( image above) 11 October 2021 Crystal Bridges Museum, Bentonville, AR

This personal blog page by is intended as an efficient way to keep in touch and share news with our family, friends, and extended acquaintances. While it’s not quite as personal as a hand written letter or postcard, we want to convey our hope to keep connected to you, with a mutual awareness of our experiences, commonalities and differences, hopes and aspirations.

Mark and Dana December, 2021

Please help us to stay connected with you!

4/25/21 Aman Park, Grand Rapids, MI you may recall a similar COVID-virus-reminiscent photo that we posted last year)

Dear Family & Friends,

1/2/21, biking down Haleakala Crater Maui, Hawaii

What another long, strange year it’s been! We hope that you and your loved ones have been keeping healthy, safe, and finding creative ways to survive, perchance to thrive, in these uncertain times!

We are still both safe, healthy and keeping quite busy (sometimes distracting ourselves as a break from our normal life pressures and obligations). Last year we posted a a 2020 year-end blog sharing then-news, photos, and inviting you to respond and share news with us. We loved your responses and we hope that you enjoyed viewing our blog and the responses that others posted there. We hope that you’ll respond again to this 2021 version! Please leave comments below (scroll ALL the way down) and/or communicate with us privately via mail / email, or schedule a phone / live video catch up call with us! Besides hearing good news and milestones, we also hope to hear when people in our sphere have fallen ill, have passed away, or have suffered a loss or setback.

Please write and tell us how YOU are doing since we last connected!

(The easiest way: scroll to the bottom of this page and leave a comment!)

A Quick Take on Our 2021

3/28/21 Mark & Dana at Seven Magic Mountains by Ugo Rondinone outside Las Vegas, NV

Jan 2021 Haleakala Crater, Maui

Jan 2021 Waimea, Oahu

Jan 2021 Waikiki, Oahu

Mark's 2021 Travels According to Google

9/9/21 Wedding Anniversary Celebration, Grand Rapids, MI

…a few 2021 bullet points:

We’ve avoided COVID infections (so far, knock on wood), and have received our third-dose booster shots. We feel very fortunate not to have had close friends or family members die of COVID or COVID-related complications since the pandemic started.
This year Dana turned 60, Mark turned 63, and our parents (Nancy, Tom, and Mary) are doing well in their 90’s.
Dana announced he will step away from his leadership role at the Grand Rapids Art Museum in January 2023. Here is a link for the full story.
The Plant at Kyle received a significant legacy award from the Texas Society of Architects/AIA.

Family

3/27/21 Andrew, Alex, Ying-Chao, and Jim (Mark's Brother's family) at the Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada

6/20/21 Father's Day Gathering in San Antonio, Texas

7/10/21 Sandy & Ted (Dana's Sister & Brother-in-law) in Casco Bay, Maine

7/17/21 Red Rocks, CO. gathering of cousins and remembering our uncle Chuck

8/18/21 Mary & Tom (Mark's Dad & Partner) at Albuquerque Botanical Gardens

8/21/21 visiting with cousins Karen and Rob Taylor in Santa Fe

12/1/21 Nancy (Dana's Step-mother) and Santa in Scarborough, Maine

11/25/21 Dana and Andrew (Mark's nephew) at The Plant

11/23/21 Mark and Ellen (Mark's Sister) at the Blue Hole, Wimberley, Texas

12/25/21 Thanksgiving at The Plant

How’s YOUR family doing?

As the pandemic challenges continue, our family ties remain strong nonetheless. Dana’s sister Sandy, brother-in-law Ted, and their family enjoy life in Portland, Maine, and nearby, our stepmother Nancy Friis-Hansen, is a lively 99-year old, engaged in Red Sox baseball, Patriots Football, and volunteer activities within her retirement community. In July we had a wonderful visit with them, and enjoyed quiet time at our shared family summer cottage on Little Diamond Island in Casco Bay, and have returned for a week at year-end.

Texas, especially Austin, remains a key part of our lives, and we are equally well-connected to Mark’s family there, with whom we spent time at Thanksgiving. Mark’s father Tom and partner Mary are both in their 90’s and live in a lovely independent living facility in Austin, TX. They maintain a positive outlook despite being forced to set aside their busy travel schedule, social gatherings, concerts, and in-person lifelong learning programs. We had a very nice outdoor Thanksgiving dinner Tom, Mary, Mark’s sister Ellen, brother Jim, sister-in-law Ying-Chao, and nephews Alex (19) and Andrew (17). Alex started attending Rice University in September, 2020. Andrew was just accepted at Rice and will join Alex there next fall. They are both interested in engineering.

