Self-portraits by actor and theatre director André Gregory (Photo courtesy Atlas Theatre Company) We gathered around André Gregory like children eagerly assembling around the librarian for story hour. André perched in a picture window inside Winsome Brown and Claude Arpels' fashionable Tribeca apartment. Behind him, the sun was setting over [...]
Poet Matthew Zapruder and Fiction writer Amy Hempel after their reading at the Juniper Summer Writing Institute (Photo by Ryan Williams courtesy the Juniper Summer Writing Institute) A few weeks ago I had a chance to meet writers Matthew Zapruder and Amy Hempel for the first time. The event [...]
Stills from The Clock by Christian Marclay (Photo courtesy arkitipintel.com) (NOTE: This review is from the summer of 2012. Marclay's The Clock is on view at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City through January 21, 2013, with a special 24-hour screening on New Year's [...]
Rachel Perry Welty, Lost in My Life (receipts), 2011. Pigmented ink print, edition of 3. 91.25 x 60 (Photo courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery) Rachel Perry Welty, Lost in My Life (price tags), 2009. Pigmented ink print, edition of 3. 91.25 x [...]
I'll never forget the first time I saw James McNeill Whistler's Nocturne in Black and Gold. I was still in high school when I stumbled across the painting in an art history book and was immediately stunned. I had never seen night captured so perfectly in an artwork [...]
When you turn on the tap in your kitchen, do you ever think about where the water pouring out of your faucet comes from? Do you ever consider the fact that a simple thing like clean drinking water requires an elaborate system of pipes, reservoirs, water tanks, [...]
Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for miseries and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries. -- Blaise Pascal Our day begins with good intentions. Feeling rested and focused, we set our priorities. We resolve that today will be different [...]
"I always thought the novel, with it’s ability to show lives in their full emotional and social complexity was the best medium for understanding and illuminating the world. I thought it more important than any non-fiction I could write as an academic, or journalist, or 'expert'; It seems an almost [...]
The best link in this morning's Twitter feed came from Christopher Jobson over at Colossal. Last month the Copenhagen Philharmonic pulled off an audacious stunt---performing Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt on a crowded, moving metro train for unsuspecting passengers. The flash mob was created in collaboration with Radio Klassisk. All music [...]
When Mary Ruefle's book Melody: The Story of a Child arrived in the mail several weeks ago, I could smell the musty, antique pages and the faint whiff of stale cigarette smoke before I even opened the package. The beige envelope arrived by U.S. Postal Service, without insurance and [...]
When I was a girl, I was fearless. I was always falling out of trees, off of speeding bicycles, into muddy creeks. Once, I was bitten by an angry goose. I was knocked on the head accidentally with a baseball. A rock. And a basketball. On one hot [...]
Note: This is a guest post by Riley MacPhee, a regular contributor to the Johnston Architects Blog. Johnston Architects PLLC is a small architectural firm focusing on creative, innovative, and sustainable design throughout the West. You can see their designs and learn more about [...]
The first time I saw a Peter Hutton film was at a screening at The MacDowell Colony several years ago when Peter was in residence. A small group of us gathered in the Colony library to watch Study of a River. A 16mm projector hummed over our shoulders [...]
Artist Mary Goldthwaite-Gagne studies "Capturing Resonance," a piece made of chain-link fencing on view at the deCordova Museum. (Photo by Michelle Aldredge) On my recent visit to the deCordova Museum, one of the artworks I found most compelling was "Capturing Resonance" by sculptor [...]
Today's Sunday Poem, "Tornado Child" by Kwame Dawes, is one of many powerful poems in Dawes' book Wisteria, Twilight Songs from the Swamp Country. The poems in this collection are based on Dawes' conversations with the elders of Sumter, South Carolina, who shared their memories of growing up [...]
In 1965 singer Bob Dylan was burned out after a grueling tour; he was sick of reporters' questions and tired of performing the same old songs. Dylan told his manager that he was quitting music for good and proceeded to disappear. He squirreled himself away in a cabin in Woodstock. [...]
After an Illness, Walking the Dog Wet things smell stronger, and I suppose his main regret is that he can sniff just one at a time. In a frenzy of delight he runs way up the sandy road— scored by freshets after five days of rain. [...]
Ai Weiwei's Blog: Writings, Interviews, and Digital Rants, 2006-2009 has been good company the past few days. Between 2006 and 2009, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei used his blog as a daily notebook where he posted thousands of photos, documented his artistic practice and personal [...]
Winter has finally arrived in New Hampshire. We're expecting about a foot of snow here in the Monadnock region by the time the storm ends Thursday evening. There hasn't been a single opportunity for snowshoeing this year, which I've missed. Snowshoeing has been on my mind...This week I noticed [...]
"Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog," says the writer E.B. White. "Few people are interested and the frog dies of it." It's been years since I've read White's classic books Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little. I had forgotten how funny the author could be until yesterday, when [...]
In the West, Hiroshi Teshigahara is best known as the avant-garde director of the 1964 film Woman in the Dunes--an erotic, surreal film that was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Teshigahara's haunting shots of sand, skin, [...]
Today is Valentine's Day--a day for candy hearts, sentimental cards, flowers, garish lingerie, and romantic dinners for two. It's another holiday aimed at consumers, a holiday especially tortuous for my friends who are "single and still looking." So today, out of respect to the singles of the [...]
This Sunday I have a humorous, poignant poem by Naomi Shihab Nye to share. Nye's found poem, which is comprised entirely of statements made by her young son, is a reminder that we're surrounded by comic, inventive language on a daily basis, but that we often [...]
Edward Hopper, Automat, 1927. Oil on canvas, 28 in × 36, Des Moines Art Center. This week a reader sent me a copy of "How to Feel Miserable As An Artist." This marvelous list was created by illustrator Keri Smith and is part of The Artist's Survival Kit, which [...]
Kim Uchiyama's studio is located on a quiet, tree-lined side-street in Lower Manhattan. On a crisp fall day in mid-November over tea and brunch, I visited Kim in her Tribeca apartment. We spent the day looking at art and discussing her new painting series, her artistic development and [...]