Paul and Laura’s excellent fine art collection includes artwork acquired through purchases, gifts, and trades by and with fellow artists and their creations. Some craftworks from India, China, and Vietnam are from family travels and overseas adventures.

Paul Thompson is not a professional artist; he contributes his pinhole camera photographs, drawings, and other art purchased or collected over the years. Paul, who lived in Thailand, Beirut, and the American southwest, has acquired pottery and objects of Native Americans that adorn the collections. Paul worked at Darroff Design and then at MGA Partners, where Laura would later work and meet. The Peruvian craftworks are from Laura and Paul’s honeymoon in Peru.

Paul and Laura designed and helped construct a number of custom furniture pieces in their home, including the wedding sofa, granite coffee table, walnut side table, walnut and brass credenza, and fiber optic, metal, and glass chandelier.

Laura Blau was an award and grant-winning professional artist, working in multiple media before becoming an architect. After graduating with honors from Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1976, with her BFA with a major in art, she practiced in the Twin Cities, exhibiting and receiving several grants, awards, and fellowships. She exhibited at the Minneapolis Art Institute, University of Minnesota, various galleries, and competition exhibitions nationwide.

The most prestigious award was the Bush Fellowship, 1983, similar to the Pew Fellowship for the Arts. At the time, Bush was the highest-paying fellowship for the arts in the US. She and her former spouse Steven Beyer, a Guggenheim and Bush recipient in 1982, used their fellowships to live and work for two years overseas at the coveted Cité International Des Arts in Paris, France. Some of the work on the walls was also exhibited in “Luxuriances,” a three-woman show at the American Center for Art and Culture in Paris.

Laura and Steven moved from Paris to Philadelphia in 1984 for Steven’s teaching position at Tyler School of Art. In 1985, she won a PA State Arts Board Grant. During this period, she designed and did much of the construction of a gritty urban studio/living loft space above City Cleaning Company on N. 13th & Callowhill Streets, a no-man’s-zone in the warehouse district, now a hip residential loft apartment neighborhood. The loft design earned her an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and her landlord hired her to design the office conference space, followed by a kitchen for the manager, whose friends started hiring Laura for interior design services. Creating spaces rejuvenated her interest in architecture. She had hit a glass ceiling, and unlike her husband, Laura could not garner a full-time teaching job without a master’s degree in art. She decided to seek a master’s in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania, graduating with honors at age 40 in 1995.

Paul and Laura are musicians and co-chair the South Philly Acoustic Jam and Meetup Group. Laura is a vocalist, having played in several jazz bands. Paul, a former high school band and college woodwind musician, plays percussion, bass, and some guitar at the Jam.

Both enjoy the immediacy of music as a counterpoint to the slower, methodical practice of architecture.