Where Have You Been?

This is a story about Lehrman Cameron Studio’s recent whereabouts. It is mostly about place. But, as LCS News has been dormant for four years, it is also about time (wouldn’t ya say?).

Lehrman Cameron Studio began in my one-bedroom basement apartment in Brooklyn, New York, in 1988, immediately after I received my architectural registration. It was also after I was just awarded my first major job – to develop and design a garbage museum in Connecticut. The project entailed a great deal of research about garbage, and all of the heavy lifting of designing in both two and three dimensions, with both literal and figurative outcomes. For this project, I worked from home, with one part-time design assistant, and I held a design/build contract, so that I also directed a dedicated and experienced fabrication crew. I loved the subject matter, and the process, and it felt as though it was telling a worthwhile story in a good way, moving people toward positive change. It was grueling and it was fun, and I got hooked on interpretive design from that time forward.

When the Garbage Museum project was complete, it won a design award. My firm was off and running, and I never looked back. Since that time, I have designed and/or been Lead Designer for nearly one hundred projects and have managed thirty five staff members as well as hundreds of consultants, contractors, and collaborators. The complicated projects have employed my architectural training, my artistic abilities, my graphic design sense, my (perhaps limited, although you decide) ability to write, my love of conversation, my interest in education, and my willingness to learn. The work has been challenging, and, for the most part, the teams of collaborators have been a joy to work with. I have been quite happy and in the flow.

Confession, nevertheless: It was about four and a half years ago, when the drudgery of sustaining a business began to grate irreparably upon my spirit, and the pleasure of fresh realizations in exhibition design waned precipitously, that I began to turn down prospective projects. This was also in the midst of the USA’s most recent economic depression when downsizing was not uncommon. Furthermore, this timing coincided with my children’s imminent departure for college (thus opening up the prospect of more room in our house). I pulled inward, and Max (my husband/partner) and I moved the office back into our home.

Working from home was “coming home” in a real sense, since I had run my office out of my place of residence for more half of the time I had been in business. I had started Lehrman Cameron Studio in our cozy apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn, kept it in our house on a hill in Mill Valley, CA, and then spent many years working on considerable projects from a single room with an expansive view of the Olympic mountain range in our home in Seattle. I continued this work-and-live-in-the-same-place trend while my babies became toddlers, and toddlers turned into adolescents around me. Eventually, I moved the office down the street and had a 42-second commute without crossing an intersection. The workload grew, Max joined the firm, and we moved the office two miles away to a larger place in another, hipper Seattle neighborhood. In 2010, I designed the renovation of our house. And then, the pull was compelling enough and I returned the office to home. I have always taken pride in building and sustaining a thriving business with little overhead while being in close proximity to my family. Given everything, this move back was comfortable and right for me. And, now we have meetings at the dining table, looking out on the garden.

Since returning to the homestead four years ago, Lehrman Cameron Studio and I have had various projects. We designed

• the didactic interiors and exhibitions for “The Smart Building Center” in Seattle (an organization promoting environmental innovations for architectural renovations);
• an exhibit concept plan for Northwest Energy company in Montana;
• an interpretive plan for a new loop trail in the Washington Park Arboretum;
• interpretive elements for a park in honor of Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson in Everett, WA;
• an energy exhibit for a middle/high school in Seattle; and
• an interpretive landscape for the park where Chief Sealth lived every winter for 60 years on Kitsap Peninsula.

I also pursued a public art project, gathered a spectacular team, and submitted a distinctive plan for a playground competition that was chosen as one of five finalists out of forty-five. (I was honored, although, ultimately, my project did not win.) I was a panelist on the subject of work/life balance for a women’s architecture group. Max and I lectured about our work to design students at the Seattle Creative Academy. We worked as interpretive designers for a new park on the northern shores of Lake Union in Seattle. And we developed a concept plan for interpretation to accompany the redesign and experience of a historic carousel in Spokane, WA.

Furthermore, for a year, I was the Creative Director for my mother’s magazine, the Nob Hill Gazette, and traveled often to and from San Francisco. For the Gazette, I led a group of website students at the Art Academy in the Bay Area to redesign the publication’s sorry and neglected website (a website soon to be relaunched) and I aggressively pulled the aesthetics of the publication into the 21st Century.

During this recent era, our now grown children left for college. Simultaneously, our aging parents began to need much more of our close attention, although they live in separate and distant states. I wrote various drafts of my mother’s biography.

Most central and personal of all, I have found that the pull to return to fine art is an irresistible one for me. I have set up my fine art studio again.

Admittedly, this has not been an easy period. I have felt somewhat burnt out — not a feeling I ever expected to endure — perhaps an inevitable accompaniment to the uncomfortably quiet Empty Nest Syndrome. Also, something strange was occurring in the exhibition design field or our particular small corner of the universe. For a quarter of a century, I was able to brag that almost one hundred percent of our projects were constructed. However, in the recent past, there have been several concept plans or even project developments that never made it to fabrication. There has been much soul searching on my part and, if I may speak for him, also on the part of my infinitely patient partner/husband.

But now, at this side of the whirlwind, I find myself with a clarity and a revived enthusiasm for it all. For Max and for me, our intentions are to continue to design and develop interpretive projects that intrigue us. At the same time, I will draw, paint, and write, everyday in my personal art studio. I also hope to teach, part time. There are projects I have dreamed of for many years, and they span fields and defy categories. My dreams are hard to pigeonhole with labels, but I plan to chase them – with as much energy, enthusiasm, and happiness as I can muster. From home. I encourage you to raise your expectations. And please join me. Here we go.