Tadao Ando, Church of the Light, 1989. Osaka, Japan. Philadelphia is a city awash with memorable architecture, so it's fitting that I stumbled across The Architect Says: Quotes, Quips, and Words of Wisdom at the Philadelphia Museum of Art's store, which offers a well-curated assortment of books inside of [...]
Bill Traylor, Runaway Goat Cart, c. 1939-42. Opaque watercolor and graphite on cream card, 14 x 22 inches. (Photo by Will Brown courtesy the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection) "I painted pictures in the gutter," the African-American artist Purvis Young once remarked, "and [...]
James Crews’ poetry collection, The Book of What Stays, is full of evocative landscapes and secret lives. There is the old woman in Chernobyl who refuses to leave, ice fishing with Patsy Cline, and the moving poems about artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres.
Liu Bolin, Hiding in the City No.93 -Supermarket No.2, 2010. Photographs by the Chinese artist are on view in Brattleboro, Vermont, through June 23rd. (Photo Courtesy Eli Klein Fine Art © Liu Bolin. Click to Enlarge) The summer art scene in New England presents a special challenge. [...]
Polaroid by Andrei Tarkovsky from the book Instant Light: Tarkovsky Polaroids from Thames and Hudson. “Never try to convey your idea to the audience," said Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, "---it is a thankless and senseless task. Show them life, and they’ll find within themselves the means to [...]
Concrete Sound (Photos courtesy Audra Wolowiec) Last year Gwarlingo readers responded enthusiastically to Mary Ruefle and Jen Bervin's erasure poems. Today's Sunday Poem features another unique project that defies categorization---a collaboration between interdisciplinary artist Audra Wolowiec and poet, critic, and artist Christine Shan Shan Hou. In conjunction with [...]
Singer, writer, and performance artist Joseph Keckler (Photo by Gerry Visco courtesy of Joseph Keckler) Few things are as fulfilling as seeing a large, creative project finally reach completion. For many artists, finishing can be as difficult as starting. Artists often toil away for months, even years [...]
Barry Underwood, Archimedes. This installation was created at the construction site for the new Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland. (Photo © Barry Underwood. Click to Enlarge) As New York artists search for the next affordable, urban frontier in Bushwick and Queens, a renaissance of sorts is taking [...]
John Lam and Lia Cirio with pianist Tomoko Mukaiyama in Jirí Kylián's Tar and Feathers (Photo by Rosalie O’Connor courtesy the Boston Ballet) Last week the Boston Ballet kicked off its spring season at the Boston Opera House with three works by Czechoslovakian choreographer Jirí Kylián. Born in Prague, Kylián trained [...]
The wreckage of Rockaway Boardwalk after Sandy (Image via CNN.com) A few months ago I shared Eve Mosher's piece, High Water Line, a public art project in Manhattan and Brooklyn that brought the topic of climate change directly to the city’s residents. Mosher's inventive project showed what [...]
A still from Wim Wenders' Pina (Photo © Neue Road Movies GmbH. A Sundance Selects Release. Click to Enlarge) Timing is everything, particularly in the case of Wim Wenders' film Pina. Wenders, director of the critically acclaimed Wings of Desire and Buena Vista Social Club, first saw Pina [...]
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 [...]
Horace Pippin, Mr. Prejudice, 1943. Oil on canvas, 18 x 14" (Image courtesy of The Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Matthew Moore) Last summer I was strolling through the galleries of the new Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, surrounded by the exquisite paintings of Matisse, Modigliani, [...]
Sam Green narrating his live documentary The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston (Photo by Sam Allison) "I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am [...]
It's Friday and another week has almost come and gone without a mid-week post on Gwarlingo. Apologies to Gwarlingo readers for neglecting everyone but the poets the past 14 days. I've been traveling on business and working on an exciting (arts-related) project down in Philadelphia. While Gwarlingo is my [...]
One of the images from Anthony Sherin's Solo, Piano - N.Y.C. Since creating its controversial pay wall in 2011, The New York Times has continued to explore new ways of merging storytelling with technology. Their recent multi-media piece "Snowfall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek" is an impressive glimpse at [...]
A still from Terry Gilliam's 1968 animation "The Christmas Card" Merry Christmas! This holiday I'm grateful to readers like yourself who have made 2012 such a fulfilling and exciting year. Thank you. I've thoroughly enjoyed connecting with so many of you in person, through email, social media, [...]
Last night a friend and I watched Jean Cocteau's 1946 film La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast) for the very first time. Luckily, we were able to see the restored version of this French masterpiece on the big screen. It is hard to remember just how radical [...]
(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 [...]
In 2007 artist Eve S. Mosher used beacons and chalk to mark the projected high water line in Brooklyn and Manhattan. (Battery Park photo by Hose Cedeno courtesy highwaterline.org) Artist Eve Mosher in 2007 (Photo courtesy highwaterline.org) "I never wanted this to be [...]
A 1968 poster parodying the Nixon campaign's motto, "Nixon's the one!" (Courtesy the Library of Congress) Election Day is finally here, and I thought it would be fun to explore some of the campaign posters from past presidential elections. All of the posters featured here are in [...]
"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 [...]
This drawing may look like a maze or an artist's sketch, but it's actually a musical score created by Emmy-award-winning composer Steve Heitzeg. A few years ago pianist Teresa McCollough received a surprise gift in the mail from Heitzeg: 192 scores titled World Piece. Each score was named for [...]
Julia Jacquette, Blond, Shoulder, 2011. Oil on wood panel. 10 x 7.5 inches (Photo by Jean Vong) It's hard not to be mesmerized by Julia Jacquette 's hypnotic paintings. Their luminous, rich surfaces are intoxicating, and yet there is so much more happening in Jacquette's work than [...]
Tatzu Nishi's public art installation, Discovering Columbus, opened in Manhattan on Thursday. Here Nishi is pictured with Gaetano Russo's 1892 sculpture. (Photo by Tom Powel courtesy the Public Art Fund, NY) Last week I featured Tatzu Nishi's Discovering Columbus on my Don't Miss List for September. Two [...]