ABOUT GWARLINGO
Contemporary art, poetry, film, music, design, and performance don’t have to be intimidating or quarantined behind the walls of academia. There is a lot of exciting art out there, but the trouble is knowing where to look. Gwarlingo highlights some of the most inventive work being made today in contemporary art. It’s also a place where creative people can connect, explore, and share challenges, ideas, and resources. Gwarlingo is different because of its personal perspective, accessibility, and unique curation. It offers you quality over quantity, clarity over clutter, and stories over sound bytes. At Gwarlingo, we share real conversations with real artists about ideas and process, as well as some of our own exciting discoveries. Our goal is to bring you the best work, period—regardless of its genre or popularity, while also having some fun along the way. The site has been featured on NHPR, Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish, RISDxyz magazine, etc. And the name? Gwarlingo is a Welsh word for the rushing sound a grandfather clock makes before it chimes. Gwarlingo is all about resonance. Enjoy.
Michelle Aldredge: Founder & Creative Director
Michelle is a designer, writer, and the founder of Gwarlingo. In 1999 she traded the sprawl and traffic of Atlanta, Georgia, for a rural life in New Hampshire, where she cared for injured hawks, owls, and eagles at a raptor rehab center and assisted artists at MacDowell, the nation’s oldest artist retreat. Currently she and her business partner, Corwin Levi, help individuals and businesses with branding, print, and web design from Gwarlingo Studio, the design branch of this site located in the 18th century mill village of Harrisville. In 2015 Michelle was named a “Top 100 Artist, Innovator, Creative” by Origin magazine. She is a 2017 recipient of the Wampler Art Professorship at James Madison University and the co-author of Mirror Mirrored, a limited-edition art book that combines Grimms’ fairy tales with vintage illustration remixes and the work of contemporary artists like Kiki Smith, Carrie Mae Weems, and Amy Cutler. Michelle currently serves as Vice Chair for the Historic Harrisville Board of Trustees.
CORWIN LEVI: MANAGING EDITOR
Corwin is a visual artist working in design, illustration, bookmaking, curating, and writing.
His passion in writing is to as often as not make connections with people and things that haven’t been written about before, or at least not deeply lately.
As an artist, he has attended over twenty artist residencies. Fellowships include the Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program, Ucross Foundation for the Arts, the Millay Colony, Elsewhere, the Wurlitzer Foundation, and the H.A. Rey Center. He has also have lived in eighteen cities across twelve states.
Along with Michelle, he co-created Mirror Mirrored: An Artists’ Edition of 25 Grimms’ Tales and contributed interior illustrations to Robert Bly’s More than True: The Wisdom of Fairy Tales.
He has been a regular writer for Art New England, painted a 175-foot-long mural across from MASS MoCA, has exhibited in and curated shows across America, and cofounded the design firm Gwarlingo Studio.
He is currently remixing vintage game boards and making a book from illustrations of Alice in Wonderland.
Also, he loves cats. Even the ones he’s allergic to.
JAMES CREWS: SUNDAY POEM EDITOR 2021–22
James Crews is the author of four collections of poetry: The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment. He is also the editor of two anthologies: Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, The Sun, and have been reprinted in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry and featured on Tracy K. Smith’s podcast, The Slowdown. James teaches at SUNY-Albany and lives with his husband in Vermont.
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