Gwarlingo is 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. Our articles offer 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. Browse articles by category or just pull up the most recent in the list below.
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Art
Susan Marie Dopp’s Lacewing
Susan Marie Dopp's Lacewing exhibit at the Roswell Museum is an enchanting collection of abstract, organic sculptures bathed in colored light that both joyfully celebrate life and poignantly meditate on aging and death.
Sarah Williams’ Pretty Rural
Walking into Sarah Williams' show "Pretty Rural" at Andrea Schwartz in San Francisco, viewers are teleported across the country by her newest paintings. Specifically, they are transported into a dark winter evening complete with Christmas lights in Brookfield, Missouri, where Williams grew up.
Amy Casey’s Teeter Totter in Hotter Water
Amy Casey's solo exhibition at Chicago's Zg Gallery, Teeter Totter in Hotter Water, is full of paintings that capture our current crises. Her detailed acrylic paintings include exploding buildings, houses falling into the sea, teetering towers that barely stand up, and constructions reclaimed by nature—in environments that one could easily assume are post-apocalyptic.
Flower Fragments, Full of Love
One windy afternoon, as I was walking through a cemetery in Eastport, Maine, something caught my eye where the cemetery's edge receded into the woods.
A Small, Polychrome Palace
Just down the street, I stumbled on this unique piece of ...art? Graffiti? Visual goodness.
Louie and Baccus in 1968
I recently had the pleasure to be reminded that beautiful artworks are not the sole domain of museums and galleries. Finding myself in a friend's basement, I was introduced to this gorgeous, fantastical painting by her half-uncle leaning against the wall. Shimmering shades of gold paint capture Walter James Lewis's ("Louie's") self-portrait from 1968.
The Power of the Pen
There's something singularly special about a pencil or a pen resting in our hand. It is a direct vehicle to channel our words, drawings, plans, ideas, and any other number of wonders residing in our heads. With that in mind, it's not unusual to see writers' and artists' graves covered in creative implements that visitors have deposited.
Found Painting No. 102.7 (Alexandria, Virginia)
Walking through Alexandria, Virginia's Clermont Natural Park, park, a bit away from the playgrounds and baseball fields, you'll stumble on a singular underpass.
The Pictures We Leave Behind
Artists are maybe uniquely situated for the posthumous book treatment because the images do so much of the talking, as opposed to a traditional biography.
The Beauty of Boxes
Earlier this week, as I struggled to open a package from the mail, I sighed and wished that boxes were better designed. But with it being almost Thanksgiving here in America, I knew the stores would already be full of Christmas wares. And, accordingly, some very interesting boxes!
Malevich Moves!
Untitled by Liubov Popova (1917) / Suprematist Composition (blue rectangle over the red beam) by Kazimir Malevich (1916) / Proun GK by El Lissitzky (c. 1922) Please scroll down after reading this article to view the videos mentioned therein. Part of my joy [...]
Tom’s Tombstone
At Cleveland's Riverside Cemetery, you’ll find the grave of Thomas “TOM” Joseph Baran. Well, technically just the headstone as Tom is presumably still alive and kicking. An engraved headstone speaks (literally, it is written on) of art and aesthetics, noting Cimabue and Giotto. It also has pictures of Superman; Jesus (many Jesuses); a corner devoted to a beloved poodle Clare; spends some time on Hegel’s concept of Geist; and it contains several telescopes and countless other wonders.
I Spy With My Little Eye…
Maybe as a child you played the game “I spy with my little eye…“? Or on road trips, the license plate game? Or the letter game (things always get stuck on Q and Z)? I have fond memories of childhood trips driving across America whiling away the hours with things like these. I still love to wander, whether in the car or by foot, and am always on the lookout for new visual information...
The Fire Hydrants of Taos, NM
What is the appeal of typologies? (Here, fire hydrants of Taos, New Mexico.) Is it bringing things across geography and squishing them together visually? Is it the delight of seeking and finding? Or maybe it is the joy at human inventiveness within specific limitations?
A Paint By (Only) Numbers
Erasure art is a special pleasure. Different from collage, which often assembles things from various sources, the act of making art through erasing depends on the form of the original to (some extent) staying intact. This week, we wondered what would happen if we erased the lines of a paint by number.