think of more. What’s next? Car design? Writing a musical? Being a chef? Knitting?

I view all my explorations as one, that there is little difference between each of them. Joy comes whether I am designing a university building or writing a novel, learning a Mozart sonata or painting a portrait. It is all a singular force of needing to make something, tell a story, and leave behind something worthwhile. This might mean the common link is that all my exercises appear to involve an audience—one attendee, dozens or thousand—a visitor to a temple I designed, a reader of my essays, a listener of my music compositions, or an observer of one of my paintings.

We all have ambitions, and more often than not, we don’t reach them. Maybe it comes down to finding happiness.

And happiness is based on defining what makes you happy. How have you crafted your life? Where have you chosen to live? What is your work? Who is your partner? Who are your colleagues? What interests you? Is being accomplished the goal?

El Capitan State Beach, Santa Barbara, California (photo by Anthony Poon)

#92: NOT JUST FOR KIDS: THE ART OF COMIC BOOKS

November 23, 2018

The New Mutants, by Bill Sienkiewicz

(On November 12, 2018, we lost a super hero. In memory of Stan Lee, 1922 – 2018.)

No longer targeting an adolescent male audience, comic books have become more complex and far reaching. Some comics, known as “graphic novels,” highlight the quality of the writing—even honored with the Pulitzer Prize. Alongside the award-winning stories, the artwork of comic books have evolved from the crude cartoons of early comic strips found in the back pages of the newspaper. Comic book illustration has advanced to the level of art. As in fine art, as in Michelangelo and Da Vinci.

And why?

The classic art form of comics arguably started with the giants of the 50’s and 60’s, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. Their line work was crisp and clear. Though graphically modest, the art was expressive. The colors were flat, but boldly captured movement and energy in two dimensions. In part due to the limits of rudimental printing, early comic book artists were forced to be thoughtful and efficient. The results brightly portrayed the optimism of the generation.

left: Spider-Man and Mysterio, by Steve Ditko; middle: Iron Man, by John Romita; right: Iron Fist, by John Brynes

From the late 60’s to the 80’s, John Romita added tonality and detail. Influenced by the world of Pop Art, abstract graphics enhanced the drama of a scene. Later, ground breaking artist, John Byrnes, continued the study of graphic design and narrative structure, literally breaking out of the typical paneled grid of comic book pages. Note the revolutionary full page art of Iron Fist, and how the smaller insets exhibit the fist of our hero transforming to iron, alongside the oddly shaped boxes of commentary. As with the Pop Art movement, irony and criticism entered the pictorial lexicon, representing a growing interest for originality and a fresh look at old things.

In studying the development of Batman over the generations, the simplicity and naivety of pioneer Dick Sprang’s Batman from the 40’s evolved to the heavy use of black ink from Neal Adams three decades later. In Frank Miller’s seminal 1986 release of The Dark Knight Returns, we confront the twisted representation of our gritty anti-hero, whose shadowy presence is barely contained within the limits of the physical page. From innocence to dark forces, graphic tools displayed our weariness in celebrating so-called virtuous heroes.

Batman, left: by Neil Adams; right: by Frank Miller

Testing further visual limits, Miller takes an abstract pictorial approach, reducing Superman and Batman to merely cinematic silhouettes. Yet through this graphic austerity, the carefully composed and detailed postures imply the entire story. Perhaps our brains are so filled these days with data, emotions and retorts, that a mere gesture can cause our bodies to generate complex reactions.

My all-time favorite, Bill Sienkiewicz, transforms the visuals of comics to the highest level—as a classical painter would, as a mixed-media artist would. For the past three decades, Sienkiewicz captured emotional and psychological content in the most imaginative of techniques. In this Moon Knight cover, note how the villainess in red, intentionally omitting her body’s outline, becomes the entire background of evil, or the cover drawing that is 98% minimalist black.

Going further, The New Mutants cover illustrates Sienkiewicz’s interest in mixed-media collage, expressing even the tape that attaches the scraps of paper. Doing away with the slickness of illustration now offered by digital means, he reverses his approach to show an honest and revealing snapshot of process and composition.

