Shakespeare on the Boston Common (Photo: Courtesy of Commonwealth Shakespeare Company) This summer has the look of life back in 2019. Lots of concerts, outdoor gatherings, busy beaches, people on vacations, overbooked flights. Even so, dogged remnants of where we have been remain, like masked faces that can still be spotted in the crowds. (I […]
The Lehman Trilogy and the Ecosystem of Ancillary Concerns
The Lehman Trilogy, at the Huntington Theater (Photo courtesy of the Huntington Theater) . It is a gesture of dramatic bravado to stage the 150-year rise and fall of a multi-generational immigrant family in America, and do it all with just three actors and a minimal set. But some stories have an appeal so trenchant […]
Pell Lucy: THINLY AND THICKLY
Andra Samelson, Sky Churning, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30″ . Every six months Pell Lucy artists come together for an online exhibit on Artsy.net. Thinly and Thickly is our summer show, the 10th online exhibit we have had since Pell Lucy came into existence in early 2020. Four new members have joined Pell Lucy: Heather […]
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Weisberg, Wingate and Wallace Stevens
. Anecdote of the Jar I placed a jar in Tennessee, And round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness Surround that hill. The wilderness rose up to it,And sprawled around, no longer wild. The jar was round upon the ground And tall and of a port in air. It took dominion […]
Passion Fueled
. “The ecstatic is our compass, pointing to our true north.” “Art is far more powerful than our plans for it.” —Advice for artists from The Creative Act, by Rick Rubin . There’s nothing quite like a consuming passion. It often comes about unexpectedly when encountering a new idea, project or person. And then it […]
Exquisitely Dynamic Interrelatedness
It is a perennially woolly question: What makes a work of art stand up and stand out? This query came to mind while reading two recent reviews by Pulitzer prize winning art critic Sebastian Smee in the Washington Post. He veers in two very different directions, from a carefully articulated dissatisfaction with the Cecily Brown […]
Luminous Elsewheres: Show Guide
This is an online guide to the exhibit that will be up through April 28, 2023 at WestBeth Gallery, New York, New York. The work is listed in alignment with the installation. To read the curatorial statement, click here. To purchase work, contact Deborah Barlow via email (dbarlow (at) gmail dot com) or on Instagram […]
Reconsidering the Spiritual
In a recent Washington Post opinion essay, Rebecca Solnit addressed the defeated, Sturm und Drang tone that dominates conversations about planetary extinction. Most of us have been operating from the assumption that a healthy future means giving up things and conveniences we love, then living lives of austerity. But what if it meant giving up […]
The Wife of Willesden
Zadie Smith in rehearsal for Wife of Willesden. Photo: Marc Brenner. . There are many reasons to make your way to Zadie’s Smith’s play, The Wife of Willesden. Based on Geoffrey Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, it draws on 600 years of admiration for Chaucer, the undisputed father of English poetry. And bringing this play to […]
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Let Form Speak
Detail, Ellen Gallagher (full image is below) . “We are living through a moment” has become a code phrase for encountering yet another art installation or exhibit that puts art in service to a credo or ideology. Social justice, political identity, equality—these are all vital causes that matter, and matter deeply. But a proclivity to […]