As insistent as I have been that this amazing exhibit, Intuition (which ends today after a six month run at Palazzo Fortuny in Venice) cannot be reasonably captured in either words or images, I can’t stop trying to share some traces of its magic. There are a lot of images included here. This is a […]
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Intuition and the Irrational Elsewhere
The first gallery of Intuition, at the Palazzo Fortuny in Venice. Statue-Menhirs from Italy and France (3rd century BC) coupled with “Versus Medici” by Jean-Michel Basquiat Ali Smith, author of the remarkable novel How to Be Both, tells a story about how that book came to be. Leafing through a copy of Frieze magazine, she […]
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Hands that See and Eyes that Touch
Belkis Ayón, collograph (detail,) from the show, NKAME: A Retrospective of Cuban Printmaker Belkis Ayón, at El Museo Barrio, New York We live in an ocularcentric culture, one that gives sight precedence over all over sensory stimuli. In one of my all time favorite books, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses, Juhani […]
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The Just Out of View
Seen on a table in a gallery in Charleston, South Carolina The “just out of view” has intrigued me for a long time. My artistic journey began many years ago with a particular fascination for exploring that domain between what is hidden and what is seen: nature’s nooks and crannies, the microscopic and macroscopic, the […]
Finding the Forgotten Note
Pottery by Lucie Rie; painting by Okada Kenzo, “A Story” A seasoned and accomplished artist friend recently shared a painful encounter with a curator. During a studio visit, the curator—much younger than my friend—declared that her work lacked irony and anxiety. In his view, her approach was not relevant to the contemporary 21st century experience. […]
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Certain Geographies
That subtle ridge is the edge of an exquisite slot canyon, the perfect metaphor for the beauty and enchantment that is hidden from our view Every time I spend time in the Great Basin desert, I feel an irrepressible sense of resonance. That soil is in me, energetically and literally (my mother being conceived in […]
Taking Flight
Small Point, Maine Angeles Arrien assembled The Four Fold Way after spending many years living with indigenous cultures as a cultural anthropologist. She observed that these non-first world cultures actually did a better job of offering their residents a way of life that has more access to joy and happiness than ours. In case you […]
The Don’t Know Mind
The human brain contains structures and shapes that may have up to 11 dimensions. (Photo: Blue Brain) Being baffled, confused, incredulous, angry, outraged—those are the emotions that I feel and hear more than ever before. Going through the Slow Muse archive, I found a few segments from a post in 2015, Identity, Universality and the […]
The Distance Between Us and the World
Clouds over New Mexico A few weeks ago I wrote Sense Making, a post that praised those who take on meaning in smaller, more intimate chunks. When you are caught in the middle of a maelstrom, it is difficult to see the larger patterns forming. While dodging the barrage of fire hoses indiscriminately blasting information […]
Time Outside of Time
Diana Al-Hadid, at Burlington City Arts, Burlington Vermont Artists have to find a way to pull the audience in, for only when people come to understand that within a painting or a sculpture they can find a time that is outside of time will they want to keep looking. . Jed Perl . My experience […]