Enrico Taglietti was born in Milan in 1926 and graduated in 1954 from the Milan Polytechnic University, where he studied under Gio Ponti, Franco Albini, Bruno Zevi and Pier Luigi Nervi. In 1955, he was sent to Australia by the Italian government to find a site in Canberra for the Italian embassy (which he ended up designing). He loved the unspoilt environment of Australia and ended up settling in Canberra from the early 1960s. He designed many iconic buildings, mainly in Canberra, but also in Sydney and Melbourne. They are in a Modernist, sometimes Brutalist, late-20th-century Organic Style, designed "from the inside out", according to the architect, with an emphasis on atmosphere, light and poetry. Taglietti was celebrated in 2018 as the featured architect of the Canberra Design Festival, with a whole day symposium dedicated to his work. He wrote on his website: "“We stand upon the verge of an abyss, the abyss created by the culture of egoism and puritanical righteousness. Men have lost their belief in the invisible. Architecture is no longer a WONDER but a temptation for the profitable. The aim of my architecture is to express the invisible, joy and music, silence, light and the desire to be”". Taglietti died on 3 May 2019, at the age of 93. Taglietti was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in the 2020 Australia Day Honours for "distinguished service to architecture, particularly in the Australian Capital Territory, to education, and to professional organisations." The award was announced after his death. Mertlene Perkins  Mertlene Perkins (1917–2015) was an American artist. She is associated with the Gee's Bend quilting collective. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and is included in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Perkins' mother and father were Maggie Tripp and Isom Martin, respectively. Her mother was a farmer and her father worked on the railroad. She loved being with her mother, so she began to help on the farm the earliest that she could, around eight years old. They mostly raised cotton, corn peanuts, and potatoes. She attended school for nine years in Prairie, Alabama She married Herman Perkins when she was nineteen. They raised twelve children together, nine of which survived to adulthood. Perkins learned to quilt from her mother and grandmother. Quilting was a source of enjoyment for Perkins.