Mark’s maternal-side family celebrates Italian heritage with the last name of “Cozza” originating from small towns in the Southern Italian regions of Campagna and Calabria. Current Italian law supports the case that American-born Cozza descendants are Italian dual citizens since birth. Mark is leading the effort to petition the Italian government for recognition of Cozza family dual Italian citizenship (which also comes with European Union rights and privileges) on behalf of about fifty Cozza descendants. This petition process involves a lot of coordination and collection of vital records to prove descent for each petitioner. It is expected to take about two or three years and is not 100% certain, so please wish us all luck!

Mark’s Uncle Chuck Cozza died at age 75 in Colorado after a decades-long struggle with a traumatic brain injury. Many Cozza family members gathered outdoors in Denver in July 2021 to celebrate Chuck’s life.

Our Lives

5/31/21 Dana in front of Bennet School for Girls (closed), Milbrook, NY (where his Grandmother once worked)

5/13/21 Dana giving birthday speech, Memphis, TN

5/13/21 Dana's Birthday Celebration in Memphis, TN

5/14/21 "A Tour of Possibilities" & Tiny World Black History Tour of Memphis, TN

6/30/21 Micala Evans Cochran (PhD) and Mark leading Tiny World Black History Tour in Idlewild, MI

6/30/21 Idlewild, MI Tiny World Black History Tour

6/6/21 Glenstone (private contemporary art museum) in Potomac, Maryland

How’s life where you are?

Grand Rapids continues to be a wonderful home for us. We have adapted to “Life during COVID” and its continual changes, including “working from home,” “returning to the office” and then a mixed model when the virus flared up again. As very social people, we developed ways to see our friends by entertaining outdoors, in a garage, or indoors with socially distanced cocktail tables placed around our condo. Our food experiences continued to widen; we joined the local Blandford Farm CSA which provided a varied allotment from late spring through early fall, and Dana learned to cook vegetables new to him, and developed soups from the leftovers.

Exercise helped keep us sane. We especially enjoy our 2021 local nature walks in the amazing city, county, and state parks, often joined by a mixed group of friends, of which Kayem Dunn and Alexander Stoffan were regulars. in 2021 we logged over 350 miles (according to Mark’s AllTrails app,) which doesn’t include our daily indoor workout routine down and up 34 flights of stairs at our high-rise residence.

A key part of our pandemic time has been reflecting on what is important to us in life now. Last year we started to downsize our possessions, reduce our footprint, and focus more on meaningful experiences and community impact. With an aim to find a smaller condo in this building, we put our unusual River House penthouse loft on the real estate market over a year ago, but a buyer excited about our vision has not yet come along…so if you are curious, we invite you to take a look at our condo’s info page, with the realtor’s link at the bottom.

In the meantime, we have logged our book collection and will donate most of them to the local Kendall College of Art Library, while others will go to The Asia Society. We’ve also been reducing our files, archives, and photographs, often through scanning and recycling...with mixed feelings about letting go.

Expanding Horizons

3/27/21 Dana and Mark’s family visiting Double Negative by Michael Heizer outside of Las Vegas, NV

1/30/21 Southernmost Point in the USA, Key West, Florida

1/30/21 Dana's Carleton College Friend Karen, Key West, Florida

2/14/21 Omega Mart by Meow Wolf, in Las Vegas, Nevada

2/16/21 Mark's solo visit to Seven Magic Mountains, Nevada

3/27/21 Double Negative

6/11/21 Mark in front of The Lhakhang from Bhutan on the campus of the University of Texas at El Paso

9/30/21 Mike Reiss and Mark hanging with aliens, El Paso, TX

10/1/21 Prada Marfa (artwork)

10/1/21 Presidio County Courthouse Cupola, Marfa, Texas

10/1/21 Fort Davis, Texas

10/1/21 Deborah Hay and Mark at McDonald Observatory Meeting, Fort Davis, Texas

How have you expanded your horizons?

Like many others, this past year we watched a lot of television, movies, YouTube learning videos, and other streaming content… We did read books, both in hardcopy and on iPad, and scheduled a good share of zoom calls with friends. Topics that continue to interest us are contemporary art, culture, science (including astrophysics), languages, food, and travel, Mark rejoined the board of visitors at the McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, Texas, operated by the University of Texas at Austin.

We also cautiously re-incorporated travel back in our lives, to see friends and family, to experience new places, and re-ignite memories and connections to destinations we’ve frequented in the past. We spent the holidays last year in Hawaii, with time on Oahu and Maui, hiking, biking, swimming, and exploring the history, architecture, and art of the islands. In February we were invited to join Dana’s Carleton friend Karen and her husband Scott for a sail on their catamaran in the Florida Keys, and met up with Mark’s family in Las Vegas later in the spring, spending more time in the desert than on the strip, topped off by a fun evening at Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart immersive theatre experience.

