Distance From up here, the insomniac river turning in its bed looks like a line somebody painted so many years ago it’s hard to believe it was ever liquid; a motorboat winks in the sun and leaves a wake that seals itself in an instant, like the crack in a hardly broken heart. And the […]
Chemical Dance
It is a strange and esoteric chemistry that moves the inner dial of our moods. Who hasn’t taken a micro-second whipsaw ride from ebullience to hopelessness? For me, some days in the studio are all flow. On others, nothing goes right. If only I could clear a pattern headed in the wrong direction as easily […]
Art for All
After several days in California, I’m readjusting to the stubbornness of a winter overlord who won’t give up New England. Succession planning? We’re working on that. Spring is off stage, bedecked in faille, fluttering her white and pink organzas, just waiting for an entrance cue. I had some memorable moments last week, both indoors as […]
Waiting for the Crack
Spring Thaw in South Hadley Old snows locked under glass by last night’s ice storm left curatorial Winter, in whose hands alone we’d hope to find the keys, jangling them in the trees—. not merely in these pine needles by the fistful gloved in crystal, but, from their boughs, the self- invented digits of icicles […]
The Nature of True North
I’ve written about Kathan Brown, founder of Crown Point Press, on this blog previously. While I was visiting CPP in San Francisco, I was introduced to The North Pole, Brown’s book about her adventure on a Russian nuclear-powered icebreaker in 2002. With no coffee table aspirations, this paperback is simply and elegantly designed, interleafing Brown’s […]
Authenticity, Identity, Reality
I’m recovering from knee surgery, so maybe that is the reason I’m sporting a surlier view of things. Bear with me here, I’ll be ambulatory and more optimistically inclined soon enough. But until then… Much has been written over the last week about the latest scandal regarding yet another faux memoir exposed. It is easy […]
Monumental Grandiosity
Clyfford Still So maybe this is my week to air art world frustrations. My latest complaint: The newly unveiled Clyfford Still Museum in Denver. An excerpt about the proposed museum from the Denver Post can be read on Slow Painting. The building concept sounds soulful, more of an invitation to solitude than its brassy, sassy […]
Art Distribution and Other Woes
I have been a life long advocate for the importance of original art in daily life. Of course that is a position that is nothing short of self serving, but it is also based on a very distinct experience from my own childhood. My parents were suburban middle class people who grew up on farms […]
Freedom, History, Loss: Stoppard’s Rock ‘n’ Roll
What is it that Tom Stoppard does that moves me so deeply? Rock ‘n’ Roll was as intoxicating an experience as Coast of Utopia had been the year before. In many ways it is a continuation of many of the same themes, just brought forward 100 years and closer to home. (The play takes place […]
The Many Worlds View
I’m off to New York for a few days. I want to see the Mannerist drawing show at the Morgan Library, most particularly out of respect for my daughter Kellin who is a Mannerista fanatic now that she is living in Florence. (To read an excerpt from the New York Times review of this show, […]