Latest Food Network star Katie Lee (Photo: Gillian Laub for The New York Times) Some have called me and my family food snobs. In all honesty I would not disagree. It’s the language we speak—hours are spent analyzing the fine tuning of a perfect braised roast, the complexity of a seafood broth or the gentle […]
The Pity of the World Has Leaked
Carol Ann Duffy Carol Ann Duffy, England’s poet laureate, has assembled a remarkable trove of poems written by “senior” British poets about ageing. Published in the Guardian, the selection reflects Duffy’s deft hand (and I mean that as a compliment.) I read them all and was moved by every one. Here are two that stood […]
Architecture Crib Notes
Very cool find: A small book by Matthew Frederick, 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School. Well designed (a raw slab of heavy cardboard for a cover which makes it feel handmade and intimate) and sized for easy portability, this book is full of thoughtful insights for architects as well as all of us architect […]
Sages of Silence and Fear
A painter and a poet. Martin and Stafford have been (and continue to be) elemental influences on me. *** Agnes Martin (Photo: Charles R. Rushton) To discover the conscious mind in a world where intellect is held to be valuable requires solitude, quite a lot of solitude. We have been very strenuously conditioned against solitude. […]
The Sound of Silence
View of the desert sky, this one in the American Southwest I am having an ongoing attraction to the concept of silence, of what happens when you choose to move into the spaces that exist without language, without the need to speak. I’ve written about this here on and off for months, and the attraction […]
Steir et al in Providence
Pat Steir, The Austria Group, No 2 (Photo: risd Museum) Drawing Out of Line features 40 years of work by Pat Steir and is currently on view at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art. The range of expression captured in the show speaks to Steir’s fierce exploration through her force of nature […]
Hangin’ with Tom
Who knew that Tom Robbins would keep surfacing as a personal wisdom source? These things happen, and when you least expect it. (Another great Robbins quote is here.) Our lives are not as limited as we think they are; the world is a wonderfully weird place; consensual reality is significantly flawed; no institution can be […]
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A Beyond of Color
Rainer Maria Rilke More on the theme of poets and artists: Good friend Sally Reed steered me to a slender volume, Letters on Cézanne by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. These letters were written mostly to his wife Clara while he was living in Paris in 1907, a time when he was spellbound by Cézanne’s […]
Willing
Simplicity and complexity: A piece hanging on the wall at sculptor Paula Castillo’s studio in Santa Fe. The two entries below, a poem by Moramarco and a quote by Tom Robbins, were included in two separate posts on my favorite random access wisdom source, Whiskey River. But when I landed on the site this morning […]
Rice Paddy Art
A traditionalist and enchanting version of earthworks: Rice paddy art. Created by planting different varieties of rice, images appear over time. Examples of this technique first appeared in the early 1990’s, originally conceived as a local revitalization project. But the approach took on a life of its own and within a few years, computers were […]