Porthole glimpses into the complexity of layers under the surface of the ice and snow Megan Hustad‘s memoir of a childhood as the daughter of evangelical missionaries, More Than Conquerors, brings her insightful mind to bear on more than Christian theology and the usual themes found in a Bildungsroman. In a conversation recounted near the […]
Multifariousness
News this week: Scientists have found the first evidence that briny water may flow on the surface of Mars during the planet’s summer months. Photograph: Nasa/JPL-Caltech/ University of Arizona/Reuters Perhaps it would be fair to say that I am on an analog mission. Much like NASA’s efforts of the same name (“conducted on earth, in […]
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Practical Virtues
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 […]
The Light Within: Opening Reception at Brooklyn Workshop Gallery
Thank you to everyone who joined in at the opening reception of my show, “The Light Within”, at Brooklyn Workshop Gallery last Thursday, September 17. The paintings were beautifully echoed in the ceramic work by Amani Ansari. It was a great night. Special thanks to the amazing BWG team—Martine Bisagni, Amani Ansari and Iviva Olenick, […]
Essential Unknowability
Ghostly: ‘Untitled’, 1977, is on show in Agnes Martin’s Tate Modern retrospective Photo: Agnes Martin / Artists Rights Society Some would say there has been enough written about Agnes Martin to last us for a while. Her show at the Tate Modern (up through October 11) has produced many reviews, plus two new books about […]
Art as a Well Planned Crime
One corner in my new show, “The Light Within”, at Brooklyn Workshop Gallery (September 5 – October 11.) The combination of metallic surfaces on the series to the right (“Silma 1-4”) and the chalky intensity of “Kannakam” on the gorgeously textured wall on the left pleases my eye. How to talk about the visual without […]
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Permeability
Somewhere between what is hidden and what is seen: A matchbook found at the bottom of a box of paints from my days on the Lower East Side in the 1970s. In Jane Hirshfield‘s slim but wisdom-packed book, Hiddenness, Uncertainty, Surprise: Three Generative Energies of Poetry, she includes a poem written in 1000 CE by […]
Bulldoggity
Up close and personal on a painting, seen from an angled view Bulldog behavior, getting a hold of something and holding on especially if you’re not sure exactly what it is—worrying it, wiggling it, maybe throwing it up in the air and chasing it, not letting it get away but not pinning it down either. […]
Brooklyn Show
Marae 2, 16 x 16″, mixed media on wood panel I am having a show of recent paintings at Brooklyn Workshop Gallery in Carroll Gardens during September and October. Curator Martine Bisagni has titled the show, “The Light Within,” choosing works where light appears to be emerging from within the painting rather than sourced externally. […]
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Playing From the Other Side of the Score
Skeepa, from a new series The New Yorker‘s Joan Acocella recently reviewed Playing Scared: A History and Memoir of Stage Fright by Sara Solovitch. Stagefright. Being a visual artist comes with plenty of baggage, but this isn’t one that is on my list of potential afflictions. Meanwhile this is a disabling condition that affects a […]