Cover of Gillian Welch’s last recording, The Harrow and the Harvest Life has rhythms and frequencies. Lots of them. And as I get older I am increasingly sensitized to the need to pay attention to what those are. Time to consider biodynamic agriculture? I’d say we need to consider biodynamic living. Plowing through to a […]
Boston Common: All’s Well That Ends Well
Will LeBow as the King of France in All’s Well That Ends Well, now playing on the Boston Common Do not miss the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company‘s production of All’s Well That End’s Well, free on the Common through August 14. Last year’s production of Othello with Seth Gilliam and James Waterston (reviewed here) was spectacular […]
Leaving the Heavy Behind
The light in Canada Politics and art have been combined and comingled in the past, producing work that is powerful and provocative. Goya. Guernica. Beckmann. But that isn’t the case for me and my way of working. In fact mixing the two is a toxic brew. Over the last week I have had to conscientiously […]
Show Highlights: In and Around Boston
A few personal highlights from shows in and near Boston: Ursula von Rydingsvard, Ocean Floor, 1996, cedar, graphite, and intestines (Photo courtesy of the Artist and Galerie Lelong. Photograph by Andy Ryan) Ursula von Rydingsvard Andy Goldsworthy Kysa Johnson deCordova Museum Lincoln MA From the museum’s intro to Ursula von Rydingsvard: Ursula von Rydingsvard works […]
- Philosophy
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Weather Patterns
Skyline of the Wasatch Mountains in Salt Lake just after a cloudburst Yesterday I heard an interview with an American journalist on NPR. She has spent most of the last 8 years in Afghanistan reporting on the war. In the process she developed a deep affection for the country and its plight, so much so […]
Standing Alone: More on Solitude
The view of Coolidge Point near Manchester Massachusetts and home to my friend Laurel, a hermit artist extraordinaire. Being a 21st century Thoreauian is a singular stance. More on the theme of isolation, solitude, quiet (see the earlier post Where it Works.) Online artists and friends Walt Pascoe, Luke Storms and Holly Friesen directed me […]
- Art Making
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Where it Works
A shelf of visual stimulants in my studio The artistic value of hermiting and the need for isolation has been an ongoing theme on this blog, so of course I was intrigued reading Tony Perrottet‘s essay in the Sunday New York Times Book Review about writers, isolation—self-inflicted and otherwise—and the discipline needed to work. (Curiously, […]
Unvarnished
The pleasures of the minimal. Just the bare thing. Raw, open, essential. Unvarnished. Here are two minimal recent moments. One was indoors, at Carroll and Sons Gallery in Boston, and the other was the outdoors, in Utah. Damien Hoar De Galvan’s show, I Wish I had Something to Say, is like a cool drink in […]
Fetishists and Digitizers
Temple site at Mahabalipuram, India Many of us have been discussing James Gleick’s recent piece in the New York Times, Books and Other Fetish Objects which addresses the digitization projects that will move historical documents into the cloud, available anywhere and by anyone. Gleick is a bit impatient with the sentimental attachment that some have […]
- Aesthetics
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Unchained
Many of you have undoubtedly heard about the Chain Letter Show. The idea was a robust one—using the existing network of artists, create an international, artist-curated, pop up event at several locations around the world all at the same time. Ten artists were asked, and then they asked ten more, who then asked ten more. […]