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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Recent Articles
Find a Rock and Make a Wish
Strolling up the chilly Maine coast (and into Canada), you might start looking for seashells just as you would on many other beaches—but then you quickly notice an unusual proliferation of stripes. Stripes… on rocks. Big rocks, small rocks, in-between rocks… all decorated by a stunning variety of zips.
Where Does All the Art Go?
There have been artists who comb thrift stores for hidden treasures and sometimes you hear about a lost masterpiece found at a yard sale—but what about art with a slightly less glorious trajectory? We found this once-loved painting (it was framed after all) at a giveaway table at the local dump, as if its owner saw it not worth keeping nor worth finding a home for.
The Beauty of Book Spines
With the advent of online bookstores, the cover of a book has become our first visual interaction with unknown tomes. Still, though, in bookstores and libraries and our friends' shelves at dinner parties, we are most often greeted by the spine of a book. It is, despite that familiarity, maybe a bit neglected as a design form—more like the edge of a cassette tape case than the front of a record sleeve.
An Unfinished Paint by Number
When you wander across an unfinished paint by number for sale, what are you to make of it?
9-Note Register: America’s Empty Signs
One type of American roadside signs is those that have fallen into disrepair or become partially disassembled such that where there was once a sign, all that remains is a window to the world behind it. The “frame” of the sign, which previously kept some name, symbol, or slogan, now holds the space behind it—a shifting picture.
9-Note Register: Reimagining Velázquez’s Las Meninas
Described as the "theology of painting," it has been said about the painting Las Meninas that "if ever a painter wrought a miracle of illusion with brush and pigment that painter was Velazquez in his Las Meninas." In today's 9-Note Register, enjoy nine pieces that pay homage to Velasquez's master painting in this week's Nine Note Register.
Dan Mills: What’s in a Name? (The Secret Lives of Maps)
Dan Mills is, in addition to being a very talented painter, a wealth of piercing information: 31 states are named after indigenous words, one in 113 people worldwide are displaced from their homes, one in five Syrians are refugees, Maine is the state with the smallest number of incarcerated people per capita in America yet is only the median for this statistic among countries worldwide, and New Hampshire is considered the “most free” state.
Jennie Harbour, Where Have You Gone?
One of the most beautiful and contemporary wonder tale books I’ve seen, My Favourite Book of Fairy Tales, was published near the end of the Golden Age of illustration in 1921. It is illustrated by an exceptionally talented artist, acclaimed in her own lifetime, who history has transformed into an elusive mystery: Jennie Harbour.
Six Books’ Stories with Denise Markonish
MASS MoCA curator Denise Markonish shares her stories of experiences with selected books featuring Nick Cave, Jen Bervin, Mary Ruefle, Barbara Bourland, Carl Belz, J.M. Arms Sheldon, and Camille Flammarion.
Afton Love: Through Rocks
Afton Love’s artwork opens up the possibility of self-examination. “We cannot know the fullness of the rock, but we can strive to know ourselves better and to live a meaningful life,” says Love. “By considering that there are things we do not and will never know, we grasp how small we are, and upon pushing into that idea we realize that we are vast as well.”
Book from the Ground: Point to Point by Xu Bing
100 Word Book Review: Book from the Ground by Xu Bing. In the 1920s, a group of scholars in Vienna tried devising a universal picture language called isotype. Today, Shigetaka Kurita has perhaps achieved that vision with emojis. And in 2012 Xu Bing wrote a book without words from emojis and other contemporary symbols.
Jamie Franklin’s Collection of Self-Taught Art
Jamie Franklin has been the curator at the Bennington Museum in Vermont for almost 15 years. In that time, he has also assembled a personal collection of art from around the world ranging from calligraphic drawings to art created in prisons and psychiatric hospitals—a collection one might label “outsider art.” But Franklin says, “I don't like the term outsider art. There are art worlds; there is no Art World. There are artists working in many contexts, and many never get acclaim.”
An Invitation to Dinner, from Roswell with Love
Tucked away on the outskirts of Roswell, NM, far away from the daily bustle of the alien museum, lies the Roswell Artist in Residence Program. The residency hosts six artists a year and each, near the end of their residency, has a solo exhibition. Each exhibition is followed by a dinner, which is prefaced by a handmade invitation from the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art's Director Nancy Fleming. She has been making these special invitations since 2004, and here is a peek into these small treasures.
Joseph Keckler, Interdimensional Traveler
I have a copy of a brand new book, Dragon at the Edge of a Flat World, sitting on the edge of my desk. Inside it is inscribed: "Hope we stay in the same reality. Love, Joseph." At the time, I did not fully appreciate the extent to which Joseph Keckler, the author, is a dimension-traveling wizard. But I already had inklings.
Babel’s Bricks: The Power of Play
Remember, as a kid, when you played with wooden blocks, Erector sets, Lincoln Logs, and Legos? Artists have continued to nurture the impulse of putting parts together to make a more wonderful whole. At Gallery 51's latest show, Babel's Bricks, twenty artists playfully interpret the idea of artwork as building block.