The Institute of Classical Architecture & Art (ICAA) is holding a three-day architecture and design conference for 200 attendees in Charleston, South Carolina on November 3-5, 2023 at the historic Francis Marion Hotel, located at 387 King Street.
In conjunction with the National Conference, the ICAA is hosting a juried art exhibition of student and young professional work. Taking place at the historic Aiken-Rhett House in partnership with Historic Charleston Foundation, the group exhibition will be on view from November 3rd to 26th. Students and young professionals, 35 years old and younger, submitted works inspired by the classical tradition for consideration. A distinguished jury with backgrounds in various design fields carefully reviewed all submissions and selected the finest examples of classical design to include in this historic show.
Participants with selected works have been awarded a $1,000 stipend for travel and lodging, and are attending the Enduring Places Conference free of charge, which provides an invaluable opportunity to learn from and connect with experts in the design and architecture fields.
For more information about each artist, click their name.
Malek Alqadi
Michael J. Bursch, AIA
Davis Butner
Made in Collaboration with Evan Sale, AIA - Hart Howerton Architects and M. Isabel Balda, AIA - Smith Group
It is assumed that originally pogosts were rural communities on the periphery of the ancient Russian state, as well as trading centers. In the end of the 10th century pogosts transformed into administrative and territorial districts. Pogosts varied in size, ranging from tens to hundreds of villages in 11th—14th centuries. As Christianity spread in Russia, churches were built in pogosts, functioning as parish centers. In the central uyezds of 15th-16th centuries pogosts were small settlements with a church and a graveyard.
The Church of the Transfiguration is a remarkable example of wooden pogost architecture. It is not heated and is, therefore, called a summer church and does not hold winter services. A legend tells that the main builder used one axe for the whole construction, which he threw into the lake upon completion with the words “there was not and will be not another one to match it”. The church has 22 domes and with a height of 37 meters is one of the tallest wooden buildings in Northern Europe. According to the Russian carpentry traditions of that time, the Transfiguration Church was built of wood only with no nails apart from the domes and roof shingles. The basis of the structure is the octahedral frame with four two-stage side attachments.
Samuel Davis
Clare Draper
Morgan Dummitt
Michael Ezzell
Zach Felder
Drawn exclusively on-site in the blazing Roman summer sun, this drawing reveals the overlapping proportions layered onto the Mausoleo di Santa Costanza over the past seventeen centuries.
The drawing originates with the circular plan, cut at four different levels to reveal the various proportional systems, of 4, 12, 14, 16, and 198. A frontal perspective is then cast a third of the way across the page, with shade from the sun revealing the intricate brick patterns of the facade. An arc is then struck from the central vanishing point, forming the basis of a half-scale axonometric section. Across the top, aligned from the central spire of the perspective, is an unrolled elevation of the surrounding compound, a palimpsest of fifteen centuries of construction. Below, a miscellaneous collection of encountered artifacts on site - a wedding program, grass shadow, cat, and concert flyer, personalize and contextualize the drawing to a specific time.
A surrounding border holds the notes and various proportional systems used to construct the various components of the drawing, mirroring the complex proportions of the building itself.
Benjamin Felix
Emily Fuchs
Garrett Hardee O’Neal
* Note that this image of Hunt for Britannia has been cropped for formatting purposes. For a full view of the work, click HERE.
Yi Huang
Georgina Renée Johnson
Luca Keefer
Eric Kerke
Helena La Rota López
A snapshot of Helena's notebook’s page studying the construction of the double pyramid featured in "Present–Self", but here focusing on the natural geometry of hexagons in beehives. Plate etched in 2017 / Printed in 2023.
