"This is the first book devoted to Marion Mahony Griffin's graphic work and presents a new critical interpretation of her art. She was the second woman to graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in architecture and the first woman licensed to practice architecture in Illinois. After years of freelance drafting and design - most famously for Frank Lloyd Wright - she and her husband, architect Walter Burley Griffin, embarked on a career that catapulted them from Chicago to Australia in 1914 after winning the international competition to design Canberra, Australia." "Marion Mahony Griffin's graphic art is defined by her innovative representations of nature. Her presentation drawings clearly illustrate that architectural design and forms of the natural landscape are inseparable. Botanical forms are also woven into her children's book illustrations and murals and are the subject of the series of Forest Portraits she made in Australia." "The many illustrations in this book include vintage photographs and commercial illustrations that have previously never been published, new photographs of her public murals, full-page color plates of her architectural renderings and Forest Portraits, and an exclusive color facsimile of the Forest Portraits and captions as found in the New York Historical Society's copy of Marion Mahony Griffin's unpublished memoir "The Magic of America.""--Jacket.