Video of Class of '63 artists and architects reveals varied career paths

By Linda Myers

People love reunions because they offer a window on the lives of classmates with parallel educations. The views are often surprising, sometimes inspiring.

For the fourth year in a row, video producers Phil and Maddy Handler have spent the past year capturing the lives of graduates of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning who are celebrating their 40th reunion. In this year's video, seven AAP Class of '63 graduates talk about why they enrolled, what they experienced here, and how their professional and personal lives have evolved since then.

Artist Madeleine Leston Meehan, Class of '63, is one of seven Architecture, Art and Planning alumni featured in a video made by Phil and Maddy Handler that will be shown in Sibley Hall during Cornell Reunion. She and others in the video will take part in a panel discussion in Sibley, Friday at 1 p.m. Phil Handler

"We try to capture a little of their personality and what's important to them, as well as provide a historical record for the college," said Maddy Handler.

Phil Handler earned his B.Arch. degree at Cornell in 1964 and his M.Arch. in 1965, the same year that Maddy received her B.S. degree from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. They met on campus and married soon after graduation. After working as an architect for 25 years, Phil launched Fly on the Wall Productions in 1991, a videography business. The Cornell AAP reunion video project is a labor of love that both Handlers participate in and pay for, traveling distances to interview subjects. Typical interviews take up to three hours to videotape, then are whittled down in the editing room to six minutes a person.

As with any work of art, a whole video is more than the sum of its parts. Past videos have drawn emotional responses from viewers. "The whole idea of renewing a bond with people years after college is a strong part of it," said Phil. Another part stems from how effectively and humanly the Handlers are able to capture the lives of those they profile, including personal challenges and struggles.

"This is a wonderful service that Phil and Maddy provide to the college," said AAP Dean Porus Olpadwala. "We are extremely grateful for their enthusiastic and generous contribution of time, talent and effort that adds so much to our reunions."

On Friday, June 6, at noon the Handlers' AAP Class of '63 video will be shown on a large screen in 157 East Sibley Hall. At 1 p.m. Phil Handler will discuss making the video and introduce, "AAP: Then and Now," a panel discussion that includes six alumni featured in the video. The event, which is free and open to the public, is moderated by Kent Hubbell, B.Arch. '69, Cornell dean of students and professor of architecture, and will be videotaped by Phil and given to the college. A reception in Sibley's Hartell Gallery follows at 2:30 p.m., where works by alumni in the video are exhibited and the video will be screened continually throughout reunion on televisions supplied by the Handlers.

Chimacoff

Among those highlighted is architect Alan Chimacoff, who has the unique distinction of being the only graduate of the college to design three building projects at Cornell: the Sage Hall renovation project for the Johnson Graduate School of Management, completed in 1998; the site design and building of residence halls on north campus, which opened in 2001; and the Lab of Ornithology's new building on Sapsucker Woods Road in Ithaca. (Read related story.)

Chimacoff loved working on all three, he said. "Bringing Sage Hall back to life and giving it a new presence on East Avenue was a gift. The north campus residence hall project has had the biggest impact, transforming that part of campus and changing the undergraduate learning experience. The challenge with the Lab of O project was to create a large building with a small presence in a delicate setting and make it embody the spirit of a bird in flight," he said. Viewed from above, it resembles one.

Chimacoff's powers of recall are so detailed that he is able to sketch the seating arrangements in his freshman architecture class. "It was a magical time," he said. "We had a particularly interesting group. People formed strong friendships and really valued the time they spent studying architecture." He also remembers captivating a crowd on the Arts Quad while selling tickets to the college's Beaux Arts Ball and then being chastised by the university proctor for creating a disturbance.

The AAP reunion video also features these Class of '63 alumni:

• Tom Beeby, former dean of Yale School of Architecture, who remains on its faculty while running his own architectural design firm in Chicago;

• Donna Forsman, a writer, graphic designer and communications consultant who ran a dairy goat farm and published a book about it. She designed the Class of '63 Reunion logo (see http://classof63.alumni.cornell.edu);

• Marjorie Walker Sayer, who, with her husband, owns and runs Sonicscrub, a unique ultrasonic cleaning system for non-electronic medical equipment that serves such hospitals as Massachusetts General in Boston and Mt. Sinai in New York City;

• Peter Parsons, an architect and educator who is director of graduate programs in architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he has been teaching architectural design, history and theory since 1975;

• Madeleine Leston Meehan, a practicing artist who has studios in East Hampton, N.Y., and St. Thomas, the U.S. Virgin Islands. Meehan, who taught herself how to draw with her left hand after losing her right hand during an accident at college, now travels to international music festivals to create images of musicians and dancers for her "mostly music art" series; and

• Robert Fox, an architect who designs "green" buildings -- ecologically sound office buildings, among them the Condé Nast Building at Four Times Square in New York City, and is a spokesperson for sustainable, environmentally sensitive architecture. (He is the only subject not part of the Friday panel.)

The Handlers also produced a 14-minute video on the art of Elsie Popkin '58 that will be shown continually at the Johnson Museum during Reunion Weekend in conjunction with an exhibition of her paintings. Popkin will join the Friday panel.

For details about the AAP reunion video and other related events at the college, contact Mary Wilkins, 255-7510, mw25@cornell.edu or visit the Class of '63 Web site listed above.