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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Greatest Hits
Setting Creative Goals for the New Year? Let Fear Be Your Guide
Bill Viola, Catherine's Room, 2001. Video installation. (Photo © Bill Viola courtesy tate.org) Resolutions It's the New Year, which means that many of us are taking stock of our personal habits, both good and bad, and resolving to do better. But how many things on this year's list [...]
Daily Rituals: How Artists Create (And Avoid Creating) Their Art
"In my personal life, if I don't have a project, I don't have any discipline," says performance artist Marina Abramovic. Discipline and daily ritual were one of the subjects of her 2002 piece The House with the Ocean View. Abramovic spent 12 straight days living on three open platforms in [...]
I Never Knew How Blue Blueness Could Be: Maggie Nelson’s Bluets
Helena Almeida, Inhabited Painting, 1975.© Helena Almeida, courtesy Serralves Foundation Collection, Oporto, Portugal One of the joys of Gwarlingo is meeting art lovers from around the world. Sigrun Hodne and I found each other early in Gwarlingo's short history, and though she lives in Norway, and I [...]
The Sunday Poem : Gregory Orr’s River Inside the River
Poet Gregory Orr reading at the 2012 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival (Photo by Michelle Aldredge) With his new book, River Inside the River: Poems, Gregory Orr set a high bar for himself. His intention: to write three lengthy pieces that combine the intensity of lyric poetry with [...]
Outsiders No More: An Exceptional Collection of Outsider Art Will Have a New Home in Philadelphia
Bill Traylor, Runaway Goat Cart, c. 1939-42. Opaque watercolor and graphite on cream card, 14 x 22 inches. (Photo by Will Brown courtesy the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection) "I painted pictures in the gutter," the African-American artist Purvis Young once remarked, "and [...]
The Sunday Poem : James Crews
James Crews’ poetry collection, The Book of What Stays, is full of evocative landscapes and secret lives. There is the old woman in Chernobyl who refuses to leave, ice fishing with Patsy Cline, and the moving poems about artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres.
The Polaroids of Andrei Tarkovsky : The Mystery of Everyday Life
Polaroid by Andrei Tarkovsky from the book Instant Light: Tarkovsky Polaroids from Thames and Hudson. “Never try to convey your idea to the audience," said Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, "---it is a thankless and senseless task. Show them life, and they’ll find within themselves the means to [...]
The Cleveland Art Scene: Be Prepared to Be Surprised
Barry Underwood, Archimedes. This installation was created at the construction site for the new Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland. (Photo © Barry Underwood. Click to Enlarge) As New York artists search for the next affordable, urban frontier in Bushwick and Queens, a renaissance of sorts is taking [...]
Sonic Artist Bruce Odland: Money Makes Noise, A Water Tank Creates Art
The Tank in Rangely, Colorado, is considered one of the sonic marvels of the world within a certain circle of composers and sound artists. (Photo courtesy Friends of the Tank) Is there a connection between noise and money? Which sounds are healing to us as [...]
“Naughty Nun” Mary Johnson on Existential Crisis & Mother Teresa
Sister Donata (Mary Johnson) with Mother Teresa at her first profession of vows, in Rome, June 8, 1980 When Mary Johnson left Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity after 20 years of service, she had to learn to pump her own gasoline, to [...]
The Epiphany of Dance: Wim Wenders’ Stunning Farewell to Pina Bausch
A still from Wim Wenders' Pina (Photo © Neue Road Movies GmbH. A Sundance Selects Release. Click to Enlarge) Timing is everything, particularly in the case of Wim Wenders' film Pina. Wenders, director of the critically acclaimed Wings of Desire and Buena Vista Social Club, first saw Pina [...]
The Life and Art of Horace Pippin
Horace Pippin, Mr. Prejudice, 1943. Oil on canvas, 18 x 14" (Image courtesy of The Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Matthew Moore) Last summer I was strolling through the galleries of the new Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, surrounded by the exquisite paintings of Matisse, Modigliani, [...]
Envisioning the Future with Yo La Tengo, R. Buckminster Fuller, & Sam Green
Sam Green narrating his live documentary The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston (Photo by Sam Allison) "I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am [...]
A Day in the Life of a Homeless Piano: A Short Film by Anthony Sherin
One of the images from Anthony Sherin's Solo, Piano - N.Y.C. Since creating its controversial pay wall in 2011, The New York Times has continued to explore new ways of merging storytelling with technology. Their recent multi-media piece "Snowfall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek" is an impressive glimpse at [...]
The Complete Creative Part 4 : Christian McEwen on the Art of Happiness
"What has been planted is the I want! I want! of advertising, which thrives on envy and dissatisfaction. Advertising tells us that happiness can be bought if we will only put our minds to it." (William Blake, "I Want! I Want!" from For Children: The Gates of Paradise, 1793. [...]