Today is the last day of the show Drawn to Detail, at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln Massachusetts. From their description of the show: Drawn to Detail features a variety of contemporary drawings with a very particular focus. This exhibition displays the work of 26 American artists who explore extreme attention to detail, obsessive mark-making, […]
- Aesthetics
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Finding the Edge
One of my art professors had a spiel about how to push a work to its farthest edge by reminding us that a great work of art almost doesn’t work—but it does. It was his way of getting his students to take risks, to push out beyond what feels safe. There’s really no other way […]
Signals to Attend
Blogging is its own kind of neighborhood. You share the road, the same convenience store, snowstorms and sports teams. When someone suddenly moves away and leaves no forwarding address, it’s like you lost something that didn’t really belong to you but felt like it did. So here’s celebrating the return of a former denizen of […]
Seasonal Surrender
Street view, January 2009 I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. A day when one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most […]
Floating in a Moon-Green Pool
I Am in Need of Music I am in need of music that would flow Over my fretful, feeling fingertips, Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips, With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow. Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low, Of some song sung to rest the tired dead, A song to fall like water on […]
- Aesthetics
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Winnicottisms
In a remembrance of the writer Harold Pinter that appeared in the Los Angeles Times (and posted on Slow Painting), Charles McNulty included a memorable quote by D. W. Winnicott: But for all his vehemence and posturing, Pinter was too gifted with words and too astute a critic to be dismissed as an ideological crank. […]
No Other Way
so you want to be a writer? if it doesn’t come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don’t do it. unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don’t do it. if you have to sit for hours staring at your computer screen or […]
One for the Record Book
I’m still recovering. Yesterday was probably the most memorable Christmas of my life. I take it back, all those bad things I’ve been saying about the holiday season. This was fabulous, utterly. For the last 28 years I’ve been the Christmas engine in this house, overseeing the gifting and feasting for the five of us. […]
Epicuriousity
Clate flexing some serious cooking guns They’re home, my three children. And all of them are seriously gastronomicized. They spent the last two days coming up with the 9 course menu for our Christmas feast which will include three styles of oysters from Island Creek, home made ravioli filled with butternut squash, seared scallops on […]
The Quiet Joy of Breathing and Living
A Body Was Given To Me A body was given to me – what to do with it, So unique and so much my own? For the quiet joy of breathing and living, Who is it, tell me, that I must thank? I am the gardener, I am the flower as well, In the dungeon […]