It may be a case of selective viewing, but I feel sure there is a fundamental shift happening in how Western culture describes the connection between the mind, the body and the physical world. My primary interest areas are visual art, literature, cognitive science, philosophy, psychology, cultural theory, psychedelic studies/neuroscience, spirituality. And as wide ranging […]
The Ethics of Minimalism
We Had a World, at the Huntington Theater (Calderwood Pavilion) Photo: Annielly Camargo A noticeable shift is emerging in contemporary theater and cinema, one that values a stripped-down, elemental storytelling. And for many reasons, it feels less like an aesthetic choice and more like a cultural necessity. Joshua Harmon’s We Had a World (Huntington Theater, […]
Pell Lucy: LUCID GROUND
Giving attention to a work of art is like willingly entering an alternative atmosphere. Time slows, then unexpected thresholds appear and reveal themselves. How vital it is in these times to have a place where experience is not being mediated, captioned, or categorized. Finding solace in that zone is not escapism. It is engagement in […]
Pell Lucy: THE UNEXPLAINED NECESSARY
Lynette Haggard, Possibly Biased, from the Pell Lucy exhibit, The Unexplained Necessary To view to entire exhibit on Artsy, click here. These are not easy times to speak of beauty, mystery, or quietude. The world feels increasingly harsh—bluntly shaped by politicians, billionaires, demagogues, and the machinery of attention. The rest of us are being trained […]
Shape and Story
There are times when content strains against the limits of a container, when the material itself feels too unwieldy, too fragile, or too charged to be held by any known form. And yet, again and again, artists attempt the improbable: to find the shape that can hold what feels unholdable. This negotiation is not new. […]
Enchantment
Opening reception for Enchantment, October 25, 2025 at Lockwood Gallery, Kingston New York We are living through a moment when doubt has become our default posture. To be intelligent, we are told, is to suspect; to be contemporary is to remain at a critical distance. Wonder is seen as indulgent and naïve. The spiritual […]
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The Long View
This was written after the opening of The Long View: Women Artists in the Studio, at Suffolk University (October 14- November 21.) The exhibition is the first of three that will take place over the course of the academic year, bringing together Boston area women artists whose lives have been shaped by years of steadily […]
Needed Now: Radical Honesty
Sam Kissajukian, in 300 Paintings (Photo: American Repertory Theater) In an age when so much of what we see and hear has been filtered, polished, or generated by code, Boston’s stages are offering something almost shocking in its simplicity: unadorned truth. Three current productions — Sardines, starring Chris Grace; 300 Paintings, performed by Sam […]
Beyond the Margins
Jenny S. Lee in The Silent Sky, at Central Square Theater (Photo: Central Square Theater) Years ago, Chris Anderson observed that when cable television first arrived—disrupting the era of three networks—it unleashed a flood of banal, derivative programming. Yet only by passing through that unruly torrent did we arrive at transformative works like The Wire […]
The Traveler’s Body
Passengers, at American Repertory Theater (Photo: Sébastien Lozé) Many have written lately about the decline of cultural criticism—how it has grown timid, reluctant to judge, more boosterish than incisive. That charge is not without merit. But the reasons are more complicated than an unwillingness to be harsh or to put in the work to […]