Riverview.

My drawing table has returned to me, after long being in my wife's classroom. I also bought me a watercolor sketchbook, so it looks like things are moving forward. Here's the first one I've done on the table.


"I find it very hard to believe that a gorgeous building like this can coexist with some of its neighbors with any modicum of architectural harmony. This comes from an old photograph, taken sometime in the late nineteenth century. It's from St. Cloud State, and I'm not quite sure if it's Riverview Hall or the building with the old gym directly next to Riverview Hall. At any rate, this building once stood proud, alone in a vast lawn dotted with healthy, young maple trees. Some of the trees remain to this day (and turn a most enchanting shade of gold in October), but most of the lawn has been replaced with streets, retaining walls, and parking lots. In the 1960s, St. Cloud State underwent vast expansion at the same time the International Style, possibly the most evil movement ever to mar the good name of architecture, swept across middle America. Today the stately Riverview stands shoulder to shoulder with a slew of cold, ugly, ineffectual heaps of brick and concrete that can't hold a candle to the historical might of a well-designed building. Of course, the whole thing is probably lost on the majority of SCSU's student body. Such is the nature of progress I suppose."

If you like laughing, especially in response to funny things.