Art’s political power derives…from having no pragmatic application. It can’t fix the world…It stands for itself, it confronts our imagination and our intellect, and so it shapes our capacities as free citizens…If I seek out art in a time of national catastrophe…it’s because I need to be reminded what to live for. Jason Farago, art […]
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Antifragility and Art Making
Note: A few weeks ago I gave a guest lecture for the MFA students at Long Island University Post. At the time I referred to my remarks as a “shop talk:” gathering with fellow tradespeople to share some work wisdom. Art making can resemble a kind of guild after all, one that adheres to the […]
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Somewhere Between What is Hidden and What is Seen: A New Pell Lucy Exhibit
Pell Lucy, the 21 artist collaborative created three months ago, has a new exhibit up on Artsy today: Somewhere Between What is Hidden and What is Seen. The show will be available for viewing through December 3. This exhibit continues exploration into the Pell Lucy credo that form “possesses an intelligence of its own–an intelligence […]
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Under Our Skin
Interior characteristics often differ from surface qualities. A young ‘tween might be sassy and defiant, yet under the skin of these choices, she can possess a very sweet nature. Artwork is the same way. The visceral, visual qualities of the language can be as opaque as all the challenges we experience when we try to […]
The New Comes Out of the Random
Six years ago I read Charles Eisenstein’s book, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible. I was immediately caught in its spell. I described it to friends as a book that will fundamentally change the way you see the world. I know I am particularly susceptible to books. New ideas are the most […]
The Infinity of Aesthetics
“Public opinion doesn’t usually move in staccato bursts,” writes Bill McKibben. “Culture usually shifts gradually—painfully gradually for those of us who want change. But, occasionally, attitudes swing quite suddenly, as if pressure had been silently building up behind a dam until it burst.” Consider for a moment how many build ups are bursting on this […]
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PELL LUCY
This was the final paragraph in my last essay, Art and Mycelia: Artists, like mycelium, have been operating in a world where they are mostly hidden, undervalued and disempowered. Like the concept of the flipped classroom—the movement to change institutionalized pedagogy by switching what happens inside the classroom and out—maybe it is time to flip […]
Art and Mycelia
Perhaps it is my reduced engagement with the flow of life as we knew it that has made it easy to ponder what we should be fighting to preserve, post COVID, and what we would be better off shedding. As the wiser advisors across the world have made clear, there is no returning to the […]
Myceliumania
No matter the circumstances of a life–whether being lived indoors under quarantine or in that effortlessly privileged expansiveness of our world before it closed—the mind is on. It is relentlessly weaving a slew of meanings, patterns, stories. Some days it feels slow and heavy, overwhelmed by the hyperobjectival complexity of considering a common future, one […]
In the Bewilder
“Nagala,” mixed media on linen, 54 x 78″ (one of a series painted a few years ago) My friend Tina Feingold, reliably epigrammatic and to the point, sent this message to me today: Time is slow. Days are slow. But life is fast. This feels so apt even though I don’t understand how it works. […]