SCARBOROUGH, MAINE – Harmon's Market is pleased to present a body of work by Homer and Willauer Architects, entitled Summer Houses at Prouts Neck, Maine. These original drawings date from 1961 to 1963. The firm, which was a collaboration between Arthur Osborne "Oz" Willauer and Richard Wellington "Dick" Homer explored the relationship between modernist and shingle-style architecture. The exhibition will be on view from June 5th through July 6th 2019. There will be a reception on Tuesday, July 2nd, from 5 to 7pm.
In 1935, Oz, a younger friend of Dick's father, designed the Homer family cottage at Southwest Harbor, Maine. In the mid-1950's, when Dick decided to aim his prodigious talents away from ceramics and toward architecture, he turned to Oz for guidance, encouragement and work. At that moment, their collaboration began. After finishing his degree at MIT, with Walter Gropius, Dick went to work for The Architects Collaborative in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At the same time, he and Oz Willauer, of Prouts Neck, Maine, began Homer and Willauer Architects. Oz's talents, together with his history with and relationship to Prouts Neck, enabled him to help and guide his friends and neighbors, at Prouts, who were beginning to think about designing and redesigning their summer houses, in new ways.
The director of Harmon's Market was a boy, at Prouts, during the heyday of Dick's and Oz's collaborative work. He remembers well and fondly the buzz, sometimes controversial, that the new designs created. Also, having very recently become a year-round resident of Prouts, on his winter walks on the beach, the director has been repeatedly dazzled by the way in which Oz's and Dick's G. S. Rockefeller house enables the view of the sunset over the western beach to pass through its glass-filled gable ends and be viewed while walking on the eastern beach. Winter's leafless vistas have rarely been focused through such a spectacular lens!
As a result, 2 years ago, the director asked Brad Willauer, one of Oz's sons and also a resident of Prouts, whether drawings of such work survived. Brad said that after his father's death, for practical reasons, Dick asked for the drawings and he gave them to him. Brad added that Dick passed away a few years ago and, if the drawings survived, they may be in the possession of his daughters. One of Dick's daughters, Susi Homer, lives in the family house at Southwest Harbor and the director contacted her. And, in fact, Susi had her father's drawings and, after pointing the way to the attic, allowed the director to go through them. There, he found approximately 80 drawings related to 3 of the iconic summer houses that Homer and Willauer built at Prouts Neck: The Meck Cottage; the G. S. Rockefeller House; and, the E. P. Maynard House. All of the drawings were conserved and of the total number, the current show is comprised of 33.
Harmon's Market is grateful to Brad Willauer, Susi Homer, and the entire Willauer and Homer families for sharing with and offering to the wider public these superb original drawings of Oz's and Dick's Summer Houses at Prouts Neck, Maine.
For more information and images, please contact the gallery: (207) 883-1085 or info@harmonsmarket.com