Something happens when we face the truth about ourselves. For one thing, there is no room for pomposity, arrogance, or self-absorption. More than one person has pointed out how closely conjoined “humility” is with “humor.” A sense of humor, like a true sense of humility, involves ruthless honesty about who we are, without disguise or […]
Brookline Massachusetts, December 14th View from my front door Yesterday was the first snowstorm of this winter season. I love the quality of the light, the way the sound of a city changes, the disruption of life, the patterns of tires and feet, the way a neighborhood becomes unfamiliar and redefined, how everything is conjoined […]
There’s a story told by the poet Ruth Stone. While working in the fields in Virginia, she could feel and hear when a poem was traversing the landscape, coming right at her. It was like a “thunderous train of air,” shaking the earth under her feet. The only thing to do was “run like hell” […]
On the set of Wild, at American Repertory Theater (Photo: Maggie Hall-Nile Scott Studios) Most of the thinkers I follow closely are actively exploring alternative models, ones that can impact our ability to continue as a species on this planet. That search for a change is summed up by Daniel Schmachtenberger: Rather than just iterative […]
Some proclivities are sui generis, perennially present as a life unfolds. That is the sense I get when George Saunders expresses the discomfort he still feels about his childhood failure to befriend a lonely girl in his neighborhood. For Saunders, gifted author and teacher, kindness and humility are built in. I have a primordial proclivity […]
Note: A few weeks ago I gave a guest lecture for the MFA students at Long Island University Post. At the time I referred to my remarks as a “shop talk:” gathering with fellow tradespeople to share some work wisdom. Art making can resemble a kind of guild after all, one that adheres to the […]
We are readers, my partner Dave and me. And given the current sheltering at home circumstances in the world, we are, like many others, ingesting even more. (When a friend called us “a pair of bloody whales”–referencing their prodigious ability to filter and digest 8,000 pounds of krill every day–I had to admit being flattered […]
Monnara, from a new series July Mountain We live in a constellation Of patches and of pitches, Not in a single world, In things said well in music, On the piano and in speech, As in the page of poetry- Thinkers without final thoughts In an always incipient cosmos. The way, when we climb a […]
Early morning light, South Boston The ease of viewing contemporary work today is staggering. The steady flow of images on Facebook, Instagram and online art sites brings thousands of images from all over the globe into easy view every day. When I first started as an artist, new work came to me through two or three […]
Lori Ellison: Untitled, ink on paper, 8.5 x 11″, 2006 (Photo: McKenzie Fine Art) Lori Ellison: Untitled, ink on paper, 8.5 x 11″, 2012 (Photo: McKenzie Fine Art) Over the nine years of writing this blog, I have returned frequently to the theme of staying open, vulnerable and accessible in the art making process. The […]