Machu Picchu. 10 years ago Ten years ago my three sisters (along with several friends) and I took a trip to Peru. Expertly planned, the trip started in Cusco and then had us hiking into Machu Picchu over the mountaintops, taking the ancient Inca Trail into one of the world’s most exquisite spots. It was […]
Merwin: Past and Present
The Times’ put it this way: “The famously handsome Mr. Merwin in his younger years.” Wow. Few poets get that accolade… (Photo: Dido Merwin) A moment to contemplate W. S. Merwin, a poet whose work I respect but I often take for granted. As Dwight Garner wrote in a recent article in the New York […]
David Hare on Art, Matisse and Meaning
Plays that deal with visual art and art making can be problematic. I remember seeing La Bohème as a child and already being cognizant that the bohemian lifestyle portrayed in the opera was mythic, a well used trope that only people like my father believed was real. (He tried to discourage me from pursuing my […]
Chasing the Bubble
A poster hanging in a coffee shop window on Smith Street promotes yet another Walt Whitman event. My friend Michael, a Whitman scholar, told me there is some kind of Whitman commemoration going on in Brooklyn every month. *** In terms of square miles, Brooklyn is New York’s second-largest borough, after Queens; in terms of […]
Brooklyn Workshop Gallery Opening, June 26
Still riding high after a great weekend and art opening in Brooklyn. Thank you to Martine Bisagni and Amani Ansari for their Herculean effort to pull off a great event. More pictures coming* (I was too busy talking to take any during the opening to take my own) but here are a few of the […]
BRB (Be Right Back)
Brooklyn Workshop Gallery curator Martine Bisagni in my studio choosing work for the show that opens this weekend. I’m in New York for the opening of my show in Brooklyn this weekend. I’ll be back online on Monday.
The Strange Notes of our Wildness
The flying foxes (bats) in Sydney’s Hyde Park. They are an extreme statement of wildness very close at hand. It is not skill, knowledge, intellect, good luck or bad, but choosing to feel the strange notes of our wildness, for there is not nothingness despite the easy magic of despair. Another moment spent in the […]
Vacation as Metaphor
View of the beach in San Francisco, America’s favorite vacation city For anyone who loves a journey and has an appetite for adventure, travel is as essential for pleasure as a working shower, delicious food and a good pair of walking shoes. An article in the Boston Globe by Drake Bennett applies a little more […]
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Marginally Less Focused, Exponentially More Connected
Seo 2, mixed media on canvas, 24 x 48″. From a series commissioned by Catherine Seo, professor of business and management and a social media maven. I painted this series with her hyperconnectedness in mind. Some of you have engaged with me on the topic of the Internet’s impact on the way we think, process, […]
Weirdly Clear
Nox, by Anne Carson (Photo: Tony Cenicola) I’ve followed Anne Carson’s work for many years. She’s a complex persona—part professor of classics, poet, novelist, essayist, critic and all around category buster—exploring a wide range of topics, approaches and methodologies. Meghan O’Rourke’s description is apt: “Anne Carson has somehow become a culture hero—the ‘anti-bourgeois’ variety of […]