Majosta So! What Did You See Today?: The Art of Steve Borbas

Grandpa lived with us for a long time in our small apartment in Pecs, Hungary. I was in elementary school when he started to ask, "So, what did you see today?" about what I saw walking home each day. "People, buildings, cars, trees, statues," I replied. He asked me day after day. He never asked other questions, added to my answer or corrected me. He just walked away. Before long, I started to see more: shapes, sizes, colors, movements, little details like windows and shades, this kind of car and others, short people, blonde hair, umbrellas, hats, etc. Later, I realized that Gpa was teaching me about ideas, play, emotions, intellect, and interpretation of space. In other words, as Mo'd Bilbeisi mentions in his book, Graphic Journal, "The many individuals who view the world as a series of lines to be scribed by their pens and pencils while trying to comprehend why things are the way they are." This is what I learned from Grandpa. Yes, I learned to see. I have traveled to 87 countries, many short stopovers, and found more and more beautiful lines of the urban landscape. Can buildings be considered landscapes...growing up from the ground, full of life, energy, changes and the ability to alter the visual environment? Landscape is a collection of physical elements - buildings, natural heights and depressions, plants, natural growth, plazas, streets, bodies of water, colors, shapes and more that are used, lived in, ever-changing, recreationed on, observed and admired. The majority of buildings around the world are just basic, average and not worthy of landscape quality. But our climate is dramatically changing, our urban environments combine more shade as part of plazas, building elevations and entertainment functions. Historically, dance terraces were built around large trees in Germany for shade. In India, bridges were fashioned from plants. Frank Lloyd Wright at Fallingwater and elsewhere built structures within the natural environment. And today more balconies in high rise buildings become gardens and forests, such as those designed by German architects Ferdinand Ludwig and Daniel Schoule. Paolo Soleri's megacities will be, in fact, a collection of forest landscapes, with the structures and light built within on a scale not yet known. So, why not call architecture a landscape? Herein are 150 or so of my global travel sketches. To contextualize the sketches, each will be accompanied by a brief explanation or sense of the mood of the sketch. An aim for this book is that the reader/viewer of the sketches copies over the lines and expands on them with color or even colors right there on the page. ***** Steve Borbas studied at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn NY – Bachelor of Architecture and Masters of City and Regional Planning. ABD in American Studies/Architecture, and at the London Architectural Association University. After decades of working around the world Steve was hired by the University of New Mexico where he taught Architecture, Landscape, Planning and Urban Design Studios as well as Sketching. Steve has created award winning landscape sculptures, including one for the New Mexico Veteran’s Memorial in Albuquerque, which is featured as the cover art on the award-winning SouthWest Writer’s anthology “Holes in Our Hearts.” His large-scale sculptures grace several locations including a water feature at the Santa Fe School for the Deaf, where the students participated in its creation, and a steel sculpture of a bear meeting a snake on a tree is located in Albuquerque on 2nd street south of Osuna. Now retired in Albuquerque, Steve is a member of the New Mexico Watercolor Society, and his art has been featured at the Masterworks Exhibition annually at Expo New Mexico.