Black Mountain College, North Carolina

Black Mountain College - home of most things I love about teaching art from an experimental perspective and the birth of the "happening" - was on the agenda today. I was channeling my inner Robert Rauschenberg (seen below creating a project while he was a student attending the college - more images here)....



.... Buckminster Fuller who created the first geodesic dome which happened to be on this campus...



Harry Callahan, Willem de Kooning, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, ETC. ETC. Here is the Lake Eden campus first used in 1941 until the school closed in 1956.



Here's what it looks like today as a Christian boys' camp/dorm area. The sun was glaring into the camera upon approaching but here are some terrific upclose images of the building designed by Walter Gropius from Mondoblogo.



Here is the view from in front of the building of Lake Eden on this almost spring March day. How rough it must have been to teach/attend school here sixty years ago.



My friend Jonathan suggested seeing the Blue Ridge Assembly which first housed Black Mountain College from 1933-1941. As usual (and with nearly every photograph this trip), I was facing the sun but here is what the road looked like on the drive out.



I can attest that the Robert E. Lee Hall porch still looks a lot like it did in this photograph though the sun was facing a more appropriate direction when the below image was taken (via Artlurker).