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The Sunday Poem : Jorge Carrera Andrade’s Micrograms

July 28, 2012 in Sunday Poem, Words with 6 Comments

Ecuadorian poet, historian, author, and diplomat Jorge Carrera Andrade

“The images of Jorge Carrera Andrade are so extraordinarily clear, so connected to the primitive I imagine I am…participating in a vision already lost to the world. It is a place melancholy but grand.” — William Carlos Williams

Largely overlooked by American literary critics, Ecuadorian Jorge Carrera Andrade has long been considered one of the most important poets in Latin America. He began publishing poems in his teens, and his distinguished literary career spanned a wide range of work, from editing and translation to criticism and poetry, much of which was published internationally.

When Jorge Carrera Andrade was appointed Ecuadorian General Consul to the United States in 1940, he moved to San Francisco and quickly established friendships within the American literary community. He corresponded with a number of American writers including John Peale Bishop, Archibald MacLeish, Thomas Merton, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams.

Throughout his life, Andrade was a bridge between disparate worlds. As Steven Ford Brown details in Drunken Boat, during his childhood Andrade developed sympathetic relationships with the Indians who worked the land on his family’s country estate. His father’s views from the judicial bench — very liberal for this period in South America — were also sympathetic to the plight of the Indians. This empathy and impulse towards universal understanding would become an integral part of Andrade’s writing, as well as his work as ambassador to Japan, Peru, Nicaragua, the U.K., France, and other countries.

Jorge Carrera Andrade

Joshua Beckman and Alejandro de Acosta have recently translated Andrade’s Micrograms into English and republished the book as it appeared in the original 1940 edition. Micrograms is part essay, part poetry, and part anthology. It’s entirely unique and also oddly postmodern in its structure.

As Beckman and de Acosta write in their introduction, for Andrade “the international was less about crossing boundaries and more about disregarding them in the name of the universal.”

“[Andrade] writes, ‘I try to testify to an ordinary man’s orbit in time. At first he feels as a stranger in the midst of a changing world but later receives the visit of love and discovers deep within himself a feeling of solidarity with all men of the planet. In this sense I have traversed new countries in different latitudes and have returned to others already known, in a pilgrimage as passionate observer rather than as curious traveler.’”

It is from this ‘worldly’ perspective and influence that Andrade’s writing emerged, and maybe the most fascinating of these works is his Micrograms.

What exactly is a microgram? Here is Beckman and de Acosta…

“The microgram is a poem usually between three to six lines long and about little natural creatures (both flora and fauna) and their existence in the universe…While formally unique, it presents its newness with the gentleness and grace of a conversation on a shared idea. Using the most subjective of personal histories (few were as international)… [Andrade] sees and calls for an objectivity—a generous objectivity of the individual eye.”

Andrade saw hidden potential in poetic short forms that many contemporary American poets have not. The author’s thoughts on Pierre Reverdy’s writing is also the perfect description of Andrade’s own work.

“[Reverdy] does not sing agonizing mythologies, nor does he dress up in mystical robes: his voice is that pure and simple poetry that escapes the ordinary—and also mysterious—life of men…Reverdy’s technique is personal, and his greatest secret lies in the stripping away of all decoration: the cult of naked and simple expression.”

For today’s Sunday Poem, I’ve chosen five of my favorite micrograms by Jorge Carrera Andrade. If you’re intrigued by these poems, I encourage you to pick up a copy of Joshua Beckman and Alejandro de Acosta’s translation ofMicrograms from Wave Books. I’ve never read anything quite like these poems before, and Beckman and de Acosta have given us a marvelous introduction to Andrade’s work.

“To identify a history is to create a history,” Beckman and de Acosta write, “and to create a history is to say that a history can be created. To create a form is to see a form and to share a form, but it is also to suggest that there is something in the world to be seen a new way.”

Enjoy your Sunday!

Kernel of Corn

Every morning
in the rooster’s beak
each kernel becomes
a cob of song.

Oyster

Two-top clam:
your calcium coffer
keeps the manuscript
of some shipwreck.

Typewriting

Late Night Toad: your little
typings strike
the moon’s blank page

What the Snail Is

Snail:
tiny measuring tape
with which God measures the field.

Definition of a Seagull

Seagull: foam eyebrow
on wave of silence.
Kerchief of shipwreck.
Skyroglyph.

About Jorge Carrera Andrade

Jorge Carrera Andrade (1902-1978) has been recognized in Latin America as one of the most important poets of the twentieth century. He was born in Quito, Ecuador, and was a diplomat as well as a poet, essayist and journalist, and he encountered many literary communities as he served appointments in Peru, France, Japan, and the United States. The originality of Carrera Andrade’s poetics is rooted in his experiences abroad as well as in the rich culture and natural landscapes of Ecuador. His distinguished literary career comprises a wide range of work, including editing, translation, criticism, and poetry.

He is a poet who remains difficult to categorize, though scholars and critics have drawn comparisons between his poetics and American imagism, Spanish ultraism, the Latin American Indigenous school, and the Japanese haiku form. William Carlos Williams described Carrera Andrade’s images as “so extraordinarily clear, so connected to the primitive I imagine I am … participating in a vision already lost to the world.”

About Joshua Beckman

Joshua Beckman was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He is the author of nine books, including Take It, Shake, Your Time Has Come, and two collaborations with Matthew Rohrer: Nice Hat. Thanks. and Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty. He is an editor at Wave Books and has translated numerous works of poetry and prose, including Micrograms, by Jorge Carrera Andrade, 5 Meters of Poems (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010) by Carlos Oquendo de Amat and Poker (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2008) by Tomaž Šalamun, which was a finalist for the PEN America Poetry in Translation Award. He is also the recipient of numerous other awards, including a NYFA fellowship and a Pushcart Prize. He lives in Seattle and New York.

In his introduction to Things Are Happening, poet Gerald Stern noted the “openness” of Beckman’s poems: “His identity is through affection. That is his print.” In a review for Coldfront magazine, John Deming commented: “Beckman’s traditionally a master at converting the personal to the existential in a deceptively plain-spoken way.”

About Alejandro de Acosta

Alejandro de Acosta attended Hampshire College and received his Ph.D. in Philosophy, Interpretation, and Culture from SUNY-Binghamton. Recent publications include Micrograms, by Jorge Carrera Andrade, a translation of Carlos Oquendo de Amat’s Five Meters of Poems, and numerous contributions to anarchist anthologies and websites. He currently lives in Austin, Texas.

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“Kernel of Corn,” “Oyster,” “What the Snail Is,” “Typewriting,” and “Definition of a Seagull” appear in Micrograms by Jorge Carrera Andrade, translated by Joshua Beckman and Alejandro de Acosta Copyright © 2011. Used by permission of Wave Books. All rights reserved. Biographies are also courtesy Wave Books.

Christian Marclay’s The Clock: Does the 24-Hour Artwork Live Up to the Hype?

July 27, 2012 in Events, Images, Sounds with 5 Comments

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 Eve. For more information, visit MoMA’s website.)

Last week I made the four-and-a-half-hour drive to New York City and stood in line for an hour in the rain to see a rare screening of Christian Marclay’s The Clock, currently on view at The Lincoln Center Festival. Before I arrived, playwright Wallace Shawn had been spotted in the queue. The Twitter feed for the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center has also reported sightings of Angelica Huston, Marlo Thomas, and Dr. Ruth. Wait times for screenings have burgeoned to two hours at some points and can be longest around midnight, when the ultimate climax of this 24-hour art installation occurs.

So is The Clock really worth of all this trouble? I’m happy to report that it is.

The Clock is the brainchild of Swiss sound and video artist Christan Marclay, the same artist who created the brilliant video works Telephone (1995) and Video Quartet (2002). (Note: You can watch Marclay’s Telephone at the end of this article).

But while Video Quartet was only fourteen minutes long, and Telephone a mere seven, The Clock is Marclay’s magnum opus, a mesmerizing 24-hour montage of thousands of time-related movie clips that have been masterfully edited and synchronized to show the actual time. The time is conveyed through dialogue, clocks, watches, and other timepieces. One moment Patrick Macnee is looking at his pocket watch in The Avengers; the next, Tobey Maguire is racing to deliver pizzas in Spiderman. The Clock has no beginning and no end, but endlessly loops, just as a real clock does.

As the clocks tick and we see snippets of shootouts, bank heists, chase scenes, romances, comedies, and detective dramas all appropriated from the rich history of cinema, patterns begin to emerge—travelers rushing to catch trains, men with hangovers smashing alarm clocks. The top of the hour is a popular time for cinema’s most dramatic moments—hangings, bombings, shootouts, trains leaving the station. But life is less outlandish when the hour hand passes the 12. This is the time when people wait, comb their hair, smoke, call a friend on the phone, commute to work, or cook dinner. In other words, its more like real life. In The Clock time passes not only in minutes, but also in years, as we glimpse actors like Joan Crawford, Catherine Deneuve, and Jack Nicholson in youth and in old age.

It took Marclay three years to make The Clock with the help of six assistants.

It took Marclay three years to make The Clock with the help of six assistants. The assistants’ job was to watch movies all day long and to bring Marclay any time-related clips they could find. For the first year, Marclay wasn’t even sure the project would be possible. Were there enough time-related clips in film history to create a 24-hour artwork?

For three years Marclay sat at his computer editing. “It was a gruesome three years,” Marclay told David Zlaewski in The New Yorker:

“But I became addicted to finding those little solutions. It gives you a bit of a high. You put two things together, and you get, like, ‘Oh my God, this works!’…The worst was when I worked really hard on figuring out some nice transition at 10:46 a.m. and someone would bring another 10:46, which was better footage or worked better with the narrative. There was constant remodeling.”

The Clock is a film about film, but also a film about our own mortality and obsession with time. (Photo courtesy galleristny.com)

The Clock finally debuted at the end of 2010 at London’s White Cube Gallery and was first shown in New York at the Paula Cooper Gallery. Both galleries gave Marclay financial support to cover the budget of creating the piece, which cost more than $100,000.

One cost that didn‘t factor into Marclay’s budget was copyright payments. As Zalewski details in his New Yorker profile, no one has ever objected to the artist’s appropriation of sounds and images in the past, so using thousands of film and music clips in The Clock didn’t give Marclay pause. “If you make something good and interesting and not ridiculing someone or being offensive, the creators of the original material will like it,” Marclay told Zalweski. At the 2011 Venice Biennale, Marclay won the Golden Lion for best artist in the exhibit. Accepting the Golden Lion, the artist humorously invoked Andy Warhol, thanking the jury “for giving The Clock its fifteen minutes.”

No description of this 24-hour installation can possibly convey its genius. Marclay’s collage is nothing less than a masterpiece, and one that must be experienced in person to be appreciated.

First, there is the event of it all, of gathering together with fellow film-goers to have a common and unique experience. Even the wait in line adds to the anticipation. The ability to watch any film or television show on demand in the privacy of our homes whenever we feel like it makes the rarity of The Clock screenings quite exceptional. The Clock is a live event, meant to be seen in real time. The audience is an integral part of the piece. The experience begins the moment we enter the space and ends the second we leave it.

It’s Marclay’s brilliance as an editor, his uncanny ability to stitch the right scenes and sounds together, that is the secret of The Clock‘s power as a work of art. (Photo courtesy Time Out New York)

The fact that only six copies of The Clock exist has turned these live screenings into a kind of competitive sport. Five copies of The Clock have been acquired by museums (or collectors who intend to donate the piece to a museum), including MoMA and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. One copy has been purchased jointly by the National Gallery of Canada and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and in February of this year, the Tate, Israel Museum, and Centre Pompidou collaboratively purchased one of the last remaining copies. The sixth copy was sold to Steven A. Cohen, a Connecticut hedge-fund manager. These institutions were right to act quickly, for I have no doubt that Marclay’s piece is destined to become a seminal piece of 21st century art.

When I learned that Lincoln Center was offering a rare chance to see The Clock for free as part of The Lincoln Center Festival in New York City, I immediately made plans to visit. After waiting in line for an hour outside the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center, I was ushered into a darkened room and directed to one of the carefully arranged IKEA couches. I had forgotten my cell phone during the screening, but conveniently, keeping track of time wasn’t an issue.

With the hard work of getting there behind me, I settled into my front row seat and put myself into Marclay’s hands.

The artist doesn’t disappoint. Marclay is a gifted editor, particularly when it comes to sound. He has had a long-standing interest in fusing fine art and audio culture. Earlier in his career, he was known for creating sound collages out of broken records, which he would cut up and then rejoin. Playing these assemblages produced a mix of music, as well as strange pops and hisses each time the turntable needle hit a seam. The artist began working with turntables in the late 1970s independently, but also parallel to hip hop’s use of the instrument.

Christian Marclay, Recycled Records, 1983. Collaged vinyl records, 10 inches diameter. (Photo © Christian Marclay. Courtesy of the artist and the Paula Cooper Gallery, New York)

What surprised me most about The Clock was its emotional pulse. There are moments of poignancy, humor, and surprise: a sudden car wreck, humorous, well-timed cameo appearances from Woody Allen, clock-watching lovers who have been left waiting a bit too long. (Photo: The Clock by Christian Marclay)

The Sunday Poem : Adrienne Rich

July 21, 2012 in Sunday Poem, Words with 5 Comments

The late poet Adrienne Rich during her student days at Radcliffe (Photo courtesy Harvard University and the Radcliffe Archive)

The Sunday Poem returns today after a two-week hiatus. Thanks to all of you who wrote and told me how much you missed receiving the Sunday Poem in your inbox. It only confirms what I suspected all along: that Gwarlingo has some of the best readers on the planet!

Work-related deadlines and travel have prevented me from posting the past two weeks, but I have some compelling new work in the queue for the coming months. There’s a wave of new poetry publications that have just been released (or that are coming out soon). I’ve been enjoying perusing these books in my spare time and am in the process of lining up new poems for the series. I’m looking forward to introducing some new poets to you, as well as publishing new work by some of our most accomplished poets throughout the remainder of 2012.

For today’s Sunday Poem, I have a reading by the late Adrienne Rich to share with you. Rich, who died in March of complications from rheumatoid arthritis, was one of the best-known American public intellectuals and among the most influential writers of the feminist movement. She wrote two dozen volumes of poetry and more than a half-dozen of prose. According to her obituary in The New York Times, her poetry, published by W. W. Norton & Company since the mid-1960s, has sold nearly 800,000 copies.

“[Art] means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of the power which holds it hostage,” Rich once said. As Margalit Fox writes in her Times obituary, “Rich was far too seasoned a campaigner to think that verse alone could change entrenched social institutions.”

“Poetry is not a healing lotion, an emotional massage, a kind of linguistic aromatherapy,” she said in an acceptance speech to the National Book Foundation in 2006, on receiving its medal for distinguished contribution to American letters. “Neither is it a blueprint, nor an instruction manual, nor a billboard.”

But at the same time, as she made resoundingly clear in interviews, in public lectures and in her work, Ms. Rich saw poetry as a keen-edged beacon by which women’s lives — and women’s consciousness — could be illuminated.

In this video produced by David Grubin Productions and WGBH Boston, in association with the Poetry Foundation and Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, Rich reads her incisive poem ”What Kind of Times Are These.”

As always, if you’re reading this post in an email and can’t play the video, simply click here to watch the video on the Gwarlingo website.

About Adrienne Rich

Poet and essayist Adrienne Rich was one of America’s foremost public intellectuals. Widely read and hugely influential, Rich’s career spanned seven decades and has hewed closely to the story of post-war American poetry itself. Her earliest work, including A Change of World (1951) which won the prestigious Yale Younger Poets Award, was formally exact and decorous, while her work of the late 1960s and 70s became increasingly radical in both its free-verse form and feminist and political content. Rich’s metamorphosis was noted by Carol Muske in the New York Times Book Review; Muske wrote that Rich began as a “polite copyist of Yeats and Auden, wife and mother. She has progressed in life (and in her poems …) from young widow and disenchanted formalist, to spiritual and rhetorical convalescent, to feminist leader…and doyenne of a newly-defined female literature.”

Beginning with Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law: Poems 1954-1962 (1963), Rich’s work has explored issues of identity, sexuality and politics; her formally ambitious poetics have reflected her continued search for social justice, her role in the anti-war movement, and her radical feminism. Utilizing speech cadences, enjambment and irregular line and stanza lengths, Rich’s open forms have sought to include ostensibly “non-poetic” language into poetry. Best known for her politically-engaged verse from the tumultuous Vietnam-war period, Rich’s collection Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972 (1973) won the National Book Award; Rich, however, accepted it with fellow-nominees Audre Lorde and Alice Walker on behalf of all women.

A noted writer of prose, Rich’s numerous essay collections, including A Human Eye: Essays on Art in Society (2009) also secured her place as one of America’s preeminent feminist thinkers. In addition to the National Book Award, Rich received numerous awards and commendations for her work, including the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, the Bollingen Prize, the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, and a MacArthur “Genius” Award. She made headlines in 1997 when she refused the National Medal of Arts for political reasons. “I could not accept such an award from President Clinton or this White House,” she wrote in a letter published in the New York Times “because the very meaning of art as I understand it is incompatible with the cynical politics of this administration.”

Adrienne Rich was born in 1929 in Baltimore, Maryland. Her father was a renowned pathologist and professor at Johns Hopkins; her mother was a former concert pianist. Rich’s upbringing was dominated by the intellectual ambitions her father had for her, and Rich excelled at academics, gaining her degree from Radcliffe University. In 1953 she married Alfred Conrad, an economics professor at Harvard. She had three children with him, but their relationship began to fray in the 1960s as Rich became politically aware—she later stated that “the experience of motherhood was eventually to radicalize me.” Rich’s work of the 1960s and ‘70s begins to show the signs of that radicalization. Moving her family to New York in 1966, Rich’s collections from this period include Necessities of Life (1966), Leaflets (1969), and The Will to Change (1971), all of which feature looser lines and radical political content. David Zuger, in Poet and Critic, described the changes in Rich’s work: “The twenty-year-old author of painstaking, decorous poems that are eager to ‘maturely’ accept the world they are given becomes a … poet of prophetic intensity and ‘visionary anger’ bitterly unable to feel at home in a world ‘that gives no room / to be what we dreamt of being.’”

Conrad died in 1970 and six years later Rich moved in with her long-term partner Michelle Cliff. That same year she published her controversial, influential collection of essays Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Institution and Experience (1976). The volume, following on the heels of her masterpiece Diving Into the Wreck, ensured Rich’s place in the feminist pantheon. Rich was criticized by some for her harsh depictions of men; however, the work she produced during this period is often seen as her finest. In Ms. Erica Jong noted that “Rich is one of the few poets who can deal with political issues in her poems without letting them degenerate into social realism.” Focusing on the title poem, Jong also denies that Rich is anti-male. A portion of the poem reads: “And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair / streams black, the merman in his armored body. / We circle silently / about the wreck. / We dive into the hold. / I am she: I am he.” Jong commented, “This stranger-poet-survivor carries ‘a book of myths’ in which her/his ‘names do not appear.’ These are the old myths … that perpetuate the battle between the sexes. Implicit in Rich’s image of the androgyne is the idea that we must write new myths, create new definitions of humanity which will not glorify this angry chasm but heal it.”
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Why Kitty Wells Matters

July 17, 2012 in News, Sounds with 3 Comments

Country music legend Kitty Wells died Monday at her home in Madison, Tennessee, after suffering complications from a stroke. She was 92.

The music of Kitty Wells and other country artists played frequently on the turntable in our Georgia house. My grandmother, who grew up on a farm in the North Georgia mountains as one of twelve children, was raised on the sounds of Mother Maybelle and The Carter Family. Music was an integral part of the church services she attended, and my grandmother (who is still living) always loved to belt out hymns on Sunday mornings in an off-key whine reminiscent of both Mother Maybelle and Wells. When I hear the gospel-tinged moan of Kitty Wells today, it still feels like home to me.

Without Wells, it’s possible that a young Loretta Webb born into poverty in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, and married at the ripe age of 15, never would have found the courage to teach herself to play a $17 Harmony Guitar or to write songs like “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “The Pill,” “One’s on the Way,” or “Rated X.” (Photo courtesy the Associated Press)

From where we sit today, it’s easy to forget how important Wells was to country music. Before Mother Maybelle and Kitty Wells, country music was very much a man’s world. Singers like Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, George Jones, Hank Thompson, and Ernest Tubb emerged from a conservative, working class life obsessed with both sin and salvation. There was poverty, drinking, hard living, followed by the usual Sunday morning repentance. The female characters who inhabit these country music songs were often portrayed as either “angels” or “whores.”

Take Hank Thompson’s number one hit “The Wild Side of Life” (see video below), which tells the story of a woman shirking her domestic duties in pursuit of a wild, night life. “Wild Side” co-writer William Warren based the song on a young woman he once met — a honky tonk angel, as it were — who “found the glitter of the gay night life too hard to resist.” In his book The Grand Ole Opry History of Country Music Paul Kingsbury writes that the song appealed to people who “thought the world was going to hell and that faithless women deserved a good deal of the blame.”

Until Mother Maybelle and Kitty Wells, the female perspective was notably absent from commercial country music. One has to look to Appalachian, Scotch-Irish, and New England folk tunes to find female singers and writers “telling it like it is.” (One of my favorite examples is this Vermont folk tune “Single Again,” which was collected and recorded by legendary song catcher Margaret MacArthur and recently re-recorded by Margaret MacArthur’s granddaughter Robin and her husband Tyler Gibbons.)

Kitty Wells’ “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” was the perfect comeback song to Hank Thompson’s “Wild Side.” It should be noted that the tune wasn’t written by Wells herself, but by J.D. “Jay” Miller, but it was Wells who made it a success. It became the first number one Billboard country hit for a solo female artist, which was in and of itself, a major breakthrough. Here is Bill Friskics-Warren writing in The New York Times:

Ms. Wells was an unlikely and unassuming pioneer. When she recorded “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels,” she was a 33-year-old wife and mother intending to retire from the business to devote herself to her family full time. The only reason she made the record, she told the weekly newspaper Nashville Scene in 1999, was to collect the union-scale wage ($125) that the session would bring.

“I wasn’t expecting it to make a hit,” she said. “I just thought it was another song.”

But Ms. Wells’s record proved to be much more than just “another song.” It was a rejoinder to Hank Thompson’s No. 1 hit “Wild Side of Life,” a brooding lament in which the singer blames a woman he picks up in a bar for breaking up his marriage, and it became her signature song.

“Honky Tonk Angels” resonated with women who had been outraged by Mr. Thompson’s record, which called into question their morals and their increasing social and sexual freedom. At a time when divorce rates were rising and sexual mores changing in postwar America, the song, with lyrics by J. D. Miller, resounded like a protofeminist anthem.

“As I sit here tonight, the jukebox playin’/The tune about the wild side of life,” Ms. Wells sings, she reflects on married men pretending to be single and causing “many a good girl to go wrong.” She continues:

It’s a shame that all the blame is on us women

It’s not true that only you men feel the same

From the start most every heart that’s ever broken

Was because there always was a man to blame.

The NBC radio network banned Ms. Wells’s record, deeming it “suggestive,” and officials at the Grand Ole Opry would not at first let her perform it on their show. The Opry eventually relented, in part because of the song’s popularity and Ms. Wells’s nonthreatening image.

It was the remarkable Kitty Wells who paved the way for singers like Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, Patsy Cline, and Tammy Wynette, whose popular songs defied the typical stereotype of being submissive to men and putting up with their philandering ways.

Without Wells, it’s possible that a young Loretta Webb, born into poverty in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, and married at the ripe age of 15, never would have found the courage to teach herself to play a $17 Harmony Guitar or to write songs like “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “The Pill,” “One’s on the Way,” or “Rated X.” Like Wells, the conservative country music community was slow to embrace Loretta Lynn’s frank songs about sexuality, and often refused to play them on the radio, but both Lynn and Wells found widespread commercial success — a testament to the fact that their voices were appreciated by listeners, if not by the male dominated music business.

Here’s Kitty Wells performing her #1 hit at the Grand Ole Opry. I love this video for the way it captures commercial country music at this moment in history. Everything about the set, band, and television production plays it safe — it’s conservative, white, and non-threatening. The real innovation here is Kitty Wells herself, the woman who voiced an alternative point of view and made it possible for the groundbreaking female voices that followed in her footsteps.
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Receipts, Email, Bread Tags, Styrofoam : Rachel Perry Welty Transforms Life’s Daily Clutter into Art

July 12, 2012 in Creative Spaces, Events, Images, Process with 7 Comments

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 60 (Photo courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery)

(Note: All photographs can be viewed in a larger size by clicking on the image)

Every artist must work within certain limitations, and these limitations come in a variety of forms. It could be financial restraints, a lack of free time, formal education, or materials, or something as basic as having limited skills or knowledge. Rachel Perry Welty is a marvelous example of how an artist can use such limitations to her benefit.

Welty is a self-described “late bloomer” and didn’t attend art school until age 36, when she decided to follow in her mother’s footsteps and attend the Museum School in Boston.

“I discovered art around the same time that I became a working mother,” Welty explained to me, “so the only way I knew how to make it was to maneuver it into my day. I gravitated toward materials that were around me and that were easy to pick up and put down, as a defense against the frustration of regular interruptions.”

By making art throughout the course of her day and using everyday objects like receipts, bread tags, aluminum foil, and telephone messages as her medium, Welty found a way to make art in spite of her busy family schedule.

Rachel Perry Welty, Lost in My Life (styrofoam), 2010. Pigmented ink print, edition of 3. 91.25 x 60 (Photo courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery)

Many of the material Welty uses, such as twist ties, styrofoam, and bread tags, are preservative in nature, yet in Welty’s work these objects perniciously erase the artist’s identity. Rachel Perry Welty, Lost in My Life (bread tags), 2010. Pigmented ink print, edition of 3. 91.25 x 60 (Photo courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery)

It’s the minutia of middle-class, American life that most fascinates Welty. As a conceptual artist, the message is more important to her than her medium. Working in the tradition of artists like Mary Kelly, Warhol, John Baldessari, and On Kawara, Welty uses photography, drawing, video, social media, installation, collage, sculpture, or whatever method is the best fit for the idea she wants to convey.

To have your only child end up in the hospital with a serious illness is a parent’s worst nightmare. It was this harrowing experience as a mother that was a turning point for Welty as an artist. Altered Receipt: Children’s Hospital Bill for Inpatient Services and Transcription/Medical Record #32-52-52-001 (654 Pages) were painstaking artworks Welty created using actual records in response to her son’s illness. For Altered Receipt she devised a color-coded system that corresponded to each number and letter of the alphabet, and then painted over each of those symbols on the 37-page receipt.

Rachel Perry Welty, Altered Receipt: Children’s Hospital Bill for Inpatient Services (detail), 2001-2002. (Image courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery)

When I arrived at her home in Annisquam, Massachusetts, I discovered an array of colorful gum packets, stickers, aluminum-foil words, plastic strips from food packaging, and other fascinating odds and ends spread around her office and studio. (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

Package strips hanging on the wall of Rachel Perry Welty’s garage studio (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

Working in the tradition of artists like Mary Kelly, Warhol, John Baldessari, and On Kawara, Welty uses photography, drawing, video, social media, installation, collage, sculpture, or whatever method is the best fit for the idea she wants to convey. (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

Two 18th century portraits of Rachel’s great, great, great, great grandparents, Mary and John Rooker, hang in the family’s dining room. The portraits are a striking contrast to the rest of the decor in Welty’s open-concept, modern house. (Photo by Hornick/Rivlin. Click to Enlarge)

Although her son is now grown, healthy, and no longer at home, Welty continues to make art out of her everyday surroundings. When I arrived at her spacious, modern home in Annisquam, Massachusetts, on a sweltering summer day, I found an array of colorful gum packets, stickers, aluminum-foil words, plastic strips from food packaging, and other fascinating odds and ends spread around her office and studio.

The books on her kitchen shelf were wrapped in aluminum foil, a lasting tribute to her piece Lost in My Life (wrapped books) and above the kitchen counter was a recent piece, Cash for Your Warhol, by artist Geoff Hargadon. Several of Welty’s own artworks hang in the house, including a series of small, framed receipt drawings, whose tiny, intricate markings seemed to recall Welty’s upbringing in Tokyo.

During the dinner party that Welty and her husband, Bruce, hosted for myself and nine other guests, two 18th century portraits of Rachel’s great, great, great, great grandparents, Mary and John Rooker, peered over our shoulders. The portraits are a striking contrast to the rest of the decor in Welty’s open-concept, modern house.

At the end of the meal, Welty asked her guests to sign their names on the white linen tablecloth. The next day Welty sent me a photograph of my own signature, which she was in the process of embroidering with white thread. The artist has been recording the signatures of dinner guests since she moved into her home in 2009; every person who has shared a meal with the artist and her family in Annisquam has signed. Eventually, Welty plans to create a public artwork out of the tablecloth. It is Welty’s nod to Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party, but also her own original way of using art as a record for her everyday life.

Rachel Perry Welty, Lost in My Life (wrapped books), 2010. Pigmented ink print, edition of 3. 91.25 x 60 (Photo courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery)

The artist has been recording the signatures of dinner guests since she moved into her home in 2009; every person who has shared a meal with the artist and her family in Annisquam has signed. It is Welty’s nod to Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party, but also her own original way of using art as a record for her everyday life. (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

The day after the dinner party, Welty embroidered my own signature onto the tablecloth using white thread. (Photo courtesy Rachel Perry Welty)

Welty’s work has transformed the way I view these banal objects in my own life. I can’t remove a sticker from a piece of fruit now without thinking of her Lost in My Life series or her elegant drawing Sin and Paradise, made from sliced fruit stickers.

As deCordova curator Nick Capasso says in the catalog to Welty’s solo show at the museum, pieces like Lost in My Life show “consumerism run amok.” Capasso rightly points out that many of the material Welty uses, such as twist ties, styrofoam, and bread tags, are preservative in nature, yet in Welty’s work these objects perniciously erase the artist’s identity.

Rachel Perry Welty, Sin and Paradise, 2009. Fruit stickers and archival adhesive on paper. 21.5 x 21.5 inches (Photo by Clements Howcroft, Boston courtesy the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York)

Rachel Perry Welty, Sin and Paradise, 2009 (detail). Fruit stickers and archival adhesive on paper. 21.5 x 21.5 inches (Photo by Clements Howcroft, Boston courtesy the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York)

Rachel Perry Welty, Lost in My Life (fruit stickers), 2010. 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 (twist ties), 2009. Pigmented ink print, edition of 3. 91.25 x 60 (Photo courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery)

The outfits that Welty has used for the Lost in My Life series hang in her garage studio. (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

Price Tag Dress-Photo by Michelle Aldredge

For the piece Lost in My Life (price tags), Welty had her artwork printed onto fabric and then made a dress from the material. There are also price-tag throw pillows on the couch in her living room (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

Welty has not been afraid to embrace technology in her artistic practice. She has an ongoing diary project on Twitter and in 2009 she created the Facebook project Rachel Is, in which she recorded an entire day’s activities in real time on Facebook, updating her status every 60 seconds. For her piece Karaoke Wrong Number, Welty collected all of the messages on her telephone answering machine not intended for her or her family, along with the machine’s time and date stamp. She then lip synched to each recording, creating a persona for each “character.”

“We’re always just a hair’s-breadth away from completely misunderstanding one another,” Welty told WBUR in a radio interview. “Somebody listens to it, pushes a button, deletes it, and it’s gone forever. And we do this in our lives daily with all of the information that comes in.”

The artist’s Deaccession Project began in 2005 when Welty decided to discard, sell, gift, and recycle some of the clutter in her life. As Nick Capasso explains, “this life-based performance is documented each day on a page with a photograph of the object in question, and accompanying brief notations that include number/sequence, date, description, reason for deaccession, and method of disposal or ultimate destination. The pages are then ordered chronologically in scrapbooks.” For Welty’s show 24/7 at the deCordova, the 2,028 pages were scanned, reprinted, and arranged in a chronological grid along a single 78-foot gallery wall.

For her piece Karaoke Wrong Number, Welty collected all of the messages on her telephone answering machine not intended for her or her family. She then lip synched to each recording, creating a persona for each “character.” The piece is currently on view at the ICA in Boston. Rachel Perry Welty, Karaoke Wrong Number, 2005-2009. (Image courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery)

Rachel Perry Welty, Deaccession Project, October 5, 2005-ongoing. Installation of 2,028 inkjet prints (each print 9×6.5). Approximately 120 x 936 inches. (Image courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery)

Rachel Perry Welty, Deaccession Project (detail), October 5, 2005-ongoing. Installation of 2,028 inkjet prints (each print 9×6.5). Approximately 120 x 936 inches. (Image courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery)

Rachel Perry Welty. Installation view of solo show at the deCordova Museum. Seen here are Spam series: what do you really want (Rochelle, February 25, 2009, 9:05:05 AM EST), the Deaccession Project, and photographs from the Lost in my Life series. (Image courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery)

For her Spam Series, Welty transformed spam email into poetry using a simple household object: aluminum foil. Rachel Perry Welty, Spam Series: what do you really want (Rochelle, February 25, 2009, 9:05:05 AM EST), 2010. One piece of aluminum foil. 8 ½ x 120 x 1 (Image courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery)

Ruin & Repetition: Margaret Lanzetta & Susan Briante’s Utopia Minus Project

July 7, 2012 in Images, Sunday Poem, Words with 2 Comments

Margaret Lanzetta, White Rabbit Alice, 2012. Oil and acrylic on panel. 12 x 12"

I’m excited to share this special expanded edition of Gwarlingo’s Sunday Poem series with you. The Utopia Minus Project is an art and poetry collaboration that has been in the works for nearly twelve months now.

Poet Susan Briante and visual artist Margaret Lanzetta have been long-time admirers of each other’s work, but when Lanzetta began a new series of paintings inspired by American highways and Briante published her latest book Utopia Minus (also infused with images of American highways), both artists realized that there were certain affinities between their projects that they were interested in exploring.

For the past year they’ve been collaborating by creating their own unique pairings of their work (one example is an edition of screen prints for Headlamp). For this special online version of the project, they asked me to curate my own combinations. I’ve spent a lot of time with both Susan and Margaret’s art over the past many months, and during that time, my appreciation for their talent has only grown.

I’ve loved Margaret Lanzetta’s striking paintings from the first moment I saw them at The MacDowell Colony in 2001. Her work draws inspiration from nature, Islamic architecture, Buddhism, and sixties’s pop. Lanzetta works in multiples and creates series on specific themes. Silk screening is an integral part of her process: oil and enamel, used fluidly with very porous screens results in rich, layered, tactile surfaces. Drawing inspiration from Warhol’s forays into seriality and abstraction, her patterns migrate, collide, and reappear from painting to painting, series to series.

The Company Paintings series (which you can see samples of on The Utopia Minus page) synthesize Lanzetta’s experiences in both India and Syria. The series title comes from the term for works commissioned by the East India Company to document India at the turn of the century. Each painting is titled after a remote Indian city and its numerical telephone area code. The entire series was done using only four different silkscreens printed in different combinations. Stripes compete with a palette of neon orange, pink, yellow and red, referencing both the intensity of spiritual devotion and industrial OSHA “safety” colors from the industrial arena. The sacred and the concrete are melded.

Lanzetta has spent the past year in Morocco, where her latest series Reign Marks was created. As you can see in the below image, Dharma Index, her color palette has become brighter and bolder in this new series. (Look for Carol Schwarzman’s upcoming review of the Reign Marks show at Le Cube Independent Art Room, Rabat, Morocco, in the Brooklyn Rail.)

"The manmade and the organic mesh and grind against one another in Lanzetta’s work," says Briante, " just as they do in that view out my window, just as I want them to do in my poems." (Photo: Margaret Lanzetta by Omar Chennafi)

Margaret Lanzetta, Dharma Index, 2012. Acrylic and digital ink on paper, 57 x 82". Screen print of mosque floor plans from the Islamic diaspora, ranging from China, India, Thailand, the United States, Europe, etc. In the collection of Nawal Slaoui in Casablanca

Although Susan Briante is also a MacDowell fellow, I only discovered her poetry a year ago. I’m officially declaring her book Utopia Minus (from Ahshata Press) one of my all-time favorite poetry books. Yes. It’s that good.

Briante has an uncanny ability to find the beauty and poignancy in the everyday. She has a photographer’s eye combined with a pitch-perfect ear and a poet’s gift for language. I can’t think of a book I’ve read recently that captures America so well. Like the photographers Stephen Shore, William Eggleston, and Robert Adams, she can transform a seemingly banal scene into a transcendent experience. She is an honest poet—one who doesn’t shy away from ugliness or imperfection.

I was reminded of this passage from Robert Adams’ book Beauty in Photography as I was reading, and re-reading, Utopia Minus, for everything Adams says about landscape photography could also be said about Briante’s work:

“Attention only to perfection…invites eventually for urban viewers—which means most of us—a crippling disgust; our world is in most places far from clean. Photographs that suggest an Arcadian landscape are recognizable from the city dweller’s perspective as partial visions, and they make us uneasy…

Photography that acknowledges what is wrong, is admittedly in some respects hard to bear—it has to encompass our mistakes. Yet in the long run, it is important; in order to endure our age of apocalypse, we have to be reconciled not only to avalanche and earthquake and hurricane, but to ourselves.”

"What captivates me about Susan’s poetry," says Lanzetta, "is its Zen-like quality of living in the moment. Celebrations of the poetic and minute, fleeting slivers of nature, beauty, history are all tempered with the sobering full-frontal here and now." (Photo: Poet Susan Briante)

For this special project, I’ve selected ten poems by Susan Briante and paired them with ten of Margaret Lanzetta’s paintings. The point of arranging these works together is not to impose any specific interpretation, but simply to highlight them and present them as a whole, so you can contemplate the poems and images much as you would in a gallery or at a poetry reading.

The pieces I’ve chosen by Lanzetta cover her entire career. They were selected not only because they are amazing artworks, but also because they share some resonance with specific poems by Susan. I encourage you to peruse Margaret’s website so you can see these works within their larger context. Each series has its own unique style, which is worth viewing in its entirety.

For this expanded edition of the Sunday Poem series, I also asked Susan and Margaret to reflect on each other’s work. Their short, insightful essays are included below.

I highly recommend Briante’s Utopia Minus, as well as Margaret Lanzetta’s catalog Pet the Pretty Tiger: Works 1990-2010. A limited edition set of Lanzetta’s Myths in Translation series (shown below) is also available from Art We Love. Prints start at just $50.

To view The Utopia Minus Project, please visit this special page on the Gwarlingo website, where Lanzetta and Briante’s collaboration can be experienced full screen.

Margaret Lanzetta, Double Speak, 2011. Oil and acrylic on mylar 30 x 24"

Weave Rip Grind
Susan Briante on the work of Margaret Lanzetta

A dazzling surface beauty first drew me to Margaret Lanzetta’s work. At the time, she was layering rich patterns over large canvases that referenced ancient textiles, elaborate wallpaper, or tile work. But the patterns were always rendered somewhat incomplete, so they seemed like fragments, images of a weave disintegrating before our eyes. I take a post-romantic view of decay that comes by way of Robert Smithson and a childhood in postindustrial New Jersey. When I think of ruin I think of the abandoned factories I see when I ride the train from the suburbs to New York City. I think of the foreclosed homes I see everywhere. Those structures tell a story. What was once a skatepark, now looks like a cathedral. I feel comfortable around that which references both what perishes as well as what persists.

Learning to Look : Whistler, Fireworks, and a New Way of Seeing

July 4, 2012 in Events, Images, Process, Words with 9 Comments

James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, ca. 1875. Oil on panel, 23.7 × 18.3 in. (Photo courtesy the Detroit Institute of Arts-Click to Enlarge)

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 before. Even as a teenager, I sensed that Whistler had caught those falling skyrockets at exactly the right time—not at the point when they were at their most garish and outrageous, but at the poignant moment when the fading sparks were falling into water.

Whistler’s style and composition owe something to Japanese ukiyo-e prints, which were popular with many Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters. Monet was a collector and Vincent Van Gogh and his brother Theo owned over four hundred Japanese prints. One of my favorite ukiyo-e artists, Utagawa Hiroshige, had a lasting influence on James McNeill Whistler. Hiroshige’s extraordinary series, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, was of particular importance. As the Brooklyn Museum website explains, Whistler was inspired by the Hiroshige prints that he once owned. “As the West entered a new century, Japanese woodblock prints provided an artistic alternative—in the use of color, perspective, and spatial structure—for presenting changes in society.”

It’s interesting to compare this Hiroshige print, Fireworks at Ryogoku (below) with Whistler’s Nocturne in Black and Gold (above). Both images are striking in their own way, but the difference between painting and woodblock printing techniques allowed Whistler to depict the fireworks and night sky with greater delicacy, as well as a deeper, more complex palette.

Utagawa Hiroshige. Fireworks at Ryōgoku (Ryōgoku Hanabi) (8th Month, 1858). From the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, c. 1856–58. Woodblock print. (Photo courtesy the Brooklyn Museum)

Whistler’s loose, impressionistic depiction of fireworks at night was not to everyone’s liking when his painting made its public debut. Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket sparked an infamous feud between the artist and the Victorian critic John Ruskin. In 1877 Whistler sued the Ruskin for libel after the critic condemned the painting in his publication Fors Clavigera:

“For Mr. Whistler’s own sake, no less than for the protection of the purchaser, Sir Coutts Lindsay [founder of the Grosvenor Gallery] ought not to have admitted works into the gallery in which the ill-educated conceit of the artist so nearly approached the aspect of willful imposture. I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.”

The trial produced this hilarious exchange between John Ruskin’s lawyer, Attorney General Sir John Holker, and Whistler during cross-examination:

Holker: “What is the subject of Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket?”

Whistler: “It is a night piece and represents the fireworks at Cremorne Gardens.”

Holker: “Not a view of Cremorne?”

Whistler: “If it were A View of Cremorne it would certainly bring about nothing but disappointment on the part of the beholders. It is an artistic arrangement. That is why I call it a nocturne.…”

Holker: “Did it take you much time to paint the Nocturne in Black and Gold? How soon did you knock it off?”

Whistler: “Oh, I ‘knock one off’ possibly in a couple of days – one day to do the work and another to finish it…”

Holker: “The labour of two days is that for which you ask two hundred guineas?”

Whistler: “No, I ask it for the knowledge I have gained in the work of a lifetime.”

James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge, c. 1872–1875. Oil on canvas, 26 7/8 in × 20 1/8 in. (Photo courtesy of the Tate Britain, London. Click to Enlarge)

Hiroshige’s influence on Whistler can also be seen in his breathtaking piece Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge. Here again, Whistler uses the golden sizzle of fireworks over the river Thames to wonderful effect. The compositional similarities between Whistler’s painting and Hiroshige’s print, Kyobashi Bridge, are unmistakable.

Whistler and Hiroshige taught me a new way of seeing. From both of these artists, I learned that less is often more. The best art, regardless of its medium, captures the essence of a thing, and leaves out all of the right parts. This idea was pushed to its limits by the minimalist artists of the 20th century. The gap between Whistler and Ellsworth Kelly or Hiroshige and Agnes Martin is not as great as it may appear at first glance.

Utagawa Hiroshige, Bamboo Yards, Kyōbashi Bridge (12th Month, 1857). From the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, ca. 1856–58. Woodblock print. (Photo courtesy the Brooklyn Museum. Click to Enlarge).

I think of these artworks by Whistler and Hiroshige each year when the Fourth of July holiday rolls around.

As an ardent lover of fireworks, New Hampshire is an ideal place to live. Each town has its own fireworks display (some shows are larger and better than others, but regardless, the crowds are never a problem). The local villages are kind enough to stagger their events on different nights so there are no scheduling conflicts. Before the show, there is typically an ice cream social, music, swimming, and other community activities. As locals gather around the lakes with their glow necklaces and bottles of bug spray, so do the mosquitoes, followed immediately by the bats.

In the past four days, I’ve seen two local fireworks shows—one over Dublin Lake by Mt. Monadnock and the other over Norway Pond in my old neighborhood in Hancock. In the case of Dublin Lake, I decided to make the mile-long journey on my bicycle. The hills were steep and the bugs intense, but the moon was bright—bright enough to throw shadows onto the empty road.

During my night ride, I spotted a fox, two porcupines, an owl, and a deer. Other mysterious creatures lurked in the bushes. I never saw them, but I heard their rustling. The number of dramas playing out in nature each night while we lie in our beds is staggering. (I’m reminded of this fact each time I hear the coyotes howling outside my open bedroom window.)

Photo by Michelle Aldredge (Click to Enlarge)

At Dublin Lake, I perched myself on a rock and waited. In a brilliant stroke of Yankee ingenuity, the woman behind me swatted bugs away with a tree branch. I buttoned up my shirt and rolled down my pants to protect myself from the swarms. Just as the fireworks began, a bat skimmed over the top of my head.

I’ve never heard a boom so loud before. Each explosion ricocheted off the side of Mt. Monadnock and bounced over the water. I can only imagine what the foxes, porcupines, and deer were thinking. The excited children, on the other hand, made their thoughts very clear: Those are my favorite. I like the purple ones! I like the one that looks like a splash in the water (little girl)! I like the giant red ones that look like a bomb going off (little boy)! Today I learned that there are more exacting names for these firework effects: peony, chrysanthemum, dahlia, ground bloom flower (there are lots of flower names). Also, willow, palm, crossette, spider, horsetail, time rain, fish.

Photo by Michelle Aldredge (Click to Enlarge)

Whenever possible, I prefer to be in nature without the distraction of electronic devices. This means no camera. No cell phone. No i-Pod. When it comes to fireworks, though, I make a rare exception.

Each year I photograph the local fireworks, and each year the photographs are a surprise, even to me. While these images aren’t “art” in the strictest sense, I do think they capture artful moments. Like Whistler, I’m particularly fond of the less dramatic scenes, the golden criss-crossing tails, the juxtaposition of colors, the unusual patterns captured by the camera, though not always visible to the naked eye.

Sometimes the point of taking a picture is the end result. We want a record of where we’ve been or who we’ve seen. Or maybe we are setting out to create art or capture something larger than ourselves. But often I find that the actual process of taking a picture is just as important. A camera can focus our attention and allow us to see things we might have missed otherwise. It sharpens our senses and also opens us to the happy accidents that often occur when we click the shutter.

“I sit for a long time and watch one thing,” says the writer Barry Lopez. “If you don’t do that homework, you don’t make yourself vulnerable enough to a place, and it never releases itself into you.”

Learning to look is perhaps the most under-appreciated skill of our generation. Do I love the fireworks for themselves? Of course. But I also love the fact that for a few days each year, individuals gather together in one place, expose themselves to the elements, and for a short time, stare at the sky, not their computer screen or cell phone.

We see what we expect to see. But if we’re still and patient, if we take time to turn off our devices and get out into the real world, we leave room for so many more possibilities.

Photo by Michelle Aldredge (Click to Enlarge)

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“Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It's what everything else isn't.”

― Theodore Roethke

About Michelle

My name is Michelle Aldredge. I’m a writer, photographer, and the creator of Gwarlingo. At Gwarlingo, I share in-depth conversations with artists, as well as some of my own exciting finds in contemporary art. I've done radio appearances on NHPR and consulted on arts projects big and small. From 1999-2012 I worked at The MacDowell Colony, the nation's oldest artist retreat, but I've also done time at an arts magazine, a library, an art museum, and a raptor rehabilitation center. You can read more about me and my work here. Thanks for visiting. Come back. Come often.

Greatest Hits

Lost in Her Life: Whether it's aluminum foil, twist ties, receipts, email, or price tags (shown above), artist Rachel Perry Welty transforms life's daily clutter into art like no one else. Gwarlingo readers loved this exclusive look at Welty's art and her studio in Annisquam, Massachusetts.

A Chain Link Fence Transformed: On my recent visit to the deCordova Museum, one of the artworks I found most compelling was “Capturing Resonance” by sculptor Soo Sunny Park and composer Spencer Topel, which is made out of chain link fencing. Read more about the piece here.

Sol LeWitt's Advice to Eva Hesse: DO! In 1965, when Eva Hesse found herself in a difficult creative place, artist Sol LeWitt wrote his friend a long letter of encouragement: “Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, grasping,…Stop it and just DO!...If you fear, make it work for you – draw & paint your fear and anxiety.” I’ve never had so many overwhelming, positive responses to a piece. Read LeWitt's entire letter here.

The Sunday Poem: Gwarlingo subscribers receive The Sunday Poem in their inbox each week for free. The Sunday poets include Matthew Zapruder, Ravi Shankar (shown above), Meghan O'Rourke, Donald Hall, Kevin Young, Matthew Dickman, Seamus Heaney, Cristián Flores García, D. Nurkse, Jane Hirshfield, Stephen Dunn, Anzhelina Polonskaya, Eduardo Corral, Jean Valentine, Maureen McLane, and more. Explore the entire series here.

The Complete Creative Series: In 13 years working for an artist residency program, I've seen it all. I understand both the psychological and practical barriers to creating your best work. Fear, doubt, financial worries, procrastination, the distraction of technology, presenting yourself online and on applications, creating an engaged community: these are just a few of the challenges you face in any creative field. The Complete Creative is an in-depth series that examines some of the topics that most concern you and your creative life. Read the series here.

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The Debut of Mary Ruefle's Erasure Melody: Mary Ruefle is one of today’s most admired practitioners of erasure poetry. A new erasure by Ruefle is a rare event, and the publication of one online or in print even rarer. Gwarlingo is the only place where you can see this one-of-a-kind piece. Read Melody in its entirety and learn more about erasure poetry here.

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13 Years, 3500 Artists, 7 Memorable Lessons: After thirteen remarkable years of working at The MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, I decided to leave the Colony in May of 2012. Letting go of a 9-5 job (with a regular paycheck and benefits) in order to expand an arts website is a risky thing to do, but I've loved every minute of the Gwarlingo adventure. Did I learn something from working with over 3500 artists in those 13 years? Hell yeah. Read more here.

52 Pieces by British Street Artist Banksy: Banksy is a walking, breathing oxymoron. Depending on who you ask, he is either a genius or an overhyped vandal, a talented documentary filmmaker or a brilliant faker. He is both a lefty and a critic of liberal piety. He flips off the art world establishment, and yet courts the very art world he claims to detest. He is a street artist who sells his work for high sums in galleries and auction houses, and “an anarchist environmentalist who travels by chauffeured S.U.V. Is Banksy an arch prankster or an art genius? Read more here. (Above: Cardinal Sin by Banksy)

How Creativity Works: Why do creative epiphanies happen? Are there specific things we can do to encourage innovation in our personal lives and in the workplace? What can Bob Dylan, Julia Child, and Picasso teach us about the creative process? Read more about Jonah Lehrer's book Imagine: How Creativity Works here.

The Illusionist: At first glance, the work of Swiss artist Felice Varini looks like interesting, abstract art superimposed on an architectural space. But these are actually brilliantly composed installations--real paintings in real spaces that hover eerily in front of it. See more of Varini's work here.

The Spectacular Snow Drawings of Simon Beck: Beck creates these incredible designs by simply walking in the snow. These massive installations take two days to complete. See more photos here.

Creativity is the Power to Act: Ai Weiwei's interviews and blog posts are a thought-provoking read. “Creativity is the power to act," Ai says. "It’s the power “to reject the past, to change the status quo, and to seek new potential.” Ai is an architect, sculptor, curator, poet, critic, publisher, and photographer--an artist who created installations out of 1,200 bicycles and 100 million handmade porcelain sunflower seeds. Read more about Ai's writing, political activism, and art work here.

Not Your Average Flashmob: 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. Readers loved this video. I dare you to watch it without smiling.

How to Feel Miserable as an Artist: This marvelous list, which is relevant to artists of all disciplines, was created by illustrator Keri Smith and is part of The Artist’s Survival Kit, which Keri wrote and designed. I like Keri’s list because it emphasizes the ways in which we tend to stay in our safe zones as artists. Read the full list here.

Hugo Author Brian Selznick Shares 20 Favorite Books: Martin Scorsese's film adaptation of Brian Selznick's book The Invention of Hugo Cabret has won over critics and fans alike. In this popular Gwarlingo exclusive, Selznick shares his own favorite books for children. There are some wonderful discoveries on the list for readers of all ages. View all 20 titles and see illustrations from Selznick's newest book, Wonderstruck here.

95 Rare Color Photographs: The second most popular post in Gwarlingo's short history has been this feature on the rare color photographs taken by FSA photographers like Jack Delano, Russell Lee, and Marion Post Wolcott. The overwhelming response to this piece leads me to believe that I'm not the only one who finds these early Kodachrome photos from the 30s and 40s a fascinating discovery.

Grace Paley on Writing: "If you want to write, keep a low overhead...The best training is to read and write, no matter what. Don’t live with a lover or roommate who doesn’t respect your work. Don’t lie, buy time, borrow to buy time. Write what will stop your breath if you don’t write." Read more here.

On Money, Fear, & the Artist: Being an artist is so hard because we’re operating in a parallel universe from the larger culture–one that values imagination, creativity, and ideas more than money or status. Read more about art and fear and explore Mark Wagner's amazing currency collages here.

Transforming the Familiar: Explore the luminous landscapes of photographer Barry Underwood.

Tour the Tate Modern: The Tate Modern in London, a former power plant, is the most visited modern art gallery in the world. I share some of the highlights from my own visit in this special tour.

The Journey to Freedom: Peter Wyer's Numinous City is inspired by the extraordinary true story of Ngawang Sangdrol, a Tibetan nun, imprisoned in Lhasa, Tibet at age 14. Sangdrol and other nuns managed to record songs on a smuggled cassette player while in prison, the fame of which ultimately led to her release. I spoke to Sangdrol and Wyer (pictured above) at a sneak preview of the opera at the Rubin Museum in New York City. Read more about this incredible story here.

Creative Spaces

Visit Kim Uchiyama's Tribeca Studio: "I think it's important for us to understand that we live in a society that doesn't value mystery. We want everything to be absolutely clear and unambiguous because this makes us feel more comfortable. We're often afraid of what is foreign or unfamiliar."

Red Heart the Ticker: A legendary songcatcher inspires two musicians on a Vermont farm. Listen to new music from Red Heart the Ticker and take a tour of their farm and studios in this special expanded edition of Gwarlingo's Creative Spaces series.

The Debut of Gwarlingo's Creative Spaces Series: Read an in-depth interview with MacArthur fellow Anna Schuleit and take a tour of her studio.

Explore the Archives

Beauty and the Beast (No. Not That One. The Other One): Why did it take me so long to finally see Jean Cocteau's masterpiece? Discover why this film classic is worth revisiting.

What Is Love? Joan Wickersham's critically acclaimed collection The News from Spain has some surprising answers. Click here to read my full review.

A Line Made By Flooding: In 2007 Eve Mosher created High Water Line, a public art project in Manhattan and Brooklyn that brought the topic of climate change directly to the city’s residents. “I never wanted this to be a reality,” Mosher said the week Hurricane Sandy devastated parts of New York and New Jersey. Read more here.

Before and After Dinner: Most people know André Gregory through his critically acclaimed film My Dinner with André, but Cindy Kleine's new documentary reveals so much more about the respected theatre director and raconteur. Read my full review of the film here.

A Good Man is Hard to Find: Click here to explore the artwork and propaganda posters from past presidential elections.

Ambient Cowboy by Ivy Baldwin Dance: It is fitting that a dance piece inspired by Philip Johnson’s famous Glass House should have a set design made of light. And not just any light—but a ribbon of light that glides over wall, floor, and dancers, then suddenly vanishes. Read my full review of Ivy Baldwin's Ambient Cowboy at New York Live Arts here.

Film & Fatherhood: How do you learn to be a father, particularly when there are no fathers around to be an example? This is the question at the heart of Samein Priester’s documentary 1st&4ever. The dilemma of fatherhood has taken on new significance for Samein since the tragic loss of his partner, artist Denyse Thomasos. Read more and watch the film in its entirety here.

The Utopia Minus Project: Gwarlingo readers loved Susan Briante's gritty, visceral poems about America's highways, suburbs, and abandoned urban landscapes paired with Margaret Lanzetta's rich, patterned canvases (many also inspired by American highways). See Briante's and Lanzetta's exclusive collaboration only on Gwarlingo.

Transforming New York City's Water Towers: Artists like Tom Fruin and Rachel Whiteread are creating memorable public sculptures out of the humble New York City water tower. In the Spring of 2013, 300 rooftop tanks will be transformed into works of art by established and emerging figures in art, music, science as well as public school students. Read more about water-tower art here.

Lessons from the Writing Life: Poet Matthew Zapruder and fiction writer Amy Hempel read and discuss new work at the Juniper Summer Writing Institute in Amherst, Massachusetts.Read more here.

My Review of Christian Marclay's The Clock: The Clock is artist Christian Marclay’s magnum opus, a mesmerizing 24-hour montage of thousands of time-related movie clips that have been masterfully edited and synchronized to show the actual time. Does it live up to the hype? Find out here.

Tales of Captivity and Freedom: In I Am an Executioner, Rajesh Parameswaran introduces us to a cast of heroes—and antiheroes: from the lovesick tiger who narrates the unforgettable opener, to the ex-CompUSA employee who masquerades as a doctor; from a railroad manager in a turn-of-the-century Indian village, to an elephant writing her autobiography; from a woman whose Thanksgiving preparations put her husband to eternal rest, to the newlywed executioner of the title, these characters inhabit a marvelous region between desire and death, playfulness and violence. Read an interview with Rajesh Parameswaran here.

Lewis Hyde on Art and Ownership: Lawsuits over image appropriation, music remixes, file sharing, and copyright infringement are on the rise and emerging as the central debate of the digital era. The Grey Album, a 2004 mash-up by Danger Mouse, is a prime example of the type of copyright dispute Lewis Hyde discusses in his most recent book, Common as Air. You can read a full interview with Hyde here.

Whistler, Fireworks, and a New Way of Seeing: James McNeill Whistler’s loose, impressionistic depiction of fireworks at night was not to everyone’s liking when the painting made its public debut in 1877. Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket sparked an infamous feud between the artist and the Victorian critic John Ruskin. During the libel trial that followed, Ruskin's lawyer asked Whistler, "The labour of two days is that for which you ask two hundred guineas?" The artist replied, “No, I ask it for the knowledge I have gained in the work of a lifetime.” Read more here.

Peter Hutton’s films of rivers, oceans, cargo ships, and landscapes are everything commercial movies are not—subtle, completely silent, thoughtful, and devoid of narrative. "Cinema tends to be this additive thing, it gets more complicated technologically," says Hutton. "I wanted to do it alone, keep it personal and private...It’s not about the pyrotechnics, it’s about something else---being inventive with limitations." Read an interview with Hutton and watch a video of his recent exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum here.

The Lines Between the Arts are Insignificant: Hiroshi Teshigahara's Antonio Gaudi is like no other film I can think of. This 72-minute visual poem on the Spanish Art-Nouveau architect avoids conventional narrative and instead, lets Gaudi’s buildings do the talking. "Gaudi worked beyond the borders of various arts,” Teshigahara once said, “and made me feel that the world in which I was living still left a great many possibilities.” Read more about Gaudi and Teshigahara here.

Re-Branding the Barnes: Has a 25-Billion-Dollar Art Collection Been Disneyfied? The controversial new Barnes Museum in Philadelphia has finally opened its doors to much acclaim and protest. Read the full story of how a spiteful, visionary genius created the greatest collection of Post-Impressionist art in the world, as well as a bureaucratic nightmare for his predecessors. My own review of Tod Williams and Billie Tsien's new building is also included here.

Doris Salcedo on the Perspective of the Defeated: This photograph of 1,550 wooden chairs piled between two buildings in Istanbul stopped me in my virtual tracks when I first saw it. Born in Colombia, Salcedo’s installations are meditations on the silenced lives of the marginalized--the gap between the powerful and the powerless. Read more about Salcedo's installations here.

The DIY Punk Philosophy of Jem Cohen: Artist Jem Cohen uses film as a solo medium to create cinematic collages and haunting meditations on memory and place. Cohen’s films are works of art–soulful, provocative, anti-commercial, mysterious, unconventional, and beautifully imperfect. The filmmaker has worked with an array of musicians through the years–Patti Smith, R.E.M., The Ex, Gil Shaham, Elliott Smith, Cat Power, and the late Vic Chesnutt. Read more about Jem's work here.

Roger King Explores Love & Fatigue in America: “What does it mean to live in between?” writes novelist Andrea Barrett of Roger King’s latest book. “Not only between geographical locations, but between health and illness, commitment and freedom, love and loss?” In this in-depth interview with British novelist Roger King, we discuss writing, King's fight with chronic fatigue syndrome, his aid work in Africa and Asia, American healthcare, and more.

Artist Matthew Northridge: Matthew Northridge uses paper like no other artist I know. Matt gave me a tour of his solo show at Kansas Gallery during a recent visit to New York City. Explore more of his work here.

The Most Memorable Experiences in the Arts: I asked an array of artists to tell me about their most memorable experiences in the arts during 2011. Singer Rosanne Cash (pictured above), Moosewood cookbook author Mollie Katzen, journalists William Powers and Jeff Sharlet, British composer Tarik O'Regan and others share their surprising picks here.

Exhuming the Forgotten: Filmmaker Errol Morris said that Bill Morrison's Decasia might be ”the greatest movie ever made.” Assembled entirely from decaying, highly flammable, early nitrate footage, this masterpiece belongs in the tradition of Stan Brakhage’s films and Michael Lessy’s memorable book Wisconsin Death Trip; it is simultaneously poetic, haunting, and compelling. The entire piece is a meditation on ruin and the temporal nature not only of film, but of life itself. Learn more about Decasia and Bill Morrison's other films here.

New England Artists Finally Get Their Due: Read my review of the de Cordoova Biennial, featuring work by Mary Lum, Anna Von Mertens, Chris Taylor, Ann Pibal, Steve Lambert (shown above), Cullen Bryant Washington, Jr., and More.

The World of E.B. White: In 1951 the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals accused writer E.B. White of not paying his dog tax and “harboring” an unlicensed dog. White wrote this hilarious letter in response to the ASPCA. Read the letter and an overview of White's work here.

A Retreat in the Sky: Explore the art, architecture, gardens, and history of New York's High Line Park, built on an old, elevated railway. (Above photo © Joel Sternfeld courtesy Friends of the High Line)

Composer Steve Reich with reel to reel tape recorders

The Sound of Four Hands Clapping: In 1971 composer Steve Reich embarked on a five-week trip to study music and drumming in Ghana. Shortly after his return, he wrote “Clapping Music.” In this 1972 video Reich performs this classic piece with percussionist Russell Hartenberger.

The Evolution of Photographer Bill Jacobson: “There has always been a poetic stance in my work,” says photographer Bill Jacobson. “Whether in focus or out, it’s never been about a single narrative, but rather something beneath the surface of what’s being photographed." Explore Jacobson's work here.

An Accidental Classic: Sibylle Baier’s critically-acclaimed Colour Green was published 30 years after it was first recorded on a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Baier starred in Wim Wender's films and wrote her own songs, but abandoned her career to move to America and raise her family. Read more about how this classic finally found an audience here.

Errol Morris on Photography: What makes an “honest” photograph? Is the medium of photography more factual and authentic than other art forms? Can a photo be objective or does it always have a point of view? When does a photograph document reality? When is it propaganda? When is it art? Filmmaker Errol Morris addresses all of these questions and more in his new book Believing is Seeing.

Ira Glass on the Creative Process: Ira Glass, the host of NPR’s This American Life, gives some useful advice about the art of story telling. Remember the method you learned in college–opening paragraph, thesis sentence, supporting material? Glass says to throw that tired technique out the window!

Essay: On Crows Openness is a state of mind that the nature lover and the artist share. Art, like bird watching, is about seeing, hearing, and understanding. It requires stillness. It demands that we remain open to the unexpected. Read the entire essay here.

Nairobi-London Sound Clash: I discovered the Owiny Sigoma Band during a 2011 trip to London. This highly original, Nairobi-London sound clash, which blends traditional Kenyan Luo styles with contemporary western influences, is like nothing else I’ve heard before. Their debut album, which pulses with mellow grooves, lyre riffs, and hypnotic drums, is organic, quirky and rough around the edges, but in a good way. Listen to the record here.

This Revolution is for Display Purposes Only: Click here to explore the world of street art, the first article in an ongoing series.

The Urban Frenzy of Olive Ayhens: Olive Ayhens' neo-expressionist pen and ink and watercolor drawings are a knock-out: textured, original, and deliberately unruly. Working on location, Ayhens draws the lively center of New York City, personifying its skyscrapers in a style that is vigorous and playful, as well as idiosyncratic.

Occupy Writers: Who could have guessed that one of the sanest pieces of writing about the Occupy movement would come from children's book author Lemony Snicket? Read “13 Observations Made by Lemony Snicket while Watching Occupy Wall Street from a Discreet Distance" here.

P.J. Harvey's "Let England Shake": "I only sing the songs that I can still believe," says singer P.J. Harvey. The emotionally charged "Let England Shake" is one of the strongest records of her career. Listen to samples and watch videos of Harvey's collaboration with filmmaker Seamus Murphy here.

A Secret Garden in the City: These gardens on the roof of Rockefeller Center are one of the best-kept secrets in New York City.

The Discomfort Zone: V.S. Naipaul believes that female writers are inferior and sentimental. Jonathan Franzen observes that "you can't deconstruct and undress at the same time." Has writing about love without hipster irony become a radical act for male novelists today? Read the full story here.

Ten Rules for Writing Fiction: Writers like Zadie Smith, Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood, and Richard Ford offer guidance on the art of fiction writing. A sampling of their advice: "Have children." "Don't have children." "Get an accountant." "No amount of self-inflicted misery, altered states, black pullovers or being publicly obnoxious will ever add up to your being a writer. Writers write." Damn. What am I going to do with all of those black turtlenecks?

Music by Goldfish: How aware are we of sound as we move through the course of our day? Which sounds do we register and which do we ignore? Do we even give the subject much thought? “Quintetto” by the Italian artist collective Quiet Ensemble is an intriguing blend of music, sound and installation art.

Doubt is Your Revelation: Jeff Sharlet's most recent book, Sweet Heaven When I Die, is a collection of 13 essays about belief, skepticism, and spirituality. Sharlet writes about Brad Will, an anarchist journalist who filmed his own murder by police; BattleCry, an evangelical youth movement devoted to spreading its particular brand of the Christian message; a new-age healer named Sondra Shaye; and renowned intellectual Cornel West.

Watch an Animation Classic: Yuriy Norshteyn’s Hedgehog in the Fog is one of the most stunning animated films ever made. Nick Park is a fan of Norshteyn's work and so is Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki. Click here to watch the 10-minute short film and to learn more about the Russian animator.

Composer & Cellist Paul Brantley: Brantley makes a case that Bach's cantatas are theologically subversive and gives Gwarlingo listeners a preview of his own Gnostic Cantata.

Animal Architecture: What if architects designed shelters not only to accommodate humans, but also to accommodate the animals? A five-star hotel for bugs? A towering home for bats? Why not?

More Than a Voice: A writer. A performer. A pianist. A cabaret act. A storyteller. An opera singer with a 3-4 octave range. Is there anything Joseph Keckler doesn't do?

Poetry Bombing: Explore two very different poetry bombing projects--one from the Chilean art collective Casagrande and the other by artist Agustina Woodgate.

George Bernard Shaw Exposed: Not many people realize that George Bernard Shaw was a passionate amateur photographer, as well as a prolific writer. When Shaw died at the age of 94, he left behind over 10,000 photographic prints and over 10,000 negatives in his home in Ayot St Lawrence.

Olafur Eliasson, the Danish artist who brought the sun to Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall and created man-made waterfalls in New York City, has a new project--Din blinde passager (Your blind passenger), a 295-foot-long tunnel filled with dense fog.

Movie Barcodes: A movie barcode for The Wizard of Oz. Click here to read more about movie barcodes and the use of color in cinema.

Breathbox by Antti Paalanen: Watch a mesmerizing piece of music by Finnish accordion master Antti Paalanen. "Mesmerizing accordion music?" you ask. Yes. Really.

The Fear of Failure: Even if you don't know his name, you know his work. Legendary designer Milton Glaser discusses the myth of creative genius and gives advice on how artists can move past the fear of failure. “Find out what you’re capable of doing or not capable of doing,” says Glaser. “Admit what is.” “Embrace the failure.” Watch Glaser's talk here.

Documenting a Revolution: Two filmmakers, who risked their lives to document the looting of archeological sites during the Iraq war, now find themselves in the heart of the Egyptian Revolution.

Gwarlingo on Twitter

Old article, but nice :) Arch prankster or art genius? 52 art works by british street artist Banksy http://t.co/1uPvI2zYAb Via @gwarlingo
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What do 335 pieces of candy wrapped in silver have to say about the fleeting nature of life? Learn more @gwarlingo http://t.co/f1yWgu4Gwc
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Gonzalez-Torres' piece UNTITLED (PLACEBO) made of 335 pounds of candy. Read more @gwarlingo: http://t.co/f1yWgu4Gwc http://t.co/QEo9x25lH4
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Read James Crews' poems about artist Gonzalez-Torres in today's Sunday Poem: http://t.co/f1yWgu4Gwc http://t.co/f1yWgu4Gwc @gwarlingo
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The Sunday Poem : Jorge Carrera Andrade’s Micrograms

Kernel of Corn

Oyster

Typewriting

What the Snail Is

Definition of a Seagull

About Jorge Carrera Andrade

About Joshua Beckman

About Alejandro de Acosta

Christian Marclay’s The Clock: Does the 24-Hour Artwork Live Up to the Hype?

The Sunday Poem : Adrienne Rich

About Adrienne Rich

Why Kitty Wells Matters

Receipts, Email, Bread Tags, Styrofoam : Rachel Perry Welty Transforms Life’s Daily Clutter into Art

Ruin & Repetition: Margaret Lanzetta & Susan Briante’s Utopia Minus Project

Weave Rip Grind
Susan Briante on the work of Margaret Lanzetta

Learning to Look : Whistler, Fireworks, and a New Way of Seeing

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The Sunday Poem : Jorge Carrera Andrade’s Micrograms

Kernel of Corn

Oyster

Typewriting

What the Snail Is

Definition of a Seagull

About Jorge Carrera Andrade

About Joshua Beckman

About Alejandro de Acosta

Christian Marclay’s The Clock: Does the 24-Hour Artwork Live Up to the Hype?

The Sunday Poem : Adrienne Rich

About Adrienne Rich

Why Kitty Wells Matters

Receipts, Email, Bread Tags, Styrofoam : Rachel Perry Welty Transforms Life’s Daily Clutter into Art

Ruin & Repetition: Margaret Lanzetta & Susan Briante’s Utopia Minus Project

Weave Rip Grind Susan Briante on the work of Margaret Lanzetta

Learning to Look : Whistler, Fireworks, and a New Way of Seeing

Join 30,000+ Readers

Subscribe for Free

Become a Member

About Michelle

The Town Square

Search Gwarlingo

Greatest Hits

Creative Spaces

Resources for Artists

Browse Gwarlingo

The Gwarlingo Store

Explore the Archives

Featured On…

Gwarlingo on Twitter

Browse by Category

Reader Comments

Archives

Weave Rip Grind
Susan Briante on the work of Margaret Lanzetta