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.
Art · Books · Design · Found · Greatest Hits · Inspiration · Interviews · Performance · Process · Recent · Sounds · Sunday Poem · Video & Film · Words
Process Articles
Ai Weiwei’s Little Black Book
Ai Weiwei with his new book Weiwei-isms, edited by Larry Warsh I didn't expect a publication that has been touted as one of the "Best Art Books of 2012" to stand just six inches tall and contain only two photographs. But as Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's new book [...]
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. [...]
Gwarlingo “Sells Out”…To You
(Photo taken in Copenhagen, Hovedstaden, DK. by Zephyrance via Flickr Commons) You're curious. Open-minded. Creative. You're an artist or arts lover who isn't afraid to be challenged. Gwarlingo, like the arts in general, is about seeing the world in a way we've never seen before. Whether it's [...]
Chuck Close, Alice Munro, & Jack White on Creativity & Constraint
"I can remember very well writing 'Thanks for the Ride' because my first baby was lying in the crib beside me...I was twenty-two."(Photo: Alice Munro by Derek Shapton) The Challenges of Motherhood Alice Ann Laidlaw was born in the rural town of Wingham, Ontario, the daughter of a [...]
Writer Christian McEwen on Creativity and Slowing Down
Every day we're faced with the decision of how and where to focus our attention. Sustained attention may be the most endangered resource in our modern age. We often forget that we have a choice about how we spend our time, as well as how we use technology. No one [...]
The Complete Creative Part 1 : How “If-Only Syndrome” Derails Us As Artists
A ballerina by British street artist Banksy (Photo courtesy banksy.co.uk) When Gwarlingo readers give me feedback, I listen. You've been telling me that you'd like to see more articles about process and the challenges of being an artist. I've appreciated your emails and comments. Today, I'm excited [...]
Being André Gregory : Before and After Dinner
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 [...]
Amy Hempel & Matthew Zapruder : Lessons from the Writing Life
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 [...]
Receipts, Email, Bread Tags, Styrofoam : Rachel Perry Welty Transforms Life’s Daily Clutter into Art
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 [...]
Learning to Look : Whistler, Fireworks, and a New Way of Seeing
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 [...]
The Art of Focus : 5 Ways to Free Yourself from Digital Dependency
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 [...]
A Sunday Poem Exclusive : The Debut of Mary Ruefle’s Erasure “Melody”
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 [...]
The Art of Taking Risks : 13 Years, 3500 Artists, 7 Memorable Lessons
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 [...]
Writer Lewis Hyde : All Creative and Inventive Minds Are Not Simply Solitary
Lewis Hyde is a rare breed of writer---a contemporary poet, philosopher, and essayist in the tradition of Thoreau, Emerson, and Czeslaw Milosz. Hyde's first book, The Gift, which attempts to reconcile the value of creative work with the demands of the market economy, is a revered text [...]
Flimmaker Peter Hutton : It’s Not About the Pyrotechnics, It’s About Limitations
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 [...]