Dear Readers:

At every office I work with, it seems that fewer and fewer new architectural grads have an opportunity to use their (often VERY impressive) traditional drawing and watercoloring talents. There's nothing inherently bad about the fact that few of us need any longer to draw in our day jobs, or that unprecedented computer possibilities have displaced the need for these skills, but still...I wonder if some future Stanford brain scientist might discover that the profession-wide loss of these skills turns out to have been the loss of something deeper?

Charles Rennie Mackintosh: from his Italian Hill Town Series

Like the ability to rotate imaginary objects and spaces in our heads, or... (more prosaically) the ability to "draw" as well as we could in CAD, or perhaps even some uniquely human and poetic capacity to think about the multi-dimensional problems of the modern city?

So my question is this: Are you feeling concern over the loss of these talents in your own life? Is there interest in a once a week class in NYC and/or Boston in which yours truly would humbly teach what little I know (subject, of course, to your being the least bit impressed with my portfolio) and where we could all get back in touch with--and share--these talents? Let me know. I would charge a relatively small fee, and the more people interested the smaller the fee. I would also bring in amazing guest renderers (think: Luis Blanc, Paul Maquire, Clark Smith, Chad Rush, Tom Schaller, Ernest Burden, Richard Chenoweth, Curtis Woodhouse) to help. I look forward to your feedback in the comments section below, or email me privately at jakers3 at gmail dot com. Let's do this!