By Bill Sienkiewicz, left: The New Mutants; right: Elecktra

Finally, Sienkiewicz’s beloved assassin, Elektra, is treated with the skill, vision and artistry on par with any generation’s most prominent creative geniuses. With some illustrators, we have reached the bleakest and most dense part of our souls. Sienkiewicz and other innovative artists reached deep into murky places and offered beauty, instead of despair.

Is it so simple to say there is a linear path from the innocence and optimism of early generations to the difficulties and sarcasm of later generations, from oppressing nightfall to triumphant invention? If comic book art and the methods of artistic process and reproduction represent the development of the human condition, than I utter the legendary phrase by the father of comic books, Stan Lee, “Nuff Said!”

#91: WINDOWS: “EYES TO THE SOUL”

November 2, 2018

Cagliari, Italy (photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash)

Church window, location unknown (photo by Tom from Pixabay)

“Eyes are the window to the soul,” so said Shakespeare, Da Vinci and many other philosophical minds. Is it just a cliché? How about: Can one witness the soul of a building through its windows?

For light, view and air, windows are basically openings in a building’s exterior wall. Whether circular or rectilinear in shape, whether big or small in size, whether adorned with a classical frame or a minimal contemporary composition, windows are typically a clear and flat sheet of glass.

But today, technology accompanied by an architect’s vision (or ego) have transformed windows far beyond that sheet of glass.

Dutch Embassy, Berlin, Germany (photo by Achim Raschka)

Above and below, both Modern projects (by Rem Koolhaas of OMA) displayed are not shy in exhibiting its internal functions, activities and soul. In Old World architecture, stairs were often expressed primarily by a vertical massive form, such as a stone stair tower. Not so with this modern embassy. Its large abnormal corner window expresses the grand staircase of the upper floors, along with the embassy’s social energy.

Educatorium, Utrecht, Netherlands (photo by Hans Werlemann)

This university center is less about windows in the traditional sense of openings in an exterior wall, but rather, these windows are the exterior wall. As giant, full height, edge-to-edge planes of glass, a viewer is greeted with a building eager to expose the full shape of the auditorium atop a student cafeteria. One could say that we have a “naked soul.”

Art’otel Cologne, Kohn, Germany (photo by Maxim Hopman on Unsplash)

Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Germany, by Herzog and de Meuron (photo by Karim Tabaneh on Pexels)

Historically, glass was clear, flat and generally square-ish. Glass meant nothing more than that. With advances in fabrication and experimentation, the varying degrees of the glass transparency/translucency, as well as three-dimensional sculpting, offer new kinds of expression. The conventional idea of “frosted” glass that one might find in a residential bathroom, is surpassed by glass surfaces and forms of all sorts: fluted, mirrored, reeded, scored, fritted, and any color—as well as concave, convex, and other such artistic explorations.

A museum that tells a story with three skylights as the narrator. Shelter for Roman Ruins, Graubunden, Switzerland (model photos from payload67.cargocollective.com; interior photo from arcdog.com)

Another kind of window, though not often thought of as a conventional window, is the skylight. A skylight can be utilitarian, nothing more as it lets in natural light. Or a skylight can be sublime. With our metaphor of eyes to one’s soul, who looks into a skylight? Perhaps, the skylight as a window on the roof, is less about eyes looking in or out, but letting the external world grace the inside. Less about seeing a view from a living room window, as one example, a skylight lets the sky in, which is more about how one’s soul can be touched. As Zumthor acheived.

Sapphire Apartments, Berlin, Germany (photo by wal_172619 from Pixabay)

Windows are used for scale, to give a building’s facade a human element. Windows connect the inside to its surroundings, and vice versa. For most, windows are thought of as openings. And as “eyes to the soul,” these openings, outside of the world of architecture, can also be the opening weekend for a movie, job opening, “window of opportunity,” or the open window within the football defense. As we look into these windows and openings, into these eyes, we observe souls of all sorts. Whether the souls are uplifted and wonderful, or challenged and confronted, it is this depth in life, as well as the architecture around us, that feeds the human spirit.

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