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Repository 212: Richard Kurtz | Wrestlers and Golden Books
Below is an essay I wrote after interviewing artist Richard Kurtz last month, and diving deep into insider/outsider/whatchamacallit art which I have been interested in for some time. His work will be featured at the New York Outsider Art Fair in New York this month (January 18 – 21). Please visit Booth 19 should you find yourself there. Meanwhile – let’s dissect the idea of outside art. Peace – c “Perhaps there is more sense in our nonsense and more…
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Repository 201: Gaining Wider Perspectives in 2017
Gaining a wider perspective is like opening a window to a stuffy room – the whole atmosphere changes and the fresh breeze carries alternatives to our habitual ways of reacting. – Tarthang Tulku Whether it’s been to justify my spells away from the studio to work as a management consultant, business owner, museum associate, mother, etc, I always believe that my artwork, and artwork in general, benefits from the more I know about everything else besides art. I still believe that is…
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Repository 199: Long Lost Art Brother | Strange Connections
I expect that where I start will not be where I end. – Me I’ve recently had the accidental pleasure of realizing my trajectory in the studio has some echoes to an artist that I have never been in love with to the degree that the general public and museum patrons have. I’ve been busy finding my art sisters and mothers – all the beautiful feminists sharing the world of women with viewers, and never gave male artists their due….
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Repository 191: Coloring Project | A Playful Exercise in the Serious Business of History and Context
The following essay will appear in the Spring Issue of “Picture Sentence”. It is currently being polished by a thoughtful editor, meanwhile I thought you might enjoy the raw thoughts. Thank you for reading! xo “We need a Ministry of Disturbance, a regulated source of annoyance, a destroyer of routine, an underminer of complacency, or, in other words, a ministry of aesthetic activity.” – Asger Jorns, “The Natural Order” Dear artist: Who are you? What do you do? How do…
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Repository 190: Art and Mindfulness | Enrique Martinez Celaya
When I had a studio at the Headlands Center for the Arts, an artist friend down the hall recommended I look up the work of Enrique Martinez Celaya – he saw my work as simpatico. That was almost 10 years ago, and over the years I’ve been following to a degree what this artist is up to. Indeed there are many similarities to our practices – we both come from an entirely different left brain focus at school (he physics…
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Repository 187: Cultivating Your Creative Process with Critical Thinking in 2016
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. – Leo Tolstoy Every year I choose an overarching theme that relates to my work, my life and my projects. Last year was the year of slowing down (hence the fewer published essays here), the year before was the year of getting dirty (I made a lot of work in the studio that year and truly made a mess), and this year is the year of critical thinking….
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Repository 131: Bon Mots | 6 Tests of Originality | Who Cares About Cool
A short post as I prepare for major travel to NYC next week. I had another moment recently (these moments are multiplying) where an artist friend was feeling flummoxed about art, the studio, making work, and doing art with a capital “A”. Art IS work, and art is an obligation not a hobby (thank you very much IRS). So to remind her of how to sift through the ideas in her mind and simply carry on, I include two pockets…
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Repository 74: Ursula on Artists
Image courtesy National Geographic, picture by Michael Quinton Artists What do they do, the singers, tale‑writers, dancers, painters, shapers, makers? They go there with empty hands, into the gap between. They come back with things in their hands. They go silent and come back with words, with tunes. They go into confusion and come back with patterns. They go limping and weeping, ugly and frightened, and come back with the wings of the red-wing hawk, the eyes of the mountain…
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Repository 71: An Artist Who Collects Art History and Ephemera
This weekend I went to artist Jason Brinkerhoff’s book launch and artist talk at Portland’s Ampersand Vintage. The occasion was a book release which Ampersand produced in collaboration with Jason. I attended because I had seen his work in NYC a year or so ago at ZeiherSmith Gallery. His work appeals on first blush to both a trained eye who can recognize his quotations of art history, and someone brand new to the discussion because his work is colorful and…
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