We had not heard of poet Lynn Ungar before we saw her poem Pandemic. It offers a deeply affirming way to view this “strange and terrible” time, referencing an ancient practice. Pandemic What if you thought of it as the Jews consider the Sabbath— the most sacred of times? Cease from travel. Cease from buying…
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As grim notices come in announcing closings and suspensions due to the Coronavirus, we saw THIS video from Italy and had to smile, heartened…
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In a 2012 talk at AIGA, Zach Lieberman, cofounder of the School for Poetic Computation, read the short, powerful ‘I Am Art’ out loud. It is one of the most astonishing and rhapsodic proclamations of art-making we’ve seen and totally nails the exhilaration art brings.
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On the great instagram Nitch, we found an excerpt from an essay Toni Morrison wrote for the Nation in 2015. It seems an extraordinarily fitting message for THIS very dark time.
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Over our transom came this moving piece from Underland: a Deep Time Journey by British naturalist Robert Macfarlane. We’ve written before about his remarkable ability to connect us to nature, landscape, heart…
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Over the years, artist-scientist Thomas Ashcraft has made artful iterations of a message that we’ve found deeply heartening. Especially so now, in this anxious time…
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When we found hand sanitizers sold out everywhere, we did some research to find ways to achieve what commercial hand-sanitizers would, along with a few other strategies for killing that nasty coronavirus.
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When a friend forwarded an email from a “noted virologist” with the Subject line, “What I am doing for the upcoming COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic”, we checked it out. Dr. Robb MD FACP did indeed write the excellent advice below. It’s well worth taking to heart.
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This sublime short film is about “saxophone colossus” Sonny Rollins’ two-year musical sabbatical playing on New York’s Williamsburg Bridge and what he found there.
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We are thrilled by the publication of Donald Judd Spaces, a rare visual survey of the legendary artist’s living and working spaces. It contains a trove of new and archival photographs alongside five essays by the artist which afford a close look and greater understanding of his integrative thinking and aesthetic, and very employable ideas.
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In his beautiful kinetic choreographies of pendulums, artist William Forsythe draws our awareness to ways we negotiate and choreograph our paths…
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In this 16 second film, a blow torch + hair dryer + popcorn makes for a curiously zen moment. We found two haiku to go with it. Then we remembered our friend Tim Chegwidden’s timed poetry-writing practice…
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Just about every week, we find something useful in Kevin Kelly’s newsletter Recomendo, a handful of “cool stuff” from really smart people. The latest is The Immediacy Filter.
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Experiencing Rondinone’s massive painting nailed directly to the wall got us thinking about enjoyable and…intimate…an experience unframed art can be. Along with a simple way to hang it.
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We’ve gathered a trove of ideas over the years…
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We were knocked out by selections from poet Mary Ruefle’s beautiful ”erasure books”, poetry made by whiting out words in old books. We also discovered Wite-Out is a potent, paint-like art material.
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Charlotte Arene’s remarkable stop motion animation captures the restless agitation of not sleeping well as though roiled by an angry sea. It’s a feeling many of us know well. Here is my list of tiny steps that can help you sleep, learned by trying them on myself.
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Without realizing it, I’ve collected a few books about “doing nothing”, one for kids and a couple for adults. All have unexpected wisdom to offer.
Read MoreEverything in the world started with yes.Clarice Lispector
When the mid-century wood table I set up for dining and work took a hit from a spilled glass of water, I cast about for a protective everyday solution that wouldn’t look like plastic. I found it in old-fashioned oilcloth…
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