What Kind of Building Would You Be?

“If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?” 

Barbara Walters, TV interviewer of famous people, was good at getting celebrities to open up and share in ways no one else could.  Sometimes she would ask people what tree they would be.  (Katherine Hepburn said she would be a strong oak.) 

Her question reminds me of a common icebreaker, at least at church retreats; “If the church is a body, what body part are you – hands, heart, feet, voice, etc?”

And since I write about building, the obvious question is…..

If you were a building, what kind would you be?

I saw these unusual drawings of imaginary Beaux Arts style buildings last week at the new UC Berkeley Art Museum.   The artist is Achilles Rizzoli (1896-1981) who seems to have been another curious questioner.  But for him it wasn’t trees, or body parts, but buildings.

Rizzoli, eccentric son of Swiss immigrants to the San Francisco area, worked anonymously as a draftsman and artist and died in obscurity.  He lived with his mother his whole life; after she died he stayed in her unchanged house until his last day.  Few knew of his art, and he seems to have led a lonely life.

After he died, relatives found many of these drawings, tributes to family, friends and acquaintances, pictured as buildings, beautiful fantastic buildings.

Mother Symbolically Represented(The relatives almost threw the drawings out, but showed them to a Berkeley gallery director.  Now Rizzoli’s works are popular and lucrative in the “Outside Art” movement, untrained artists (although Rizzoli did study drafting) who are widely featured in exhibits and folk museums.)

He made more than one drawing of his mother as a “kathedral,” a large ornate church.  This one, he titled “Mother Symbolically Represented.”

The Mother Tower of Jewels, Mrs. George Powleson Symbolically PortrayedAnd this one is in honor of his neighbor, “The Mother Tower of Jewels, Mrs. George Powleson Symbolically Portrayed", in appreciation of her remark, ‘You are a jewel’ uttered March 8, 1935.”

It seems a casual comment, for his neighbor to call him a jewel, but it must have meant a lot to Achilles.  (He may also have been inspired by the Jewel Tower that had been the massive entrance to the San Francisco Pan Pacific Exposition a decade earlier.)  So Mrs. Powleson he imagined as a tower of jewels.

I showed the drawings to my husband (they are tucked away in a corridor at the museum – they deserve better display.)  I had read the label that talked about Rizzoli’s lonely and eccentric life, but Ron took one look at them and said, “He must have had a lot of fun drawing those.”

San Francisco Pan Pacific ExpositionLook up Rizzoli and the bios do emphasize his eccentricity and loneliness and mental instability.  But maybe he was just having fun.  And wanting to honor, in the case of these two, women who paid attention to him, cared for him.

We might be better off not to read a lot into why and how someone draws.  Or answers to question about trees or body parts.  Just let it be.

So I’ll answer the questions, and let it be.

I’d like to be a dogwood tree – strong but not towering and standing out, more low and full of surprises, especially in spring - beautiful colors, bringing pleasure to others.

The church retreat question?  For years I was the voice in the church body, but recently I’m more ears and hands.  Just as buildings and trees change, so do our bodies, over time.

As for buildings, I’d be a cozy welcoming little mountain hut, a little apart and with a long view, sturdy and strong through the long winters, but always with an unlocked door and a fire in the fireplace.

Thanks, Achilles, (and Barbara), for asking the question.

Copyright © 2016 Deborah Streeter