The Politics of Portraiture: The Prison Creative Arts Project
Twelve portraits by ten artists: Rafael DeJesus, Theodora Moss, Gilbert Poole, RoShuan Smith, Raymond Gray, Nino Tanzini, Bryan Picken, Moses Whitepig, Johnnie Trice, and Anonymous Artist.
Outsider Artist, Outside Time
Who gets to be considered an outsider artist, or an artist at all? Alison Stine on John B. McLemore (the unlikely star of the blockbuster podcast S-Town), the politics of art and access, her own artistic practices, and more.
The Cabinet of Ordinary Affairs: Stephanie Ellis Schlaifer and Cheryl Wassenaar
Stephanie Ellis Schlaifer and Cheryl Wassenaar take us into The Cabinet of Ordinary Affairs, an art exhibit inspired by a poetry manuscript by Schlaifer, in which they explore the bureaucracy of the mind through imagined interior government officials and cabinets.
The Music Does Not Matter: Notes on Music in Literature
“Nevertheless, all across Boston, music remains awake, remains traveling from performance hall to telephone wire to private music room or bedroom, whether it can be heard or not . . ..” Jaydn Dewald roves through literature, looking at the challenges–and pleasures–of representing music in words.
If They Come For Us: Fatimah Asghar and Shyama Golden
Fatimah Asghar and Shyama Golden discuss how Shyama created cover art for Fatimah’s debut collection of poetry, If They Come For Us, and more. Including glimpses of Shyama’s drafting process and three other pieces of art.
Robert Calafiore
Robert Calafiore talks with Debra Klomp Ching about his extraordinary and colorful pinhole photographs.
Two Visual Essays: American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
After Terrance Hayes completed American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, he found he had some remaining fragments and lines that yet “begged … for shape.” From them he has been making drawings.
The Goodbye Door
Lesley Jenike encounters a painting with an intriguing title—The Goodbye Door by Joan Mitchell—at around the same time that she learns about the discovery of remains of infants and small children near a Catholic Church-run home for mothers and babies born out of wedlock in Tuam, Ireland. In this essay, Jenike meditates on Mitchell, Tuam, her own life, internalized misogyny, resistance, synesthesia, narrative, love, and more.
Somewhere on the Road to Nowhere: Double Negative
Merridawn Duckler takes us beyond “No” and “No” into Double Negative, Michael Heizer’s monumental piece of land art stationed in Nevada.
Amy Jorgensen
Amy Jorgensen talks with Debra Klomp Ching about Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue.
The High Rise on Desolation Row
“Dylan became our soundtrack, as we wrestled with confusion, living so far from home.” Philip Metres discovers a quintessentially American album while living in Russia.
The Colossal: Iris van Herpen and Girls Write the Museum
“For me, each dress functions the way a poem does: ‘A poem should not mean / But be.'” Emily Mohn-Slate on “Girls Write the Museum,” the art of Iris van Herpen’s couture, poetry, and the feeling that the world could be colossal.
Four Paintings by Margarita Gokun
Four haunting and alluring paintings by Margarita Gokun, a writer, novelist, and painter, and an editor’s note.
Standing Water
“I am eight years old, and the sun has set, and I am nowhere near Memphis, Tennessee, when Jeff Buckley slips under the surface of Wolf River Harbor.” Lee Huttner on music, mourning, and faith.
Kimberly Witham
Kimberly talks with Darren Ching and Debra Klomp Ching about her Vanitas-inspired Of Ripeness And Rot series of still-life photographs.