Steve Ziger, a founding partner of Ziger|Snead Architects in Baltimore, recently retired after 40 years, has played an important role in shaping Baltimore’s built environment, with major civic projects including the Baltimore Museum of Art, Center Stage, the SNF Parkway Theatre. He co-designed the striking Brown Center at MICA and several buildings at Friends School.
He is about to launch a beautiful coffeetable book called While Away, characterized as part visual memoir, part travel guide, part drawing manual. It features an introduction by Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson, in which she gives a thumbnail portrait of Ziger’s life and work. In his own introductory comments, Ziger explains that what first sparked his desire to draw was the “foreignness of the landscape” when he visited his grandparents’ farm in Central Mississippi. “Removed from the usual sights and sounds of my suburban home, something awoke in me. A desire to capture the world and not merely record it — we had a Kodak Brownie camera for that—but to experience it. I wanted to be fully in the moment and drawing became my portal.”
The remainder of the book is filled with images of buildings, cityscapes and landscapes, grouped into periods of Ziger’s life. Occasionally, the images are accompanied by a snippet of explanatory text, adding dimension and sometimes emotional resonance. For example, along with the sketch of the Palio di Siena, the famous horse race of that city, he explains that his visit to the Palio was arranged by a friend for her own birthday celebration, but “cancer prevented her from joining us in Italy.”
We spoke to Ziger in advance of his launch at the Ivy Bookshop, in conversation with Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson. (In fact, we asked Dickinson to write this very article but she demurred, saying she is on deadline for a new book, which she describes as “a true crime object biography of the Ruby Slippers from the Wizard of Oz.” Interesting Writer’s Club scoop, for sure.)
Our conversation took place on the back patio of his beautifully landscaped home in Northwest Baltimore, which somehow recalls Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, the gorgeous Pennsylvania estate Ziger depicts among the sketches in While Away.
This book spans five decades, from childhood on. Looking at the earliest sketches versus the most recent ones, what changed most?
Going back over the images chronologically, I found that the earlier ones were more analytical, tighter. They took a long time, probably 45 minutes. In the later ones, I loosened up. I tried to capture just the essence of a place rather than every little detail. It became a lot faster, more a kind of personal note taking than trying to produce a nice drawing.
The later sketches are much faster. Twenty minutes. In truth, because I’m traveling with people and I don’t want to hold them up. I try to get at the essence, which is what you do when you get older.
In her introduction, Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson explains that you had never considered your sketches to be art until your partner Jamie Snead and friend Alex Castro, convinced you of their value. How? What was their argument?
I’m still not convinced that they are art.
But given that, they still had to convince you to publish them in a book.
Yeah, they did. Elizabeth gets at it in the introduction, that things are moving so quickly now. People will snap a selfie without even looking at the scene they’re shooting. But perhaps they are looking for ways to slow down and garner meaning from their environment. I’m hoping the book might encourage people to just pick up a pen and a sketchbook. The Ivy is going to be stocking the same sketchbook and pens that I use when I do my talk there.
Can you describe a specific moment when sketching revealed something you would have missed otherwise?
Every sketch makes me see something that I would otherwise have missed. Not because a drawing captures details that a photograph wouldn’t — photos are much better at capturing reality. But drawing registers those details in my head. It’s a process, not a product.
Do you also take pictures with your phone when you travel? Do you keep a written journal?
Yes to photos, no to writing. I’m a visual thinker, and this is the way I keep a journal.
I was struck by several images of Caribbean sunsets, done in black and white, though in other images you used watercolor. What was the thinking behind those drawings?
We were in Bermuda. I was sitting on a porch with a glass of wine, and there was this spectacular sunset, and I was watching it change quickly. While sunset is mostly about color, I saw these cloud formations moving so quickly and wanted to capture how they changed. Color would have taken too long. I was sketching so quickly, I didn’t even take a break to drink.
You’ve traveled so extensively. How do you decide where to go?
When I studied in Versailles for a year, I was the first person in my family to ever travel abroad. After that, I just got wanderlust. My husband Jamie and I went to Venice every year for about 25 years, because we just fell in love with the city, then at some point we intentionally expanded the horizon. Sometimes, it was a happy circumstance — like a friend’s wedding in Lebanon.
We actually stopped the book with Egypt, two and a half years ago, because it felt like it was enough. So I have a couple of years’ worth of sketches we didn’t use. We’re going to Japan for a month in November. Since one sketchbook can usually last me about a two week trip, I’ll bring four. It would be nice to think I could do a second volume someday.
Your husband Jamie, whom you met in your early twenties, is also your lifelong business partner. That seems like a rare achievement in itself.
We’ve been together since 1980, pretty much 24/7 until Jamie retired five or six years ago. For a brief period, we actually saw less of each other, because I was still working. Now that I’ve also retired, a few months ago, we’re back to the 24/7, which feels better.
What was the book’s path to publication? Did you have an agent?
I thought I’d be looking for a publisher for years, but it was very fast and very lucky. I had a colleague who had been working on a book with Oro, and he recommended them. I didn’t even know this when I reached out, but they have a series of architect sketchbooks. I sent them some images of the sketches, and that was it. They were in.
“The hand of Africa” is part of the Four Rivers fountain, by Bernini in Rome. “Bernini and Borromini were both brilliant architects in Baroque Rome, often rivals for the same commissions. The mythology was that this hand is dramatically raised in protest against Borromini’s church, which it faces. But it turned out that wasn’t true — the church was built two years after the fountain.” 
The view from a villa in Settignano, Italy where Ziger stayed while designing Harvard’s Center for Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti, in 2000. 
A series of black and white drawings documenting the progress of a sunset in Bermuda. 
Canyonlands National Park. “When Jamie Snead, he put his golf clubs in the trunk of the car and took a three-month cross-country solo trip. I met him in Southern Utah for a week.” 
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. Each slab is a rectangle made out of rusting steel, and engraved in it is the name of a county, and the names and dates of people who were lynched there. There are hundreds and hundreds of them, a total of four or five thousand names. You start out face to face with them, then as you proceed, the path descends and they hang above your head. “Please go, please go.” Petit Palais, Paris. “I love that in the courtyard of this grand Beaux Arts museum in the heart of Paris is a luxurious garden with enormous and seemingly wild Pampas grass!” Chefchaouen, Morocco, 2015. “While I was sketching this scene, a group of little kids started climbing all over me. After I handed out paper and pens, we all sat there together, drawing.” The lively little face of the flautist at an outdoor concert in Venice is one of the only faces depicted in the book, other than the faces of statues or one in a painting. Ziger’s explanation: “Buildings don’t move.”
Launch Celebration
Ivy Bookshop, Thursday October 8th, 6 – 7:30 pm, in conversation with Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson. RSVP here.
A note from Emma Snyder, owner of the Ivy: “The Ivy is delighted to host the launch for Steve’s beautiful new book. There’s so much excitement that we know it’ll be a standing room only event, so we’re already starting to plan for another book talk with Steve in the spring. In the meantime, books can be pre-ordered here!”
