Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesan West The most telling comment I can make about Scottsdale, Arizona and Taliesan West, minutes after leaving Frank Lloyd Wright’s winter residence in Arizona and pulling into a shopping center in search of a Mac widget is that my anti-consumption companion said “My god, even the shopping centers are human in Arizona.”

His artistic spirit had pronounced our mutual benediction on Taliesan West, Tucson, where we spent most of our time, and even Scottsdale, which I feared might be a bit rich for his libertarian mindset. Not so.

Scottsdale is proof positive that modern shopping centers can co-exist with their environment. The Frank Lloyd Wright imprint is everywhere in this part of Arizona. I have so many thoughts leaving Arizona — first and foremost, when can I return?

I wrote my senior high school English paper on Frank Lloyd Wright and have visited several of his residences around the country.

It was in the desert, at Taliesan West that the soul of Wright kicked in for me, even though I’ve walked New York’s spiral space Guggenheim museum for years.

Wright spoke of God and nature often, and this subject is admittedly front and center in my mind, returning to New York from Taliesan West, Tucson and Brisbee. I didn’t have the same emotional response at Taliesan East in Wisconsin, even though I have great respect for my Midwestern roots.

Frank Loyd Wright said of God: “God is the great mysterious motivator of what we call nature, and it has often been said by philosophers, that nature is the will of God. And I prefer to say that nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see.”

Secondly and more simply, Wright wrote: “I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.” Food for thought, especially in Copenhagen. Anne

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Taliesan, the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture