Wrenching and Wrangling

Silent Letter It’s what you don’t hear that says struggle as in wrath and wrack and wrong and wrench and wrangle. The noiseless wriggle of a hooked worm might be a shiver of pleasure not a slow writhing on a scythe from nowhere. So too the seeming leisure of a girl alone in her blue […]

Ted Time

The death of Ted Kennedy has brought an atmospheric inversion to Boston, one that holds the sorrow of his passing in the air, everywhere. Today the motorcade made its way through South Boston, not far from my studio, terminating at the Kennedy Library that overlooks Southie’s Carson Beach and Pleasure Bay. The sentiment heard most […]

A Call for the Imagination

Artist, writer, creativity coach and friend Nadine Boughton sent this message to several of us yesterday. Her insights touch into the delicate corner turning that happens every August. It is as if the seasons give us a gentle nudge since what is to come is inevitable and sublime, especially here in New England. Her photograph […]

Mad Women

John Hamm as Don Draper (Photo: Associated Press/AMC) If you aren’t a Mad Men fan, all I can say is, I’m so sorry. It is mesmerizing, especially for those of us who know that the brutally sexist world of the early 60s Matthew Weiner has created is authentic and legit. My kids can’t quite believe […]

Non-Linear

The Lawrence Tree, by Georgia O’Keefe. Photo: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, and Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York We spent several days last week in western Massachusetts, seeing Shakespeare plays and looking at art. There’s lots of both (plus music and dance) to be had within an amazingly small radius. As […]

Adieu Michael Mazur

Photo: Cape Cod Times/Ron Schloerb I offer a moment of silent respect for the passing of Michael Mazur, a larger than life presence in the Boston art scene for years. Printmaker, painter and professional art advocate, Mazur’s absence creates a void of a very particular nature. Fall Mountains for Kuo Shi Bowdoin College Museum of […]

The Stevensian Sense

Wallace Stevens, right, with Robert Frost in Key West, circa 1940 (Photo, Alfred A. Knopf) In today’s New York Times Book Review, Helen Vendler reviews the first edition of Wallace Stevens’ poetry to be published in 20 years. This new volume is the work of John Serio, editor of the Wallace Stevens Journal and by […]

Goddessing

A Muse of Water We who must act as handmaidens To our own goddess, turn too fast, Trip on our hems, to glimpse the muse Gliding below her lake or sea, Are left, long-staring after her, Narcissists by necessity; Or water-carriers of our young Till waters burst, and white streams flow Artesian, from the lifted […]

August City

I just returned from several days in New York. Some gallery shows and museums yes, but more than anything this was a set of days devoted to reconnected with old friends. Collen Burke. Eliot Lable. Mimi Kramer-Bryk and Bill Bryk. One of the best moments: Walking the High Line in its late summer majesty of […]

Science of the Subtle

Another note in keeping with the theme of Science: It works, bitches (see the posting below): The New Scientist has also reported on research into the “smell” of fear. While the article focuses on particular research testing “stress sweat” and the brain’s reaction to it, don’t we all have our own personal experience of the […]