Usually, when I open a new book that touches on the socially aware and community-engaged art which has been the through-line of my life, I feel an anticipatory cringe. So often, the work is tendentious in some reactive way, far from my lived experience—more an artifact of someone’s academic resume than a genuine contribution. Knowing …
More than twenty years ago, after drawing or painting nearly every day from the time I could hold a crayon, I stopped making visual art. Why? It’s a bit of a story. Something that happened on New Year’s Day made me want to tell it. My husband’s and my annual new year’s ritual has two …
I sat down to write about John Trudell’s music, thinking to write the second in a series I’m calling “A Life in Art.” Back in November, I described the blogs in this series as “turning on a work of art—painting, sculpture, music, poetry, film, maybe even cooking—that has sustained me in a moment that yearned …
For so many years, wherever I moved (I lost count around 25 moves), I hung a print of Zurbarán’s Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose on the bedroom wall, positioning it so I could lie in bed filling my gaze with its sublimity. The glass was chipped in one move, but I went …