Shadows on my studio wall When artist Robert Knafo wrote to request a studio interview with Robert Morris, this was the response he received back. Knafo describes this as the best No he ever received. “I love how he calmly shoots the art documentary cliches, holsters his gun, and walks away,” Knafo wrote. “Thank you […]
Shaping the Story
From “The Shape She Makes” at American Repertory Theater (Photo: American Rep Theater) Stories move in circles. They don’t move in straight lines. So it helps if you listen in circles. There are stories inside stories and stories between stories, and finding your way through them is as easy and as hard as finding your […]
Walking the Road
An angled view of a new piece, “Mangalat” Kathleen Kirk’s post, “Persistence and Patience”, is a thoughtful description of how she ended up, after several career explorations, being a poet. In her graceful telling, she describes her many forays into other creative fields—music, art, theater, teaching—but none of them evoked the necessary persistence and patience […]
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Brian Eno: Active Surrender
Brian Eno (Photo by Matthew Anker) A category of music referred to as “ambient”—made popular by musicians including Brian Eno, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, The Orb, Aphex Twin, Tangerine Dream, Popul Vuh—is often coupled with the music of the “holy minimalists”—Arvo Pärt, John Tavener, Henryk Górecki, Alan Hovhaness and Sofia Gubaidulina. Whether electronic or contemporary […]
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Direct Encounters
“Ekka,” a newly completed painting (33 x 47″). An art collector had this to say when she stopped by my studio recently: “Lately I have wanted to just quietly commune with a work of art. I am not interested in deciphering references or spending time getting the inside jokes. I just want to find a […]
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Everything Depends
Mar Jee 3, from a recent series I have been spending some time contemplating where working and mystery coalesce. Here are a few thoughts about that by way of some wise practitioners… Shaking the Tree Vine and branch we’re connected in this world of sound and echo, figure and shadow, the leaves contingent, roots pushing […]
Small is Beautiful
A display at the Museum of Innocence, titled “Istanbul‘s Streets, Bridges, Hills and Squares,” (Photo: Jackie Nickerson) Turkish author Orhan Pamuk (whose books include My Name is Red and Snow, among others) is an advocate of small museums (a topic I wrote about here.) We live in an era of mega-museums that work hard to […]
- Aesthetics
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Useful Space for Thought
Detail from one of my recent painting series, “Angaris” I recently found two statements about painting by Australian artist Helen Johnson that were very resonant for me. While Johnson’s work has identifiable content, her approach and attitudes are aligned with my work as a non representationalist. First, her description of painting from a roundtable about […]
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In Both But Neither
Boli (Photo: Brooklyn Museum) Bolis are abstract figures that are from the Bamana culture. The basic form, a bit like a simplified cow, is made from mud, eggs, chewed kola nuts, sacrificial blood, urine, honey, beer, vegetable fiber, and cow dung. The role of the boli is to regulate energy, whatever is moving from the […]
The Discipline to Discard
Sign post encountered on a hike in New Zealand Jim Collins is a business writer whose target audience is usually not visual artists. But wisdom has leaky margins and the best crosses the categories. In a recent essay Collins writes: A great piece of art is composed not just of what is in the final […]