Icicle propagation on a building facade in Pittsburgh: Living with constraints A few months back I posted a quote from the artist Carroll Dunham that has a great deal of meaning for me: The most basic thing to say about painting: it’s a limiting condition within which absolutely anything goes. But it’s a negative premise. […]
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The Legend of Louise Gone Viral
Annie Leibovitz’s Louise Bourgeois Louise Bourgeois’ passing has set the ripples in motion in every direction. After my eulogizing post about her work and her life yesterday, I was even more curious about the stories about her that Jerry Saltz gleaned from his increasingly muscular Facebook Tribe. And I mean muscular in the most flattering […]
Louise Bourgeois
Louise Bourgeois in 1990, behind her marble sculpture Eye to Eye (1970) (Photo Raimon Ramis) Louise Bourgeois is hard to place in my personal inspiration taxonomy. I have been aware of her for most of my art-making life, but I never had the deep connection to her work that I have had with the pack […]
We Are What We See
Gordon Waters is an artist, teacher and good friend who now lives in Sydney. I’m a big fan of his work (you can see more of it here) and of the way he thinks about seeing and looking. When he shared this recent essay with me, I thought it would be an inspiring guest post. […]
A Certain Body Heat
He Lit a Fire with Icicles For W.G. Sebald, 1944-2001 This was the work of St. Sebolt, one of his miracles: he lit a fire with icicles. He struck them like a steel to flint, did St. Sebolt. It makes sense only at a certain body heat. How cold he had to get to learn […]
In Praise of Everyday Living
Partially frozen fountain at Ojo Caliente, New Mexico I am in a bit of a detached and quiet place these days, a state of mind that is drawing me to Zen concepts, Zen words. One of my daily rituals when I arrive at the studio is to flip open Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Tao […]
The Complex Whole
Monastery in Ladakh, 2008 Terrance Keenan’s book, St. Nadie in Winter: Zen Encounters with Loneliness, has been my companion while traveling for the last few days. An enigmatic mix of Zen wisdom—part personal memoir, poetry and recovery confessional—Keenan has offered me a rich variation on that unique conversation that can happen with a book. Early […]
The Small Ones
Larter 3, a new painting from a series that may be inspired by the astral zone (but you can never be too sure) Outside History These are outsiders, always. These stars— these iron inklings of an Irish January, whose light happened thousands of years before our pain did; they are, they have always been outside […]
Enchantment, in Excess (of which there can never be too much)
Image from a recent show in Boston by artist and printmaker (and one of my favorites) Fred H. C. Liang that suggests a particular kind of enchantment of the visual type. This is a continuation of the post below since I am letting myself fall under the spell of Borges, the Borges of these 7 […]
Feeling the Dream
Mandala, a symbol of enduring mystery (Rubin Museum of Art) A few months ago New Directions came out with a reissue of Jorge Luis Borges’ Seven Nights. Based on a lecture series Borges delivered in Buenos Aires in 1977, the book is full of the themes that will feel familiar to anyone who has read […]