Where it Works

A shelf of visual stimulants in my studio The artistic value of hermiting and the need for isolation has been an ongoing theme on this blog, so of course I was intrigued reading Tony Perrottet‘s essay in the Sunday New York Times Book Review about writers, isolation—self-inflicted and otherwise—and the discipline needed to work. (Curiously, […]

Unchained

Many of you have undoubtedly heard about the Chain Letter Show. The idea was a robust one—using the existing network of artists, create an international, artist-curated, pop up event at several locations around the world all at the same time. Ten artists were asked, and then they asked ten more, who then asked ten more. […]

Random Redux

Paris, 1970 Photo by Elliott Erwitt Maybe it happens to you like this: unexpected events and encounters often come in multiples. It’s as if random events are actually traveling through our lives in a wad. How many times has someone come to mind who I haven’t seen in years and then they suddenly appear at […]

In and Out and Back

The Wasatch Mountains in Utah This comment from Bill Keller in the New York Times caught my eye: In “The Uncoupling,” there is a wistful passage about the high-school cohort my daughter is about to join. Wolitzer describes them this way: “The generation that had information, but no context. Butter, but no bread. Craving, but […]

The Whole Ball of Who We Are

An excerpt from Bulabula 1, a painting currently hanging in my show at Lyman-Eyer Gallery in Provincetown A Ball Rolls on a Point The whole ball of who we are presses into the green baize at a single tiny spot. An aural track of crackle betrays our passage through the fibrous jungle. It’s hot and […]

Assessing the State of Visual Culture

The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art by Don Thompson, published in 2008, is one of the most evenhanded descriptions of the flamboyant, unpredictable, arcane—and at times, utterly exasperating—world of contemporary art. Thompson teaches marketing and economics and, refreshingly, doesn’t write from the point of view of someone who has been […]