The Romance of June

It is July 1st, and I am flying. Ok, I am not really flying, but I am typing while sitting on the plane on my way to Seattle. In reality, the flight is only one leg of my journey to spend the 4th of July in Walla Walla. Doesn’t that just roll off your tongue—“Walla Walla”.

As the title of this post insinuates, Nick and I had a rather romantic June. We attended two weddings, and celebrated our own anniversary—6 years since that memorable evening in Walla Walla when we were married, and 10 years since another memorable evening in Seattle when we started dating.
To celebrate our anniversary Nick took me to Chesterwood, a country home and studio of Daniel Chester French, a sculptor best known for the sculpture of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial.
Daniel Chester French (lovingly referred to as DCF at the Chesterwood Visitor’s Center exhibits) bought a farm in the Berkshires in 1896, where his friend and prominent architect, Henry Bacon, designed him a cozy house to live in with his family and a bright, airy studio to work in. French personally created the landscaping around the house, transforming the farm into formal gardens.
The Visitor’s Center on the property contains a small, but well done exhibit on various projects French undertook. He first studied art with no other than Loisa May Alcott’s sister, May Alcott. Though at first it was the Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s statue of Lincoln that was considered for the Lincoln Memorial, the commission eventually went to Daniel Chester French, and he spent over 6 years working on the project.

Nick and I spent some time looking around the studio, where many plaster sketches and smaller models of French’s work were on display. One side of the studio had enormous doors and railroad tracks leading outside through the doors. A volunteer explained to us that French used the tracks to wheel his work outdoors to see what the sculpture would look like in the natural light and to check for extortions.

We also went into the house where Daniel Chester French lived, but only the first floor was open to the public.

Heading to Walla Walla now, only two weeks after our anniversary, I feel that we are simply continuing to celebrate. The romance continues…