In early May we took a wonderful southern road trip to celebrate Dana’s Birthday (which turned out to be a surprise celebration weekend with friends from college days, and our time in Texas, and Michigan.) Highlights included Louisville (Speed Art Museum, 21C Museum Hotel), Nashville (Frist Art Museum, Civil Rights walking tour, National Museum of African American Music, Birmingham Alabama Civil Rights sites (including Forth Avenue Historic District, Sixteenth Street Baptist Church), Montgomery (the amazing Memorial and Museum of the Equal Justice Initiative), The Rural Studio in Hale County, Alabama, Selma, Muscle Shoals recording studios, and Memphis (Natl Civil Rights Museum).

In the summer we spent time on the east coast visiting friends, family, civil rights and art destinations from Washington D.C. to Maine, and in the fall we were road-tripping again from Austin to GR with stops in Oklahoma City (First Americans Museum) and Tulsa (Greenwood Rising), Bentonville, (Crystal Bridges Art Museum) St. Louis (St. Louis Art Museum, Cahokia Mounds), and Bloomington, IN (Eskenazi Museum of Art).

Work

5/6/21 Promise, Witness, Remembrance exhibition focused on the life of Breonna Taylor at the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY

2/14/21 Winter Storm Aftermath at The Plant at Kyle

10/8/21 Architectural Award Ceremony for The Plant at Kyle and Lake Flato Architects

11/25/21 Stewards of The Plant at Kyle

What are you working on these days?

Our work continues to give us great fulfillment. Recently Dana announced that 2022 would be his last year as Director/CEO of the Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM). He will pivot his career to other passions, working with artists on exhibitions and international exchanges, as well as helping lead cultural tours with Mark through our company, Tiny World Tours. After ten years at the helm of GRAM, this was a difficult personal decision. He loves GRAM and West Michigan and leading a dynamic institution has been incredibly fulfilling. He has immense gratitude for the many friends, partner organizations, collaborators, and GRAM supporters who have played an essential role in the many accomplishments achieved together since starting in July 2011.

Over the course of the year GRAM gradually increased its exhibitions, programming, public hours, events, and facilities rentals, as well as started a variety of learning initiatives. A Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion Task Force comprised of staff members across all levels and departments was initiated to research and implement staff trainings. So far, sessions have been held with Overcoming Racism, Disability Advocates of Kent County, and Native American leader Cecelia Lapointe. In the spring, a group of GRAM department heads and program managers took a field trip to meet with staff at the Speed Art Museum who organized the exhibition Promise, Witness, Remembrance focused on Breonna Taylor (born in Grand Rapids and killed in Louisville) and the protests that followed. Developed with the guidance of Taylor’s family, a Steering Committee of Louisville community members, and a National Advisory Panel, it provides a model for future GRAM practices. An intensive Strategic Planning process for 2022-2026 spanned the past year, with participants including local residents, members, Board, and staff committees shaped the Objectives and initiatives.

The timing of Dana’s announcement was important, allowing for a twelve-month transition process. The Museum can continue to build momentum, and Dana is especially excited about the powerful exhibitions in the coming season and new acquisitions on the way. GRAM will be intensifying our engagement with community conversations and co-created programming. In the realm of creative learning, many wonderful discoveries are ahead. The Board has just voted to move forward on a new five-year Strategic Plan focusing outward to expand and diversify GRAM’s impact and engagement.

Under Tiny World Tours (TWT), Mark has had to cancel many planned 2022 international tours. During 2021 TWT led successful “drive your own car” COVID-aware black culture and history tours to Idlewild, MI and Memphis, TN, and intends to repeat these and co-create other black culture and history tours. Tiny World Treasures (a project of Tiny World Tours) successfully commissioned and sold online items from traditional pattern textiles from Bhutan, and Gee’s Bend Alabama quilted potholders. The TWT store will probably close in early 2022 due to the challenges of maintaining product inventory and fulfilling individual orders while traveling (if you have any ideas that may help, please share!).

The Plant at Kyle, the historic Lake|Flato Architects-designed landmark property we own in the Texas Hill Country, is a key part of our life’s activities. This year, despite COVID, our wonderful co-hosts/collaborators/next door neighbors Martha and Jamie Kinscherff coordinated multiple significant maintenance projects there including a fresh coat of paint on the steel structures and inside the pool that makes the place sparkle. The Plant is an ideal “distancing” destination with thoughtful COVID protocols in place. Although many guests were unexpectedly forced to cancel or downsize their planned events such as weddings, the canceled calendar dates rebooked quickly. Our beloved Rude Mechs collective theatre company continues to actively run their Rude Mechs Artist Residency at The Plant. Dana and I look forward to continuing our stewardship of this inspiring place as we enter the new decade.

