Shadow Patterns: Reflections on Fay Jones and His Architecture is a collection of critical essays and personal accounts of the man the American Institute of Architects honored with its highest award, the Gold Medal, in 1990.
The essays range from the academic, with appreciations and observations by Juhanni Palaasma and Robert McCarter and Ethel Goodstein-Murphree, to personal reflections by clients and friends. Two of Arkansas’s most accomplished writers, Roy Reed and Ellen Gilchrist, who each live in Fay Jones houses, have provided intimate portrayals of what it’s like to live in, and manage the quirks of, a “house built by a genius,” where “light is everywhere. . . . Everything is quiet, and everything is a surprise,” as Gilchrist says.
Through this compendium of perspectives, readers will learn about Jones’s personal qualities, including his strong will, his ability to convince other people of the rightness of his ideas, and yet his willingness, at times, to change his mind. We also enter into the work: powerful architecture like Stoneflower and Thorncrown Chapel and Pinecote Pavilion, along with private residences ranging from the modest to the monumental. And we learn about his relationship with his mentor, Frank Lloyd Wright.
Shadow Patterns broadens and enriches our understanding of this major figure in American architecture of the twentieth century.
Jeff Shannon is professor of architecture and former dean of the Fay Jones School of Architecture. He has devoted most of his career to practicing and teaching architecture in his native Arkansas.
Introduction – Robert Ivy Jr.
1. Fayetteville – David Buege and Jeff Shannon
2. Shining in the Shadow: The Architecture of Fay Jones and Frank Lloyd Wright – Robert McCarter
3. The Paradigm Shift – Greg Herman
4. Fay Jones’s Crosby Structures in Mississippi: Personal Views – Steve Sheppard
5. Nature and Humanity in a Simple Shed: Fay Jones’s Pinecote Pavilion – Ethel Goodstein-Murphree
6. Fay Jones’s Stoneflower, Eden Isle, Arkansas – Richard Longstreth
7. Reflections on My Friend, Fay Jones – Dale Mulfinger
8. Elemental and Singular: The Poetic Magic of Fay Jones – Juhani Pallasmaa
9. Presence and Absence – Karen Cordes Spence
10. Fay Jones – Roy Reed
11. Living with Light – Ellen Gilchrist
12. Working with Fay Jones – John Womack
13. A Turtle on a Fence Post – James P. Cramer
14. Memories of Fay Jones – Tom Lutz
15. A Coda: Twenty Photographs and Four Verbs – Timothy Hursley and Peter MacKeith
Begun in 2008, the collaborative publications venture between the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design and the University of Arkansas Press pursues projects that document and celebrate creative achievements in various forms of environmental design, design preservation, and design history. Projects tied to Arkansas are especially, but not exclusively, sought. The inaugural publication, a magisterial documentary DVD on the life and practice of Fay Jones, exemplifies our ambitions both in terms of subject and quality.
Winner, 2017 Ned Shank Award for Outstanding Preservation Publication from Preserve Arkansas
