art history

The Eternal Joy of Water
In this delightful and insightful essay, Anthony Archer Wills takes us on a far-flung journey into bathing traditions and the use of water in fine art. A pursuit, he explains, that is both exciting and worthwhile because to create with water is to understand its profound influence on our forms of creative expression, emotion and even spirituality. 
In Person and Beyond
The Wolfpack recently returned to in-person instruction with a successful essential builder program in September. WU is also continuing its robust online presence with courses that cover technology, design, business and architectural history.
Turkey Revisited
'For years,' wrote David Tisherman in his Details column in the June 2005 issue of the magazine, 'people have asked me where I get my ideas - pools raised out of the ground, the small spillways, the drain details, the modular deck treatments, the color usage and the use of reflection, to name just a few.  "Through my design education" is the short answer, of course, but I can get more specific if we take a look at
2012/6.1, June 6 — Hiding Headwaters, Step Lighting, Purposeful Travel and more
June 6, 2012 WATERSHAPES.COM ESSENTIAL The Hidden Source Creating natural-looking cascades and waterfalls requires the…
Purposeful Travel
Interview by Jim McCloskey When you ask David Tisherman what it takes to design at the highest levels, the answer comes back in a hurry: “Three things,” he says: “education, inspiration and travel.” The first two, he observes, come from hard work in classrooms; close observation of design precedent and the setting; and having an open, inquisitive mind when it comes to sizing up the client and the client’s capacity to get
Palladio, Jefferson and You
Thomas Jefferson was a founding father of the United States in more ways than one. Indeed, the author of the Declaration of Independence was also an architectural scholar and dedicated adherent of the philosophy and style of Andrea Palladio (1508-1580), an architect of the Italian Renaissance who
It’s All About ART
Interview by Jim McCloskeyMark Holden smiles a lot these days, happy with the progress he, David Tisherman and a group of fellow instructors have made in the very short time they’ve been organizing a new educational program. That program, called Artistic Resources & Training – or ART for short – is a spinoff of his years of trying to make the study of watershapes part of the curriculum taught to students of landscape architecture in American universities. Holden is a perpetual-motion machine these days, pulling together
Art Appreciation, Day by Day
As I’ve mentioned before in this space, my education in landscape architecture pulled up lame when it came to instruction in art and art history. That shortfall has bothered me greatly as my career has progressed, but the silver lining is that I’ve been motivated to seek out sources I can use to
2010/10.1, October 6 — Seeding Concrete Slabs, Good Plot Plans, Exotic Design and more
October 6, 2010 WATERSHAPES.COM FEATURE ARTICLE Seeding Concrete Slabs The choice of materials to use…
A Place to Begin
It’s a bit hard for me to believe it, but it’s now been fully 11 years since I attended my first Genesis 3 design school.  One of the events I remember most clearly from that first session was (among many others) David Tisherman laying out a bunch of books and recommending that we should immediately obtain and read all of them.   Always looking for a firm foothold, I asked him which one I should read first, and, without hesitation, he pointed to Janson's History of Art:  The Western Tradition.  I didn’t act on his advice right away, but I eventually acquired a copy and started reading – and it took me nearly