My friend and frequent co-traveler Lesli during a trip to Florence last December This is a great description of what can be so intoxicating—and effective—about traveling as a way of assuaging a sorrow or loss. This passage is by Liesl Schillinger from her review of the novel Brooklyn by Colm Toibin in the Times Book […]
Month: May 2009
Withinside of Honeycombed Consciousness
These days I’m finding a welcoming berth in the words of others, probably since most of my allocation of expression energy is being spent in the studio getting ready for an upcoming show. The coinage I’m minting in that travail happens outside language, so encounters with well languaged and well spoken wisdom are particularly appealing. […]
Seeing is an Inside Job
Rothko Chapel, Houston The truly great ones are fresh continuously, repeatedly. Like a painting you can sit in front of for hours and never fully grasp. When I was just beginning to study art, I asked my professor about Mark Rothko. He and de Kooning were the giants of the generation of artists who inspired […]
Boyled
Over the last two weeks I’ve talked about Susan Boyle more than any other popular culture event in a long, long time. I’ve been discussing it at such length because the whole phenom is so layered—emotionally complex, endlessly arguable, and unabashedly wonderful. I wasn’t the only one captivated by her performance and the global response […]
Gender Diversity and Financial Success
The arguments have been active and unresolved for most of my adult life. The gender issues that continue to lace through our lives, politics, organizations, educational institutions et al will probably never be “resolved” since they aren’t equations with definitive answers. I’m alternately discouraged and encouraged, heartened and disheartened, struck by the fractal, “haven’t we […]
Duffy Gets the Nod
Carol Duffy (AP/Paul Thomas) This late breaking news is fabulous on so many levels. Congrats to Carol Duffy! This report from Rene Rosechild includes a poem by Duffy that was posted here back in October: The post has been held by William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson but until two days ago, never by a […]
Hope: More Than a Condiment
Hope has become a term that can be used like ketchup: With everything. Unless of course you are dining with a hoity-toity foodie friend. Or someone French. But behind its increasingly common usage for everything from the personal to the political, hope has a lot more layers than most words being bandied about in the […]
Bless The Mess
“I’m very uncomfortable with a clean, empty studio…usually, I only clean whatever area I need for a project.” –Bruce Nauman I feel you, Bruce. And your space looks fabulous compared to mine. I have to climb in these days, the rat’s nest having grown to larger than life dimensions. Maybe someday I’ll get back to […]