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.
The Power of the Empty Page
For a very long time, I was obsessed with beautiful little notebooks and sketchbooks—Moleskins, Field Guides, Composition Books, you name it. The potential of an empty book is enormously satisfying. It sits waiting to be filled with art, ideas, to-do lists, poetry, particular projects, or anything else you can come up with.
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.
An Unfinished Paint by Number
When you wander across an unfinished paint by number for sale, what are you to make of it?
The Sunday Poem: “I Would Like” by Jane Hirshfield
We often move through life with preconceived notions about what will affect us, and what will make us the person we hope to become. Yet I see Jane Hirshfield’s “What I Like” as a full awakening to all the ways we are touched by each day, with its many chance encounters and so-called “mistakes.”
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.
The Sunday Poem: “For the Korean Grandmother on Sunset Boulevard” by Christine Kitano
As Christine Kitano shows in her moving poem, if we’re present enough to another person, we can actually become attuned to what they’re feeling. In fact, even the act of paying deep attention to a stranger can create a sense of connection, no matter how fleeting.
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.