Outside the Pale: The Architecture of Fay Jones
by June 28, 2011 10:56 am 547 views
The traveling exhibit from the Old State House Museum in Little Rock and Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries , provides a magnificent retrospective of the life and work of Arkansas native and Frank Lloyd Wright disciple, Fay Jones. Fay Jones designed over two hundred award-winning structures, most of them in Arkansas. Awarded the American Institute of Architects gold medal in 1990, Jones achieved a lifetime of creating “mysterious and magical places” as both architect and artist. President George H. W. Bush presented the award.
Born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas in 1921, young Fay Jones was motivated to become an architect after viewing a film on Frank Lloyd Wright’s SC Johnson Wax headquarters in Racine, Wisconsin. After high school, “…the only place I could afford to go was the University of Arkansas. They only had two or three courses in architecture, so I studied civil engineering.”
After service as a navel pilot during World War II, and marriage to Mary Elizabeth “Gus,” Jones returned to Fayetteville in 1946 to enroll in a new architecture program. He continued his studies with a graduate teaching fellowship at Rice University. Bruce Goff of the University of Oklahoma School Of Architecture offered Fay Jones a job and taught him another perspective in modern architecture.
In 1953, Jones and his young family spent a summer at the home of Frank Lloyd Wright beginning a tradition of summer study that lasted until Wright’s death. Inspired and mentored by Wright as a young man, the influence of the great architect can be seen in much of Jones’ work. Along with the Wrightian influence, his own experience and education are illustrated through architecture that becomes art. Jones asserted, “I never tried to be a little Frank Lloyd Wright.”
As well as learning form Frank Lloyd Wright and Bruce Goff, Fay Jones extensively studied architectural history, developing his own distinctive style. Known for working closely with clients, each structure is designed with their needs in mind along with building the structures to blend seamlessly with natural surroundings.
The structural expressionism seen in his work is evidence of his formal education in engineering. Jones’ signature works, chapels and pavilions designed in his later years, demonstrate a purity of form developed through a lifetime.
Fort Smith is home to several of Fay Jones designs. The exhibition will run through October 14, 2011.
Fort Smith Museum of History, 320 Rogers Avenue, 479-783-7841.