Hopes

10/3/21 Mark traversing Hueco Tanks State Park, Texas

3/4/21 Jacob Starner sorting Bhutan textiles at RH3301

9/3/21 RH3301 Dana visiting with Carleton College friends Chip and Claire

10/31/21 RH3301 condo nestled in clouds

11/3/21 RH3301 sunrise view

3/31/21 RH3301 balcony with Michael Cirivello and Jacob Starner

What are your hopes for next year?

As we finalize this blog on December 22, we are enjoying ten days in New England, first in Boston, and then Portland, Maine. We’re visiting with friends and family, seeing art, architecture, and historical sites, and relaxing by reading and writing. At the end of the week, we had hoped to spend ten days in Italy, but the ominous Omicron variant has prompted us to cancel that trip, as well as future 2022 travel to Mexico and Japan. Like many others, we are tired of the way COVID controls our lives but know this is the prudent thing to do. With our experiences in 2020 and 2021, we know we can live engaged and fulfilling lives under increased safety protocols and have already started to adjust our aspirations of returning to international travel to more local pleasures, car trips, and “hunkering down.”

We aspire to be better stewards of things we value: relationships, possessions, resources, environment, time, attention, energy, truth, knowledge, and wisdom.

Although we’ll hate to move out of it, we hope to sell our downtown Grand Rapids condo in 2022 as part of our gradual life downsizing plan.

We hope to be able to lead Tiny World Tours in 2022 that can go forward with COVID-aware precautions. Black and Indigenous History tours are a growing interest.

Mark is enjoying learning how to be a drone pilot, taking 360° photos, and listening to foreign language podcasts in Italian, German, and Japanese.

We envision a semi-nomadic future spending time in Japan, the Americas, Europe, and other destinations, flying Mark’s drone, and taking 360° photos. We hope to spend more time with you in person!

We envision participating in an ever-increasingly collaborative, agreeably interdependent and connected global community. We hope that medical experts are heeded, and politics are minimized to decrease death and suffering as the global COVID threat quickly subsides in the year ahead.

Other Memorable Moments from 2021

2/1/21, Vizcaya Mansion, Miami, FL

2/14/21 Millenium Park, Grand Rapids

2/18/21, Valley of Fire State Park, NV

3/28/21, Big Rig Jig, Las Vegas, NV

4/18/21, Boulder, CO

4/30/21, Raise a Glass Wine Tour, Grand Rapids, MI

5/7/21, Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY

5/9/21, National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Montgomery, AL

5/12/21 Muscle Shoals, AL

5/31/21 New York Botanical Gardens

8/8/21 Emmylou Harris Concert, Meijer Gardens, Grand Rapids, MI

9/11/21 Diner en Blanc, Grand Rapids, MI

9/18/21, Morgan Library, NYC

9/26/21, Cadillac Ranch, Amarillo, TX

10/5/21, Enchanted Rock, TX

10/7/21, Texas State House, Austin

10/12/21, Crystal Bridges Museum, Bentonville, AR

10/23/21, Villa of the Mysteries by James Magee, Fremont, MI

11/28/21, The Plant at Kyle

12/2/21, lunch with cousin Lloyd, Brooklyn, NY

In case you don’t have it handy, here’s our contact info:

Mark Holzbach & Dana Friis-Hansen

Mailing address: 335 Bridge St NW, Unit #3301, Grand Rapids, MI 49504

Mark’s personal email: mholzbach@alum.mit.edu

Dana’s personal email: danafh@gmail.com

Mark’s personal cell for voice & text: 512-689-6777

Dana’s personal cell for voice & text: 512-653-8188

PLEASE LEAVE COMMENTS BELOW AND/OR COMMUNICATE WITH US PRIVATELY VIA MAIL / EMAIL, OR SCHEDULE A PHONE / LIVE VIDEO CATCH-UP CALL WITH US!

You are receiving this because you are on Mark and Dana’s “Friends and Family” mailing list. We also maintain mailing lists for Tiny World Tours and The Plant at Kyle. If you’d like to get on or off any of these mailing lists, or have any special interests or requests, please let Mark know.

WE LOVE YOU!!

PS - There is a small assortment of 2021 videos below that we hope you may find interesting.

2021 Year End Blog