I came of age as an artist living in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Outside my Henry Street loft was a confluence of disparate cultures, each battling for turf in their own way. If you headed north, you ran into the remnants of the 19th century Jewish immigrants, and if you kept going you’d […]
Month: November 2008
- Art Making
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Joined at the Metaphysical Hip
Pam Farrell wrote a provocative piece on her excellent blog, P Farrell artblog, that explores the relationship between the artist and the studio. (Anyone interested in this discussion should go to her site and consider participating in a challenge she has posted.) Part of every artist’s consciousness, the space where the work gets done holds […]
Turn to the Open Sea and Let Go
Coastline south of San Francisco, March 2008 Security Tomorrow will have an island. Before night I always find it. Then on to the next island. These places hidden in the day separate and come forward if you beckon. But you have to know they are there before they exist. Some time there will be a […]
No Asylum of One’s Own Making
Sometimes Picasso nails it (like he does in this drawing) I Sing the Body Reclining I sing the body reclining I sing the throwing back of self I sing the cushioned head The fallen arm The lolling breast I sing the body reclining As an indolent continent I sing the body reclining I sing the […]
Kubota’s Kimono Art
About 15 years ago my friend Colleen Burke introduced me to a book she had purchased in Japan. It featured the kimono art of Ithciku Kubota. I had never seen anything like this. The technique was utterly baffling and intriguing, but it was the final product that held my attention for hours and hours. I […]
Donald Hall: Lust is Grief
Donald Hall is a poet whose life and work I have written about many times before. His new memoir, Unpacking the Boxes, was reviewed by Peter Stevenson in the New York Times on Sunday. This book follows his poignant memoir about life with poet Jane Kenyon, The Best Day the Worst Day, as well as […]
Art as Gift
My son harbors the secret hope that the meltdown of the world’s financial markets will shift the mindset of this nation and the world to a much-needed consciousness of sustainability. I see that possibility too, convinced that these great swings into the dark end of the spectrum can also initiate a great swing into the […]
Adieu Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton’s death this past week seems to have been lost in the protracted celebration around Obama’s victory, but his passing is worthy of a pause. I was never a big fan of his novels but like many other culture watchers, have been flabbergasted by the prodigious scope of his interests, intellect and output. I […]
- Art Making
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Riding the Wave
I have two poet friends, both of them extremely gifted. One, a Midwesterner, has a work ethic a lot like my own. She is focused, driven and very committed to her writing. Her poems are finely honed and crafted through successive revisions. Every word is considered carefully, and you feel that intentionality when you read […]
Thumbing Through the Dreams
Two of the five poems that appeared on the New York Times op ed page on Wednesday, November 5, the first day of this new chapter in US history: When the Fog When the fog burnt off this morning Outsize JumboTron screens were hanging off the clouds, Scores of them, huge, acres and acres of […]