Preserver, Organized, Intellectual, Analytical, Critical, Perseverance, Practical, Ingenuity of mind, Determined, Creative, Aesthetically Driven, A worrier.

Louis Sullivan was the frontier's man of Modernism in America. As a Virgo he stands between the changing of the seasons, being able to let go of past and embrace the future. Instead of looking east toward Europe to find validation in traditions of the past, Sullivan looked into the heart of the American interior. Out in the Windy City he was able to peruse his quest to find a uniquely American architectural expression. Father of the skyscraper, Sullivan understood that the steel frame structure was more than just a new structural opportunity and understood that it held the programmatic and social implications of the free plan. The Virgo is invested in the utilitarian. Sullivan coined the term "form follows function." Easily misunderstood as advocating in favor of the rational and systematic, it was in fact an understanding of an organic and essential nature of things.

As a Virgo Sullivan was concerned with beauty and possessed an excellent eye for detail seen in his explosive use of floral and geometric ornamentation which he designed to in order to affirm the structural verticality and distinguish the individuality of his buildings. Terracotta appealed to Sullivan, the Virgo, for its mutable and resilient qualities. This molded block enabled complex and intricate patterns to be reproduced over the surface of the building, paving the way for Frank Lloyd Wright's textile block houses.

Sullivan's interest in pretty things also attracted him to a polychrome scheme within his designs. The new technique of wire cut bricks, mixed with a course aggregate and a rainbow array of colored glazes, left the brick, once fired, like a colored jewel. Sullivan used this polychrome material for the facades of his Mid Western Bank series so they stood sparkling and glimmering in the sunlight on the main streets of small Mid Western towns.

The Bank's are the culmination of Sullivan's desire for an organic architecture and a democratic plan alongside the Virgo's desire to save and conserve after the reaping the rewards of the summer's harvest. At the twilight of his career Sullivan retreated from the urban metropolis of Chicago and crystallizes his life long search for an organic and democratic plan. Not in the skyscraper but rather in the form of a single order volume. The plan of the Banks radiated from the interior out into the landscape of the pastoral and agrarian heart of America, paying homage to the working class farmers of the mid west, a monument to the agricultural significance of American history.

Sullivan's sole contribution to the City of New York is arguably one of the more exquisite architectural moments within the city. The Bayard-Condict Building has angels resting gracefully above the structural columns, wings spread, elevating the roof above. They appear as thought they may lift the building up to the sky.

Yet Sullivan eventually descended. He died, drunk and forgotten, evicted from a building he designed. The father of modernism, with all the Oedipal connotations, had tragically been destroyed in order for the modern movement he helped to conceive flourish.
Dan Graham, Jessica Russell

As one of the most influential conceptual artists of his time, Dan Graham first emerged in the 1960s alongside the Minimalists. His work crosses multiple mediums including performance, film and video, exploring shifts in individual and group consciousness and the limits of public and private space. This has evolved into the installations and pavilions for which Graham is most internationally famous. All his projects are democratically rooted in everyday urban life.

Jessica Russell studied and practiced art in Melbourne, Australia, where she also worked in film and television before relocating to New York where she currently studies architecture at The Cooper Union.