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The line between the aesthetic and the practical is never so thin as in the fine art of architecture.
Ron Steege knows.
He grew up in Bloomington and was in town this month visiting friends and family, and obviously pleased to talk about his work.
After various incarnations in the work-a-day world of commercial art and graphics design, Steege finds himself in the heady world of upscale housing in the Phoenix, Ariz., area, dealing daily with the Taliesin Architects and the legacy of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Wright was one of America's greatest 20th century architects, and Taliesin West was his winter home in Scottsdale, Ariz., which he turned into a center for students and practicing architects.
Today Taliesin Architects is a for-profit subsidiary of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation with offices and studios in Taliesin West.
Steege and his wife Jennifer operated a graphics design studio in Bloomington from 1972 to 1976, then headed to Tucson, where, he said, he found little need for a graphics artist. To keep employed, he opened a "design building company." His training in graphics, he said, enabled him to provide illustrations and layouts to his customers on the remodeling and room-addition projects they hired him to do.
In the meantime, he was learning...