Monday, August 29 2022

"Wise Guise," a group show at the Narrows Center for the Arts in Fall River, features four exhibitors seasoned enough to “find fault” with our world. But they’re not so jaded as to be without tenderness.

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• 6 min read

Sunday, July 31 2022

It's been 31 days since "30 days of June," this blog's daily posting project, concluded. A recap feels useful. Did I write anything of worth? How much did I write anyway? Let’s find out!

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• 6 min read

Thursday, June 30 2022

Knowing Gramma could draw, I’d sometimes ask her to copy pictures. I recently rediscovered a notebook of Pokémon I ‘commissioned.’ These are pencil drawings on school supply-grade paper.

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• 5 min read

Wednesday, June 29 2022

What Simone Weil said: “The beauty of the world is the mouth of a labyrinth.” And at the end of the path? “There God is waiting to eat him.” When you write: Your goal is to get eaten.

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• 4 min read

Tuesday, June 28 2022

The mouse became my favorite toy of all. I still have him. In fact he’s staring down from a bookshelf at me this very moment. He’s lost a lot of weight over the years.

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• 4 min read

Monday, June 27 2022

Teresa Teng was a rare generational voice. The kind of singer with her own gravitational field. She sang beautiful, tender songs. She didn’t die rockstar young. But she did die at age 42, unexpectedly.

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• 9 min read

Sunday, June 26 2022

Mangaka tend to be prolific, but Rumiko Takahashi is truly behemoth. Multiple sources declare her the best-selling woman cartoonist in history. In her early works, we're permitted to laugh at how horrible we are.

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• 6 min read

Saturday, June 25 2022

The propulsion of any Twombly canvas is independent of the viewer’s perception. When we do manage to grab a hold of something, it whips us around with a slasher’s glee. Cy Twombly is the Jason Voorhees of abstraction. His kills are both brazen and artful.

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• 2 min read

Friday, June 24 2022

Possibly relevant selections from Luce Irigaray. "I cannot cover myself in skin again in order to return to the outside. My death is inside your own. We shall die together if you do not let me go outside your sameness."

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• 3 min read

Thursday, June 23 2022

In 1999, 47 Potato Heads were sculpted and displayed across Rhode Island. Today only 10 remain on view. So I took the pilgrimage to see 'em all. Almost all of the potatoes looked better in person than they do in pictures.

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• 6 min read

Wednesday, June 22 2022

Writing consecutively for 22 days has been consciousness changing. I have come perilously close to having egg on my face a few times. Maybe the yolk is still there, dripping right into a blindspot.

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• 3 min read

Tuesday, June 21 2022

Making a mark stops a line from becoming infinite. This is what a ‘line worker’ like Twombly, or Mary Dondero, does. And they do it enthusiastically. Within this genre, how a mark hits the ground or paper is just as important as where.

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• 3 min read