Here at Gwarlingo I've been neglecting the musicians in recent weeks. I've been consumed with Irene, the secret gardens of Rockefeller Center, Jane Hirshfield's new book, poetry bombing, Barry Underwood's incredible landscape photographs, and these Japanese manhole covers, which have suddenly gone viral after being posted on Andrew Sullivan's The Dish [...]
Imagine for a moment an Ansel Adams photograph. Any Adams' image will do. What does it look like? Do you see a landscape in black and white? Is it in a frame? Is it small? Large? Is the image on a poster pinned to a wall or displayed above [...]
Of Yield and Abandon A muscular, thick-pelted woodchuck, created in yield, in abandon, lifts onto his haunches. Behind him, abundance of ferns, a rock wall’s coldness, never in sun, a few noisy grackles. Our eyes find shining beautiful because it reminds us of water. To say [...]
What if cities that have endured horrendous, wartime bombings could experience a different sort of "bombing"--one that would bolster the morale of its citizens, instead of breaking it? In my introductory article on street art, I discussed yarn bombing, a new type of graffiti art that is being championed [...]
Inhabitat has just published a short piece on Rockefeller Center's hidden rooftop gardens. The Center has been maintaining these gardens for the past 75 years, but public access to the gardens is a rare event. According to Inhabitat, the building's developer John R. Todd and architect Raymond Hood originally envisioned a [...]
In March of this year I had the opportunity to see the musician, writer, and artist Joseph Keckler perform to a packed house at MacDowell Downtown, The MacDowell Colony's free series of artist presentations and performances in downtown Peterborough, New Hampshire. The buzz in the room was palatable, and yet no [...]
One of the benefits of living in a rural place like New Hampshire is that interactions with wild animals occur on a daily basis. I see birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and insects when I'm hiking, commuting to work, or simply strolling around the yard. Wild turkeys, bears, grouse, moose, [...]
One of my favorite book discoveries this summer is Drainspotting by Remo Camerota. The book celebrates an array of fascinating manhole cover designs from Japan. According to Camerota, nearly 95% of the 1,780 municipalities in Japan have their very own customized manhole covers. The country has elevated this humble, practical object to its [...]
Paul Klee's Boat Soon it will be winter and soon a nightingale with a bandaged throat, a plum tree in bloom, and a white hill pushed up against the door. Illness arrives like Mozart, sits down at the black piano and its voice touches with a single note. [...]
Why is van Gogh's paint palette worth preserving? Lucy Davies, photography critic for the Telegraph, tackled this question in a blog post she wrote last year: "The daubs of raw pigment or the mixes left in position can be an intriguing index to the working method and the mind of [...]
The Blindfold I draw the curtains. The room darkens, but the mirror still reflects a crescent moon. I pull the crescent out, a rigid curve that softens [...]
On March 9, 2010 an artist named Sparrow Philips was convicted of defacing personal property in the Auckland District Court. The piece that got him arrested showed a man painting money over graffiti tags. According to Philips, “the money bags represent [ed] the money spent by the Auckland City [...]