Spiral Jetty (Photo: Greg Lindquist) Greg Lindquist, a Brooklyn based artist, made a winter’s pilgrimage to the Spiral Jetty on January 2, Robert Smithson’s birthday. His photos and “trip report” can be read on Hyperallergic. As readers of this blog already know, this is a frequent pilgrimage spot for me. Lindquist’s photos of the Jetty […]
Painting Well
“Rag and bone shop” table surface in my studio The New York Times Book Review last week had a simple headline: “Why Criticism Matters”. The editors set the stage by describing our current age as one where opinions are “offered instantly, effusively and in increasingly strident tones”—by anyone, anytime. So in that context it is […]
- Environments
- ...
The Creaturely World
My partner Dave spends his waking hours advocating for a shift in thinking about how we can solve the biggest global problems, the ones that can be named in just a few words that everyone everywhere understands. Clean water. Health care. Housing. Safety of women and children. Human trafficking. On the topic of human trafficking, […]
So Chic After All These Years
‘Trees’ (1990-1991) by Joan Mitchell My good friend George Wingate sent me a heartening article from the Financial Times, In praise of older women, by Jackie Wullschlager. While I could be accused of being self serving to highlight it here given that I am both female and aging, it suggests a shift (a trend? a […]
- Aesthetics
- ...
Finding Round
Days begin and end in the dead of night. They are not shaped long, in the manner of things which lead to ends — arrow, road, a person’s life on earth. They are shaped round, in the manner of things eternal and stable — sun, world, God. –Jean Giono Western culture is grounded in linearity—of […]
Finding the Flow
Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called “the love of your fate.” Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, “This is what I need.” It may look like a wreck, but go at […]
A New Nowhere
Voyager We’ve packed our bags, we’re set to fly no one knows where, the maps won’t do. We’re crossing the ocean’s nihilistic blue with an unborn infant’s opal eye. It has the clarity of earth and sky seen from a spacecraft, once removed, as through an amniotic lens, that groove- lessness of space, the last […]
Our Eyes and Ourselves
New work, “Snap 1” and “Snap 2” (diptych), in my studio before being shipped out this week Three critics at the New York Times were given the assignment of naming their favorite paintings in New York Museums. The lists can be found on the New York Times site, but as critic Roberta Smith freely confesses, […]
Longing, And Adieu
“In Kyoto …” In Kyoto, hearing the cuckoo, I long for Kyoto. –Bashō Translated by Jane Hirshfield This wonderful short poem feels like an appropriate adieu to 2010. The collage above is by Susana Jacobson and dates from our days of sharing a loft on the Lower East Side, on Henry Street at Rutgers, so […]
Tucking In for the Winter
East First Street in South Boston on Monday morning (my studio is on the right) Ice lace on my studio wall The highlight of that infamous genre, The Christmas Letter (which is, let’s face it, a mixed bag) for me is the yearly book recommendations that arrive from my long time friends Mary Pat and […]