When I wrote about Heather Mains in the posting below (Another Library Gone), I did it from the sorrow of an exile. I had been hearing about gatherings of Heather’s friends in Toronto where stories about her had been shared. But I was in Boston, a candle burning of one. But the comments left by […]
- In Memoriam
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Another Library Gone
This is a time in my life when the message seems to be, don’t get too comfortable in that chair, you’ll be getting up again. And again. Yesterday I received word that my friend Heather Mains died in a kayaking accident. We spoke just a few days ago about my pending trip to stay with […]
Mabou Mines
Yet another reason to be in New York sometime in the next week, more specifically Miller’s Launch, a forgotten corner of Staten Island. Mabou Mines, a theatre company that has been thrilling my sensibilities for 30 years, has done it again and stepped way outside the expected. This time it is a new production from […]
Matisse, Giotto and the Religious Imagination
Giotto fresco in Padua Another excerpt from Out of Eden by DiPiero. This one is from the essay, Matisse’s Broken Circle, and is particularly interesting in its reference to Matisse’s concept of the religious imagination and his emulation of Giotto. I am compelled by DiPiero’s claim that Matisse’s career was “the most sustained and variegated […]
Painting the Facelessness
Another passage of interest from W. S. Piero’s Out of Eden: Why are the jets and emulsive tracks of paints in Pollock’s Lavender Mist: Number 1, 1950 so compelling? It’s not only because he was creating a greater plasticity of space and laying out dozens of contested fields of formal activity where disintegrating patterns pitch […]
Beyond Liturgy
My friend Stephen overlooking Frog Lake I’m back in my life online after a three week hiatus. Some of those days away were deeply satisfying. Roaming the Farmer’s Market in San Francisco (held every Saturday at the Ferry Building) is a pleasure I feel so deeply at every level that having that stroll through the […]
Off Road
I am back from Utah for just two days and then back off the grid again. Tomorrow I am driving 9 hours to Chautauqua New York, transporting 6 paintings for a show at the Chautauqua Institution. I’ll be back for one day and then heading west, to California and to Utah again. My mother fainted […]
Taking a Break
Great Salt Lake, from the air I leave for Utah tomorrow morning, tending to my mother who suffered a fall. I’ll be in the hospital nonstop, so I doubt I’ll have time for much else (like write, hike, mountain bike, see friends or revisit the Spiral Jetty.) I will be back home on July 31.
Married to Amazement, with the World in Her Arms
When Death Comes When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps his purse shut; when death comes like the measle pox; when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the […]
Something of the Hermit
There is something of the hermit about my kind of art making. I spend long hours alone in my studio. Sometimes I spend the entire day there without lifting a brush, just looking. There’s lots and lots of just looking. There is also something of the hermet when we engage with grief or sorrow. I’m […]