This summer, Madison Art History PhD student Joanna Wilson traveled to Buena Vista, Ga. to participate in conservation work at Eddie Owens Martin's outsider-art landscape Pasaquan. Wilson, a graduate of the BLC's methods course in vernacular architecture and cultural landscapes, writes about her experience on the project - one of the largest art environment preservation initiatives Kohler Foundation has taken on - for the Center for Culture, History and the Environment's Edge Effects blog. You can read her notes from the field here. 

For more about the Pasaquan's restoration, visit: http://www.kohlerfoundation.org/preservation/preserved-sites/pasaquan/

Sara Champlin, a BLC Madison student, spent her summer wandering the gorgeous Hermus River Valley as the photographer for the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, Turkey.  Sardis was the capital of the Lydian Empire and it remained an important city during later phases of Greek and Roman occupation.  Sara shared her thoughts on the experience, "My research investigates Greek and Roman material culture, so it was a wonderful opportunity for me to be working at a site with such a rich history of cultural and social interaction.  This was my second summer on the project."

A favorite memory? "Experiencing Kamran Ince’s ‘Sardis’ symphony performed by the Bilkent Symphony Orchestra at the Temple of Artemis, in the landscape that inspired it."





Click here for more information about Sardis or its history of excavation. (http://sardisexpedition.org)

BLC student Marisa Gomez, along with Angela Hronek and Joanna Wilson, both graduates of the BLC's methods course in vernacular architecture and cultural landscapes, participated in building an online-guide to Madison's historic Forest Hill Cemetery as part of a semester-long student project led by Dr. William Cronon. The students designed and conceptualized the site, and authored entries on its history, materiality and changing aesthetics, carving technologies, faux-stone memorials, and collective and inherited iconography. Read columnist Doug Moe's review of the project for the Wisconsin State Journal here.

Click here to visit Forest Hill Cemetery: A Guide.

In June, BLC Co-Coordinator Anna Andrzejewski and Madison PhD student Marisa Gomez each gave papers at the 5th International Congress on Construction History in Chicago. In a session on residential construction, Dr. Andrzejewski presented, "EDUCATING THE POSTWAR BUILDER: COLLEGE PROGRAMS FOR ASPIRING MERCHANT BUILDERS IN THE UNITED STATES, 1945-1965." Gomez gave her paper, "DEFINING MODERN IN POSTWAR AMARILLO: THE SCHELL MUNDAY CO. AND THE 1947 PERMA-STONE PROTEST" in a session on twentieth-century architecture and construction.