THE LEGACY OF ROME: 40 years of drawings — john james pron

Illustrated lecture delivered to the Whitemarsh Art Center's "Art Around the World" winter 2020 guest lecture series.

On-site student drawings in the Neil Welliver studio at UPenn

As a Temple Univ instructor, leading groups of 15 architecture majors on 3-week summertime Study Tours of Italy and of Greece. Students must keep and journal and draw. I am teaching them how.

Leaarning 1- and 2-point perspectives

Drawing not just the iconic buildings and historic piazzas but- beyond the architecture- also observing and capturing the vibrant life of the Italian cities.

Assisi

Siena

Sanctuary of Apollo, Delphi, Greece

Siena

Going beyond simple line drawings to emphasize sunlight and shadow.

Architecture school: learning to render textures, shades and shadows

Italian Travels: charcoal renderings of Rome

The people and their daily activities

Colosseum Corkscrew

The hidden evils of the Vatican

Medusa in Rush Hour Traffic

Piazza Navona: Bernini Car Bomb

Duomo Prosecca

New candelabra-like office towers for the Vatican bureaucracy

Moving sidewalks for pilgrims and visitors: Africans: the newest Catholics

Resi-ducts: residential understories, with public walkways spanning over and thru the historic Forum

Instead of closed government buildings, a totally accessible and tranparent Italian Senate chamber- the NonTheon: a temple of none of the gods.

Repurposing six Roman churches

Instead of the Bernini colonnades clutching tightly and suffocating free thinking, reverse one arm, leading to many institutes of the Vatican providing support for so many pressing modern issues. Lift up the Vatican palace to provide transparency f

Many undocumented immigrants, facing persecution, hide under the streets of Rome. Open up the floors of churches, welcome them, house them, support them.

San Clemente: tear off the tacky overdecorated ceilings, construct a new roof that collects rainwater, using it to cool the church and neighborhood in summer, warm it in the winter- using underground geothermal heating/ cooling technology

Piazza Navona: site of an ancient Roman exercise stadium, flooded in the Renaissance to provide bathing facilities for the crowded neighborhood, now renovated with health and recreational facilities

The modern consurmer-oriented world connects to the traditional church: drive-in sacraments, robo-bishops (to handle the lack of vocations), interior parking, solar panel roofs

Piazza del Poppolo- the traditional gateway to the “Citta Sancta”- the sacred city of Catholicism, with twin churches setting the obvious theme. But Rome is far more diverse today

To better respond to a highly diverse, cosmopolitan city, knock down one church, rebuilt the edge with the iconic religious edificies of the world, and treat the central space (after knocking down the obelisk) as a public gathering space- a true pia

Gallery shows at the 3rd St Gallery on2nd St in Old City Philadelphia, Temple University Architecture Building on main campus, the St Asaph’s Gallery in Bala Cynwyd, and the Temple Rome (Italy) Gallery

at the Third St Gallery on Second St, Old City, Philadelphia

The famed Mural Arts Program….but doesn’t all paint eventually crumble?

The Third St Gallery on Second Street: forced to vacate their beloved display space because of a rapacious slum landlord.

I co-curated (with architect/educator Andrew Hart) a group show of 9 local architects- most of them former students- who studied both at Temple University Main Campus and Temple Rome. Each was asked to discuss the ideas of 17th c Italian designer

My own submission looked at the area along the Schuykill River in West Philadelphia, facing center city, rethinking its purpose and images relative to Piranesi’s idea.

Six 24” x 36” panels- five image/ideas surrounding the site map (that pulls the intricated street patterns of Baroque Rome into the gridded modern city

The basilicas of Renaissance Rome were also public gathering spaces filled with art. Move the collections of the nearby University Museum into the grand waiting room of 30th Street Station

Much as Piranesi documented the public access to the Tiber, remove the Schuykill Expressway and connect people to the Schuykill

Get the cars away from the river and arc them overhead, on modern viaducts

Like Rome, move obelisks to prominent urban locations. Celebrate the creepy underworld character of the train tunnels

Not-so-Fast Last Judgement- my “contemporary reinterpretation” of Michelangelo’s famed Sistine Chapel painting

Not the Day-of-the-Dead rising, but the day before- any day before, when mankind still has the ability to observe the problems and challenges of the world…and act to correct them

Opioids, the prolifieration of guns, the evils of Satan (in the guise of a modern US president)

The “chapel” walls are lined with the “Stations of the Lost”- those peoples endangered and oppressed by the world’s evils. …and the ceiling? The Sistine has its famed ceiling, but here, there is not the hand of God, but only the hand of Man (the a

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Illustrated lecture delivered to the Whitemarsh Art Center's "Art Around the World" winter 2020 guest lecture series.

On-site student drawings in the Neil Welliver studio at UPenn

As a Temple Univ instructor, leading groups of 15 architecture majors on 3-week summertime Study Tours of Italy and of Greece. Students must keep and journal and draw. I am teaching them how.

Leaarning 1- and 2-point perspectives

Drawing not just the iconic buildings and historic piazzas but- beyond the architecture- also observing and capturing the vibrant life of the Italian cities.

Sanctuary of Apollo, Delphi, Greece

Going beyond simple line drawings to emphasize sunlight and shadow.

Architecture school: learning to render textures, shades and shadows

Italian Travels: charcoal renderings of Rome

The people and their daily activities

Colosseum Corkscrew

The hidden evils of the Vatican

Medusa in Rush Hour Traffic

Piazza Navona: Bernini Car Bomb

New candelabra-like office towers for the Vatican bureaucracy

Moving sidewalks for pilgrims and visitors: Africans: the newest Catholics

Resi-ducts: residential understories, with public walkways spanning over and thru the historic Forum

Instead of closed government buildings, a totally accessible and tranparent Italian Senate chamber- the NonTheon: a temple of none of the gods.

Repurposing six Roman churches

Instead of the Bernini colonnades clutching tightly and suffocating free thinking, reverse one arm, leading to many institutes of the Vatican providing support for so many pressing modern issues. Lift up the Vatican palace to provide transparency f

Many undocumented immigrants, facing persecution, hide under the streets of Rome. Open up the floors of churches, welcome them, house them, support them.

San Clemente: tear off the tacky overdecorated ceilings, construct a new roof that collects rainwater, using it to cool the church and neighborhood in summer, warm it in the winter- using underground geothermal heating/ cooling technology

Piazza Navona: site of an ancient Roman exercise stadium, flooded in the Renaissance to provide bathing facilities for the crowded neighborhood, now renovated with health and recreational facilities

The modern consurmer-oriented world connects to the traditional church: drive-in sacraments, robo-bishops (to handle the lack of vocations), interior parking, solar panel roofs

Piazza del Poppolo- the traditional gateway to the “Citta Sancta”- the sacred city of Catholicism, with twin churches setting the obvious theme. But Rome is far more diverse today

To better respond to a highly diverse, cosmopolitan city, knock down one church, rebuilt the edge with the iconic religious edificies of the world, and treat the central space (after knocking down the obelisk) as a public gathering space- a true pia

Gallery shows at the 3rd St Gallery on2nd St in Old City Philadelphia, Temple University Architecture Building on main campus, the St Asaph’s Gallery in Bala Cynwyd, and the Temple Rome (Italy) Gallery

at the Third St Gallery on Second St, Old City, Philadelphia

The famed Mural Arts Program….but doesn’t all paint eventually crumble?

The Third St Gallery on Second Street: forced to vacate their beloved display space because of a rapacious slum landlord.

I co-curated (with architect/educator Andrew Hart) a group show of 9 local architects- most of them former students- who studied both at Temple University Main Campus and Temple Rome. Each was asked to discuss the ideas of 17th c Italian designer

My own submission looked at the area along the Schuykill River in West Philadelphia, facing center city, rethinking its purpose and images relative to Piranesi’s idea.

Six 24” x 36” panels- five image/ideas surrounding the site map (that pulls the intricated street patterns of Baroque Rome into the gridded modern city

The basilicas of Renaissance Rome were also public gathering spaces filled with art. Move the collections of the nearby University Museum into the grand waiting room of 30th Street Station

Much as Piranesi documented the public access to the Tiber, remove the Schuykill Expressway and connect people to the Schuykill

Get the cars away from the river and arc them overhead, on modern viaducts

Like Rome, move obelisks to prominent urban locations. Celebrate the creepy underworld character of the train tunnels

Not-so-Fast Last Judgement- my “contemporary reinterpretation” of Michelangelo’s famed Sistine Chapel painting

Not the Day-of-the-Dead rising, but the day before- any day before, when mankind still has the ability to observe the problems and challenges of the world…and act to correct them

Opioids, the prolifieration of guns, the evils of Satan (in the guise of a modern US president)

The “chapel” walls are lined with the “Stations of the Lost”- those peoples endangered and oppressed by the world’s evils. …and the ceiling? The Sistine has its famed ceiling, but here, there is not the hand of God, but only the hand of Man (the a