Author Archive
Showing Up
Sitting across from me in the coffee shop is my 95 year old father reciting lyrics from a song that matters to him today. The song was written 65 years ago but for my dad it could have been released an hour ago. He’s been doing this my whole life. Making the moment shamelessly timeless. […]
Boxed Water and Art
“Can we go to the museum” is the text I receive, without a question mark, from my 12-year old daughter. “Yes” is my reply without period. I know there isn’t much there but the seven word exchange has my attention. By the time I arrive at school to pick her up she jumps into the […]
Snow
“Despite the sunshine…” is a little phrase buried inside today’s weather alert from the Weather Channel. Outside I’m in my shirt sleeves shoveling snow to create a path between my house and my studio. It is about 150 feet. I had plenty of other stuff to do today. I woke before dawn with my to […]
Tools 46235 Exhibit at Galeria Magnifica
It is tempting to try mapping out the opening scene where we get a sweeping view of the landscape and of time. I want to describe 46235 to you, bring you in a little closer, show you through rich detail how Galeria Magnifica is located behind gum ball machines, wedged between a nail salon and […]
Theater Theatre
“What are the ambitious questions? What are the questions that are big enough that you are probably going to need a whole team to answer? Questions that are so big that the answers haven’t been created yet?” These sentences were spoken by my Theater of Inclusion collaborator, Rebecca King, a couple months ago at the […]
An Artist’s Studio By Any Other Name
I’m on a business trip. I’ve come to Chicago to visit an artist who established an art studio inside a school. I’m pursuing a question that interests me: Is an art studio always an art studio? I think of the now seldom-paraquoted: A rose by any other name is still a rose. The actual quote […]
Tools Exhibit Tonight
Early on in the Ron Frick film Baraka there is a collage of moving images taken in Kathmandu as the sun is rising outside of a temple. There is a woman sweeping, the dust spreading out around her catching the first light of day. I was reminded of this image when I first saw Julie […]
Tools
I’m standing in the basement of the Central YMCA in San Francisco staring into a dimly lit closet tucked away behind the boiler room. It is three o’clock in the morning. The year is 1988 and Microsoft released Windows 2.1, NASA scientist James Hansen testified that global warming had begun, Cincinnati Reds pitcher Tom Browning […]
“Go Outside.”
These are the words I hear walking in through the front door of the house where my big brother lives. I pause with my jacket halfway off. I look at my brother James. He reads the hesitancy in my body language and repeats, “Go outside.” I counter with the already obvious, “But I just came […]
Chairs / 10-28-13
I figured out something today – it’s not about the chairs: (excerpts) 3:02 a.m. I send out a handful of invitations via e-mail and text. In the invite I include a photo of the chairs the last time we set them out. The Circle Tower Building dominates the background. In the foreground three people are […]