A Forest Garden on Somes Pond Mt. Desert Island, Maine
Stanley Ira Hallet with accompanying text by Judith Goldstein
I became friends with Judy Goldstein and her brother Jon Stein over many years of summer vacationing on Mt. Desert Island. They purchased their family property in the same year that my wife Judy and several friends bought our house. The year was the same, but everything else was different. We were in Bar Harbor in a mansion, an aging monument from Bar Harbor’s long past golden age and Judy and Jon shared a compact Bauhaus like cottage built in 1952 on the other side of the island. From a cleared, flat, grassy setting, we looked out on the immense expanse of Frenchman Bay. They were in a completely different part of Mt. Desert, on a small pond touching close to Somesville, Mt. Desert Island's most modest and picturesque town.
The typical Maine woods is often an impenetrable tangle of underbrush, the result of criss-crossing dead branches from the fir and spruce trees. It appears that only the top of these deciduous evergreens are alive as they block out the sun in its attempt to penetrate the forest floor. The acidic needles that fall, form a thick forest floor where little new growth stands a chance of surviving. The resulting thicket hides everything including sizable boulders called glacial erratics that haphazardly fell to the earth when thick glaciers retreated from the island. Through a patient but strenuous act of editing, of careful removal, the once impenetrable forest became an ever-expanding refuge for plants as well as people.
105 pages hardcover, dust jacket, premium paper, lustre fiinish.
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© 2011 ?
The Mosques of Djerba Les Mosqués de Djerba
Stanley Ira Hallet with additional text by Ali Djerbi
In 1989, architectural students from The Catholic University of America (CUA) and three students from l’Institut Technologique d’Art, d’Architecture et d’Urbanism de Tunis (ITAAUT) traveled to the Island of Djerba in Southern Tunisia with Professor Stanley Ira Hallet. With the assistance of Professor Ali Djerbi, they documented the extraordinary white mosques that dot the landscape of Djerba, thought to be the mysterious island of the lotus-eaters in the tales of the Odyssey. While on the island, they selected five mosques to record. The resulting hand drawings document these complexes where the profane, poetic and sacred exist side by side. These neighborhood mosques sit in the middle of carefully irrigated gardens with their minarets reaching up over the surrounding palm trees. Constructed of humble materials, the monolithic forms melt to form a single undulating surface containing the traditional prayer spaces and raised platform that defines the outdoor sacred space.
105 pages hardcover, dust jacket, premium paper, lustre finish
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© 2011
Sketches from Mount Desert Island
Stanley Ira Hallet
From 1980 to 1994 Stanley sought refuge to draw along the coast of Mt. Desert Island in Maine. The pencil and pen sketches in this book document his time sitting on a rock deconstructing the landscape in front of him. Part meditation, part observation, the drawings record that special zone where water and land meet as well as the structures that were built nearby. Disappearing into a body of rocks, trees and sky, he captures with simple lines the never-ending erosion of the coast revealing the forces of nature as well as man's interventions that have defined this very special place.
“Quite often, I could be found sitting on a rock, taking out a lone pencil and an elementary school metal pencil sharpener. On a single pad of heavy sketch paper I began to draw. To this day, I admit I remain the anal-compulsive type, a prerequisite in the field of architecture where so much can go wrong. Thus, for me, the act of drawing was nothing less than a form of deconstructing the landscape in front of me. The only way I could comprehend my surrounding was to realize the very rules that governed it, that defined it. Throughout the summer, it was through these mini-escapes that I began to understand the underlying realities of geology and the forces that eroded it.”
His work is carried by Artemis Gallety in Northeast Harbor, Maine
80 pages hardcover, dust jacket, premium paper, lustre fiinish
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© 2011 ?
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Evolution
By André Louis and Stanley Ira Hallet
Évolution d’un habitat: le monde Berbère du Sud tunisien, documents a remarkable group of villages found in the mountains of Southern Tunisia where the Berbers many centuries ago sought refuge from the invading Arabs who were occupying the plains below. Prepared by the distinguished ethno-anthropologist Père André Louis and me, the initial publication by the French research group, CNRS, was interrupted by the untimely death of Père André Louis in 1978. Much of the original material was believed to have been lost during the process of publication in the late 1970s. Over the last two years I have reassembled the original French text and scanned over one thousand 35 mm Kodachrome slides taken over forty years ago.
These photographs have become a rare record of the state of the Berber villages at that time. I also found and restored the accompanying conceptual drawings and an original set of black and white photographic prints taken with a large format camera. The collaboratively written text provides the historic, geological and cultural context that ultimately transformed and defined the village forms we encountered. I have also added a prologue and epilogue in English and French written by me today.
The book presents a unique approach to studying traditional village form, one that stresses the radical changes the village forms underwent during their descent from their once defensive mountain peaks. Even if you do not understand French, you should find the drawings and photographs self-explanatory as they are a great value to those studying traditional architecture.
IISBN 978-1-4507-6449-0 © 2011
160 pages, hardcover dust jacket, premium paper, lustre fiinish
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Jon Stein’s Collection The Center House
Stanley Ira Hallet
with accompanying text by Judith S. Goldstein
Over many years Jon Stein honed the art of collecting beautiful photographs, textiles, furniture, ceramic and prints. He started with the innate gift of looking that he turned into a discipline and finally into the art of collecting. The first plunge into collecting came with his fascination with 19th and 20th American and European landscape photography. He studiously studied the development of the craft from its inception. He looked at thousands of photographs and then bought. By the 1990s, he had built a significant collection that was exhibited at the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire. The Museum is now in possession of many of the finest works that Jon collected.
From photography, he moved on to a fascination with the decorative arts. His love of landscape, particularly in Maine, led him to collecting crafts of Maine artists. Summer after summer he traveled the state to look, procure pieces and develop friendships with many artists. He was an itinerant or traveling figure in search of beautiful objects not just in Maine and New England but also on his travels throughout the world.
He died prematurely but just at the time when he had assembled his collection in the house that he redesigned and loved.
A collector may never find absolute peace but Jon surely found a sense of purpose and fulfillment in collecting art. The joy of his life, the collection now gives joy to many others. It is unique in its diversity of forms and crafts. His home is now a place where artists and writers find inspiration and a testament to the creativity and beauty of so many artists.
This book is a testament to Jonís art of looking and collecting. Since there are no photographs of his photographs, paintings and prints, this book illustrates only a part of his collection.
IISBN 978-1-4507-6449-0 © 2017
127 pages, hardcover dust jacket, premium paper, lustre fiinish
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On Closer Inspection Test Copy
On Closer Inspection
Stanley Ira Hallet, FAIA, architect, Professor Emeritus and founding dean of The School of Architecture and Planning at The Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C. As a former Peace Corps Volunteer in Tunisia and a Fulbright Lecturer at The University of Kabul in Afghanistan, he has long been fascinated by the natural landscape.
When lecturing on film and architecture, he posits three forms of the landscape: the relatively untouched Found Landscape, the Agrarian or Worked Landscape and the constantly changing, Invented Landscape that is the result of the single artist or author.On Closer Inspection, Stanley Hallet explores the Found Landscape where he documents a never ending parade of landscapes found on Mount Desert Island in Maine.The images were found and recorded over 8 years as a guest of Judith S. Goldstein and the Center House Foundation located on beautiful Somes Pond, Mount Desert Island, Maine.
156 pages hardcover, dust jacket, premium paper, lustre finish
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© 2011