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Faculty + Staff
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Few instructors can claim the attachment to a particular class that Brad Agee has to the popular 1401/The Designed Environment. He has been teaching it for the last ten years, and as he explains it, "I took the class many years ago. Then I TA'd in the class for years for two different instructors. In a sense, I inherited the course." In addition, Agee teaches an introductory drawing class and LA 3001. He loves teaching and feels a special attachment and obligation to his students because of the round about way he came to his career. "I can really relate [to students' difficulties]," Agee explains. "I'm not so far removed from it, so I can appreciate how difficult it is to stay on track. If I can save somebody that grief of wandering in the wilderness...." His own wanderings included leaving school just short of completing a degree in political science, a "life-changing" trip to Africa, and eight years in the work world before returning to school at the University to pursue a BED and MLA.
Ten years ago Agee founded his own design/build firm, Constable-Steele Garden Design. "Constable" came from John Constable, the great 18th-century landscape painter whom Agee admires, and Steele is Agee's middle name. He confesses that the name was borne from trepidation in starting his own business. "That way if it flopped, nobody would directly associate it with me!" Agee shouldn't have worried. He has been very successful, and his business has grown-almost purely by word of mouth. Agee commits to a broad range of residential work and free-lance consultation while developing new projects with long-term clients year after year. " It's a classic approach, responding to the evolving needs of your clients over time" he comments.
Agee travels to France twice a year. "Part work, part pleasure and always an education" he explains, as he uses the opportunity to study the great French gardens and landscapes. "I'm a formalist at heart," Agee confesses. "I love the chaos [of the richly diverse plantings for which he is known], but I always want to contain it." |
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