Agamya 2 “May your imagination know The grace of perfect danger.” Those are lines are from the poem, For the Artist at the Start of Day, by John O’Donohue, the warmhearted Irish poet and former priest who died in his sleep at just 52 seven years ago. Writing this poem for anyone who spends their […]
Author: deborahbarlow
The Strange and the Familiar
“Lajiva”, from a new series In his essay, The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism, Jonathan Lethem writes, “It’s not a surprise that some of today’s most ambitious art is going about trying to make the familiar strange.” That line is a reference to the 18th century poet Novalis whose early romanticism was captured in his […]
- Aesthetics
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The Self-amusing, Musing Mind
Recently completed: Himnae, 42 x 84″ We all have a favorite go to distraction we turn to when things aren’t flowing (or don’t seem to be, which is a common deception.) Books, especially really great ones, are my Balm of Gilead. And right now, for whatever reason, I have a huge stack of new and […]
Pitch Perfect
Agnes Martin (Photo: Mildred Tolbert) From the newly released Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art, by Nancy Princenthal: Martin’s mature paintings (she destroyed most of her early work) are incontrovertibly right, in the sense that they convince us that not a single preliminary decision or incident of execution could have been changed without damage. Composed […]
The Journey is One-Way
Sarah Manguso, photographed at home in Los Angeles. Photograph: Barry J. Holmes for the Observer I read Alice Gregory‘s review of Ongoingness: The End of a Diary, by Sarah Manguso in the New Yorker a few months ago. I knew I would love this slim slip of a book, which I do. Gregory’s review is […]
- Creativity
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Trusting the Weir
Native American weir Consciousness is a weir. What gets snagged in the watery carapace of life flowing through us often has meaning that is very particular and specific. It’s a bit like dreams, those cinematic wonders that are designed for and about only us. The wisdom that gets caught in our consciousness weir is a […]
- Aesthetics
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China, in Fragments
The only way I can imagine discussing my time in China is from a few small side glances. The incomprehensible immensity of the country, the complexity of its 6,000 year history, the speed with which everything that cannot adapt to China’s streamlined, extraordinary collective vision of the future is being torn down, discarded and abandoned—I […]
Beyond the Parrots
The headline in the Parrot’s Weekly read: Titantic Sunk. No Parrots Hurt. –Katharine Whitehorn, quoted in The Artful Universe by John D. Barrow Oh the power of a point of view…Parrots may not be your thing, but something is. Washington’s poet laureate Elizabeth Austen speaks to our proclivity to narrowbanding in her piece, How poetry […]
Behind, Beyond, Beneath: Scaling the Continuum
A few installation shots from my recent show at the Morris Graves Museum in Eureka California, Behind, Beyond, Beneath: Scaling the Continuum. At the opening event on Saturday night, over 800 people came through the museum. I met some extraordinary people and had a terrific evening. Special thanks: A stellar team and museum staff—Jemima Harr, […]
Evocative Objects
‘Ghost Dance Dress’: Southern Arapaho artist, Oklahoma, circa 1890 (Photo: Joshua Ferdinand) The best way I know of dealing with the scale and scope of the Metropolitan Museum is to walk through and let the objects find you. Art critic Michael Kimmelman did his own version of the “evocation stroll” in the company of numerous […]