Angelina Pwerle, Bush Plum, 2005. Pwerle is one of the artists featured in the exhibit, “Marking the Infinite.” (Photo: Bett Gallery) Marking the Infinite: Contemporary Women Artists from Aboriginal Australia, is an exhibit that is making its tour of the U.S. before finishing up at the Phillips Collection in DC in June, 2018. The catalog […]
The Small and the Quiet
James Siena At James Siena‘s show at Pace Gallery, the back room is bursting with drawings that have “leaky margins,” where the mark making steps out beyond the paper’s edge and onto the matt and the frame. I was so delighted to see these. They have a quiet and relentless defiance that feels almost subversive. […]
Clew: A Rich and Rewarding Disorientation
Clew: A Rich and Rewarding Disorientation opened at the Lamont Gallery at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter New Hampshire on Friday. Clew is a collaborative installation I participated in with sound artists Jon Sakata and Jung Mi Lee, poet Todd Hearon and curator Lauren O’Neal. It is currently on view at the Lamont Gallery at […]
Clew: In Process
Clew: A Rich and Rewarding Disorientation, opens at the Lamont Gallery in Exeter, New Hampshire, on Friday, January 20. This is the completion of an 18 month long exploration of ideas with collaborators Todd Hearon, Jung Mi Lee, Lauren O’Neal and Jon Sakata. I don’t think any of us imagined that this would culminate in […]
Clew: A Collaboration
Estana 1, 36 x 36″, mixed media on canvas Clew: A Rich and Rewarding Disorientation Deborah Barlow, Todd Hearon, Jung Mi Lee and Jon Sakata Lamont Gallery Phillips Exeter Academy January 20 – April 15, 2017 Opening Reception: Friday, January 20, 5-7pm Gallery Talk: Saturday, January 21, 10am For more information about the collaboration and […]
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Makers Unite
My granddaughter Siena drawing in the Rothko room at the newly opened East Building of the National Gallery, Washington DC (Photo: Mona Wilcox) We have to help each other. That may sound trite, but it has come to mean a lot more to me over the last dark weeks. When my spirits flagged, I have […]
Bring on the Counter-Narratives
Fingersmith, at A.R.T. (Photo: A.R.T.) Counter-narratives become much needed palliatives when the storyline of daily life becomes poisonous. Watching the transition to a new regime of power in Washington is like a flashback to the most addled aspects of the 1950’s. As Thomas Friedman recently wrote in the New York Times, “There is actually something […]
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The Private and the Political
From Doris Salcedo’s Disremembered series. These sculptures are made with raw silk threads interspersed with more than 12,000 tiny, blackened needles. “Handwoven thread by thread and needle by needle, each delicately beautiful but menacing garment embodies a painstaking gesture of mourning.” (Detail) I’m not the only one stymied. Many of us are struggling with we […]
What We Can See, and What We Can’t
Earth rising as seen from the lunar surface via Apollo 8 (Photo: NASA/Bill Anders) Lessons learned from the last U.S. election cycle are still being processed and discussed. A big theme for me is just plain epistemological: How do you know what you know? The strange and the unreal took over somewhere in this process, […]
The Optimism of Uncertainty
Howard Zinn (Photo: History is a Weapon) What is left to be said? Ten days in, I have read hundreds of opinions about the outcome of the election, conversed with sympathetic friends and family, sought for ways to stay grounded in this increasingly surreal landscape we now share in the United States. For all the […]