Maybe it is because Harvard has planetary status in the Boston/Cambridge area, but it seems everyone is still talking about J. K. Rowling’s commencement address last week. Her topic–“The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination” is delicious just in its titular power. But the speech (which you can read or watch at […]
Art/Spiritual
Admit Them, Admit Them
Thank you, collective mind. And in this particular case, thank you friend Sally Reed. In response to my posting below entitled Talisman, Sally sent me the following: This brings to mind another less acute, but still astute, evocation of grief as a dog. It’s by Denise Levertov. Talking to Grief Ah, Grief, I should not […]
Clearing the Decks
During a time when I am still sitting in the silence—in the thinking and feeling rather than the doing, making, manifesting—my thoughts have been drawn to examples of significant disruptions in the flow of artistic output. Not just my own, but others. Probably the standout example from the recent past that is pointed to most […]
Gimme Shelter
How refreshing to find an art “feel good” counter story in the New York Times, especially one that offers pre-coverage of the ever contentious, rhetoric-infested, “I can’t wait to hate it” Whitney Biennial. This piece made me feel hope, like someone opened a window in a stale, stuffy room with tired furniture and too many […]
A Longing from Deep in The Bones
Ever since it was first published in 1998, Uncontrollable Beauty: Toward a New Aesthetics, edited by Bill Beckley with David Shapiro has been my primary text. This collection of essays brings together the thinking of artists and critics on the greatly misunderstood (and much maligned) topic of beauty. Uncontrollable Beauty embodies many of the reasons […]
The Object of My Affection
Here’s a midwinter diversion for you. From Slow Muse friend and frequent commenter, Elatia Harris: 3 Quarks Daily is known as one of the blogosphere’s more cerebral haunts, and it occurred to me that habitues of 3QDistan might know a great deal about being broken-hearted by a poem, a song, a building, or most of […]
Tang Dynasty Wisdom
Cold Mountain 3, by Brice Marden Here’s a thoughtful and provoking passage from one of my favorite blogs, Joe Felso: Ruminations. He references Han-shan, the same poet who inspired Brice Marden’s Cold Mountain series of paintings, who feels similar in spirit to my earlier posting on Master Linji, also from the Tang Dynasty: I wonder […]
The Power of the Question
I received a book in the mail as a gift from a friend* I haven’t seen for some time: Nothing to Do, Nowhere to Go: Waking Up to Who You Are, by Thich Nhat Hanh. As is often the way these things go, I opened it up to a few passages that had deep resonance […]
The Democracy of the Imagination
Style and substance may represent a class system. The imagination is a democracy. –From The Triggering Town by poet and teacher Richard Hugo I love this book. Opening it up to a random page before heading to the studio is to find a heartwarming wink, an approving nod, a much-needed nugget. It is at times […]
Taking Art Private
I think that art should be allowed to go private. It should be a matter of one-on-one. In the last few years, the public has only heard of art when it makes record prices at auction, or is stolen, or allegedly withheld from its rightful owners. We need to concentrate more on art that sits […]