You Reading This, Be Ready Starting here, what do you want to remember? How sunlight creeps along a shining floor? What scent of old wood hovers, what softened sound from outside fills the air? Will you ever bring a better gift for the world than the breathing respect that you carry wherever you go right […]
Zen Bits
In the case of a Zen artist, there is then no artistic reflection. The work of art springs “out of emptiness” and is transferred in a flash, by a few brush strokes, to paper. It is not a “representation of” anything, but rather it is the subject itself, existing as light, as art, in a […]
- Left speechless
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Jason Moran in Cambridge
Jason Moran and Bandwagon played two sets at the Regatta Bar in Cambridge last night. I was glued to my seat through both. Jason and crew (Tarus Mateen on bass and Nasheet Waits on drums) were joined on several numbers by Jason’s wife, Alicia Hall Moran, one of which was an aria from Turandot. Who […]
Connecting Outside of Language
Todd Gibson, speaking about Agnes Martin (and in particular, his favorite Martin, Milk River, at the Whitney Museum): Some paintings make for great public lecture material. Others are best used for quiet, personal contemplation. Martin’s work from the 1960s never fails to bring me to a place that even other great artists who strove to […]
Women and Painting
In the words of Marlene Dumas: I paint because I am a woman. (It’s a logical necessity.) If painting is female and insanity is a female malady, then all women painters are mad and all male painters are women. I paint because I am an artificial blonde woman. (Brunettes have no excuse.) If all good […]
The Impertinence of our Preconceptions
Another memorable insight from Thomas Merton by way of Louie Louie: To look too directly at anything is to see something else because we force it to submit to the impertinence of our preconceptions. The difference between seeing and looking. The disconnectedness of habitual viewing. Impertinence is the perfect word to describe how we can […]
- Art Making
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Keeping Your Head Down
Do not depend on the hope of results…you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to that you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results […]
Craving the Lightning
A few lines to remember during those times when things don’t seem to be coming together: I haven’t written a single poem in months. I’ve lived humbly, reading the paper, pondering the riddle of power and the reasons for obedience. I’ve watched sunsets (crimson, anxious), I’ve heard the birds grow quiet and night’s muteness. I’ve […]
- Art Making
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What’s Next?
In When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chodron tells a story about Trungpa Rinpoche: He was traveling with his attendants to a monastery he’d never seen before. As they neared the gates, he saw a large guard dog with huge teeth and red eyes. It was growling ferociously and struggling to get free from the chain […]
Viral Yellow
One yellow door, on one house. It was a reasonable wake up accent for an otherwise understated facade. But when yellow showed up just a few houses down, the understated gave way to garish. Gerald Horne, architect and friend, has long advocated for “architecture insurance”–a way to protect us from really bad decisions made by […]