My favorite piece in the 2016 edition of the Montreal Biennial was also the oldest by nearly five centuries: Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Portrait of a Lady. Like any anatomically correct 16th century woman, her waist is the width of…
She agitates the quart developing tank in total darkness, our windowless bath; the cylinder slides inside against the film for ten minutes at 70 degrees. I can see the developer acid in the luminous dial of my watch: she adds…
Art is difficult to understand. In the domain of public perception, few truisms have enjoyed greater staying power than this one. What with its endless parade of unfamiliar forms, its highbrow hijinks and hopelessly cryptic meanings, things can hardly be…
For decades, Carrie Mae Weems’s staged photographs and videos have served as aids for processing the legacies of slavery, racism, and sexism in the United States. The elegant solutions in Weems’s compositions, their gravitas and narrative content, appear to operate…
Micah Danemayer, aka: hippie johnny / jungle jim / ic pcp / wife rice / fake steak / real veal / mono tony / visual aids December 31, 2016 I was in Miami the night I heard about the fire…
In a playful sequence from Cecilia Vicuña’s 1980 film Sol y Dar y Dad, una palabra bailada, a danced word, the viewer’s attention is directed towards a female character, presumably the artist. Her back is leaned against the door of…
Liao Fei’s exhibition at Yve Yang gallery at first glance seems to be a work in progress: perhaps even a transition between shows. Remarking on surveillance culture, Fei’s quiet exhibition not only gives visitors the uneasy feeling of being watched,…
You can’t have relationships with other people until you give birth to yourself -Sonia Sanchez Reflecting on my recent trip to South Africa to attend and moderate a panel discussion at the “Black Portraitures III – Reinventions: Strains of Histories and…
In a 1968 interview, Anni Albers described her initial relationship with textiles as a tepid one, at best. When she first arrived at the Bauhaus in 1922, each new student was required to take an introductory hands-on workshop. The classes,…
On September 30th, I, along with a small group of skeptical but cooperative volunteer-participants, an eager and unassuming college marching band, and one very enthusiastic curator with a megaphone, gathered at the entrance of the historic Boston Common. Together we…
“I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.”-Zora Neale Hurston As a byproduct of a conversation with my dear friend and fellow artist Chanel Thervil, this essay grapples with issues of power presented within Carrie…
Inside/Out is Big Red & Shiny’s artist-in-residence series, offering a space for artists to write about their ideas, research, and challenges, and publish their inspirations, obsessions, creative experiences, and insights. Unlike an ‘Open Studio’ format, which is often predicated on potential sales, BR&S…
I recently had the opportunity to engage in a wonderful conversation with Betty Jarvis, a recent Master’s graduate from the Art History program at Rutgers University. I find that conversations outside of the studio are just as important as your…
Only what is shown to us is a prompt I used to begin writing about the exhibition I curated, The Shifting Space Around Us, Megan and Murray McMillan at Ortega Y Gasset Projects in Brooklyn (August 27 – September 25, 2016).…
“I make these when I’m not making my ‘real’ work.” I heard this statement fall out of my mouth and stopped myself, horrified. I was at the opening of the BLAA Summer 2016 exhibit You Think It’s ____, But It’s…
“…the problem lies not whether to reach for either larger or more selective audiences, but rather in understanding for ourselves our own definitions of those groups we wish to speak to, and in making conscious steps to reach out to…
These are glimpses of my experience and thoughts recorded in my journal from my time as an artist-in-residence at the Vermont Studio Center (VSC) last month. While reading my journal I reflected on what I had been feeling at the time…
The question of documentation is rooted in the history of the avant-garde. Think of Dadaist or Surrealists recording their work via sound or the nascent technology of film. Think of Hans Namuth filming Jackson Pollock as he dripped his paintings…
“The best art speaks for itself,” someone stated at a recent public discussion about Boston Creates. My immediate internal response was yes, but art also prompts, at times even goads, us to speak or write. I concede that art is,…
Since 2013 I’ve been focused—educatively, academically, artistically—on ‘socially-engaged art’ and the idea of learning in public.(1) Over the course of the last ten years, I’ve grown to understand the the site of my own work (as a curator, educator, artist…