Thinking about the transformation of the Lower East Side (see the posting below from November 17) has put me in a neighborhood state of mind…Boston/Cambridge, my home for over 20 years, made for entertaining reading in Ethan Gilsdorf’s recent piece about Boston for the New York Times‘ “American Journeys” series. Focusing on the Main Street […]
Jonestown, 30 years later
Thirty years ago today more than 900 people died Jonestown, a settlement in the jungle of Guyana. Often called a “massacre,” the victims in Jonestown participated in their communal demise willingly. They had practiced dry runs of this mass suicide several times before they did it for real on November 18, 1978. The Jonestown community […]
Boho-Luxing the Lower East Side
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 […]
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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 […]