This is a symbolic self-portrait inspired by a phrase from Kahlo’s diaries: “la raíz evoluciona.” In the first plate, the pelvis stands as an inverted cathedral; made of upturned arches designed to bear our weight – but flexible enough to bear new life. It is the basin that contains our entrails, our physical selves. Rooted to the sacrum is the sentient self, blooming with the feeling that transcends reason and physical reality. It blossoms underneath the dome of the mind, contained in the second plate as a section of the Florence cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore. This is a different type of arch, reaching into the heights of knowledge and understanding, but founded on purely rational principles. Brunelleschi designed the Duomo in the shape of an egg, or a parabola: the perfect geometry of nature links perception to reason, as symbolized with the double pyramid that, when seen from an angle, becomes a hexagon. Plate I etched in 2017 / Plate II etched in 2019 / Printed in 2023, edition in progress.
This is a more involved view into the process of printmaking with double plates. The complete image seen in "Present–Self III" is here divided into its two parts, the figure plate and the architectural plate. Each plate was polished to mirror state, covered in hard ground (a mixture of petroleum and beeswax), had the design drawn through the ground with a needle, and etched in nitric acid. The tone is achieved through aquatint, a technique invented by Goya, by using an air compressor connected to a box to uniformly sprinkle resin on the plate. It is then cooked on a hot plate or a burner to adhere the resin to the metal, and then submerged in nitric acid to bite into the selected areas. Tone is controlled by timing in the acid, and areas are selected by blocking out spots with hard ground to prevent further acid biting. The plates can then be printed separately (Present–Self I and II) or together by lining them up perfectly on the same piece of paper at the press.
Mariana Langley
Commissioned by fashion house Tulicarpa, this painting was created with the pattern piece of the Tabor dress in mind. The outline of the dress is faintly visible on the edges. It was made with careful attention to where the forms would fall on the body when worn as a dress.
Eric Leichtung
Michael Madsen
Jillian McEvoy
This traditional functional vessel form was treated with the sgraffito technique of carving through colored slip to create design in the surface and reveal the natural clay color below. The areas around the sgraffito were then painted using black slip in a similar design pattern, and the piece was then fired in a soda kiln for an atmospheric firing.
Quinn McKay
Lucian Moriyama
Moriyama's vase series was born out of a frustration with the fragility of plaster while exploring the scagliola technique. He repaired the crack in this vase with fine layers of coloured plaster which resembles, by chance, the Japanese technique of kintsugi. He discovered that each crack/repair introduced new fine details, as if to propose that the breaking, reconstitution, and transformation of an object also participate in its creation. The images on this vase recall ancient Greek vases and mineral formations.
This work is part of Moriyama's still life series, using scagliola and trompe-l'œil techniques to depict a classical hand study drawing taped onto a marble panel. A magnifying glass leaning upon an architectural folly magnifies the crossed lines of the fingers, betraying the lighting of the scene which instead emphasises an object held in the hollow of the hand: an encrusted jewel of mother-of-pearl. This mother-of-pearl represents the focused light of the magnifying glass, which one imagines would burn the paper. This surreal, deceptive, non-discursive work explores the line between the real and fiction. As the viewer walks around the work, the opposite side of the magnifying glass reveals a self-portrait of the artist.
Charles Mostow
Kevin Muller Cisneros
Patrick Okrasinski
Heather Personett
Thomas Podhrazsky
Giovanni Priante
Faith Primozic
These two renderings explore the interior space of a ballroom in perspective and in cutaway axonometric. From the arched trusses to the fine ceramic-tiled walls, this space is a celebration of traditional craft and architecture. Inspired by formal spaces in Portugal and Spain, the ballroom is a space that is meant to feel magnificent and grandiose. Its linear design terminates in a massive arched window that frames a view to the city in the distance.
Paul Reilly
William J. Rushton
Lara Saunders
Piper Schaberg
Gabrielle Schadt
Jared M. Seff
Luke Seymour
This project is an original design intended as a monumental house for one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, located on the site of the Charlcote House in Baltimore, MD. Being close to DC, Luke drew inspiration from French Mansart-inspired designs for the North Elevation (the public front) and from Philip T. Shutze's Calhoun House for the informal, private garden front in the south.
Patrick Suarez
Landon Warner