"
In 1953, Jones won a fellowship at Taliesin West, Wright's school in Arizona, and would spend several other stints under Wright's tutelage before the master's 1959 death. Jones eventually took a teaching position at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, which he held until his retirement in 1988. On the side, he built up a small but esteemed practice, taking some of his first commissions for the homes of fellow professors. His own residence, dating from 1956, gained him additional renown when it was featured in magazines that included House Beautiful and Progressive Architecture.
In all, Jones designed some 135 residences around the United States, but he created nearly three dozen chapels as well. The most famous of these is the Thorncrown Chapel outside Eureka Springs, Arkansas, which he finished in 1981. Situated on a picturesque parcel of woodland, with a spectacular mountain view, the chapel was initially the idea of the property's owner, who was unnerved by the tourists who parked on his land to appreciate the vista. Thorncrown, made of glass, stone, and wood, is just 24 feet wide, but 60 feet long, and became a major tourist destination for the region. A former architect at Jones' firm, Michael Cockram, called it "a masterpiece," he wrote in a tribute to his late boss in Architecture Week. "This small elegant chapel in the woods, with its lacework of trusses, is a metaphor for its place-a forest within a forest. Like any great spiritual space, Thorncrown makes a symphony of daylight. The ordered complexity of the structure refracts light in ever-changing ways."
Though Jones was sometimes referred to as the creator of an "Ozark style" of architecture, he rejected the label, noting that many of his works were located far from the Ozark region. One of those commissions, however, was never completed: Jones had been hired by pizza magnate and Frank Lloyd Wright devotee Tom Monaghan to create a lavish residence in the Ann Arbor, Michigan, area. But Monaghan, a devout Roman Catholic, had an attack of spiritual remorse over the money he was spending, and ordered construction halted in 1992 after four years.
Jones was feted with numerous professional honors over the course of his career, including more than 20 citations from the American Institute of Architects. He was presented with its top honor, the gold medal, in 1990, and a survey by AIA members the following year ranked him among top ten most influential living architects. Jones passed away on August 30, 2004, at the age of 83, survived by his wife, Mary Elizabeth, and two daughters. He had suffered from Parkinson's disease, and died of heart and lung failure. Another famous son of Arkansas, Bill Clinton, wrote about one of Jones' homes in his 2004 autobiography My Life. Clinton had lived in Fayetteville in the 1970s while teaching at the University of Arkansas law school, and moved into a Jones home near the campus. Clinton called it a "perfect place to live, a beautiful little house."