Web Exclusive: A Conversation with Kathy T. Hettinga
By Interview Issue 66
Kathy Hettinga has received many awards and honors for her artwork, including an Indiana Arts Fellowship, a Research Fellowship at The Institute of Sacred Music, Worship, and the Arts at Yale University, and the very first Scholar Chair from Messiah University. Her work is in the permanent collections of UCLA, the Armand Hammer Museum, the…
Read MorePixelated Glories: The Graphic Excursions of Kathy T. Hettinga
By Essay Issue 66
DESIGN IS ubiquitous. Design in its graphic manifestations is, well, frankly overwhelming. Streams of printed ephemera constantly assault us, from cherished journals, to the slumping pile of unread newspapers shoved behind an easy chair in the corner, to the blur of billboards, fliers, bulletins, and posters cluttering our horizon. The democracy of digital invention compounds…
Read MoreWilliam Eggleston
By Poetry Issue 70
To me it seems that the pictures reproduced here are about the photographer’s home, about his place, in both important meanings of that word. —John Szarkowski, Introduction to William Eggleston’s Guide I’m sure I’m wrong about him, but it’s always seemed like slumming to me, those _____lovely color photographs—quickly seen shots of broken grave monuments…
Read MoreA Celebration of Transient Beauty: The Photographic Art of Paul Kenny
By Essay Issue 73
I suppose if the main challenge I set myself is to make increasingly beautiful work, the simpler the image the better, the more ideas the better, so the other variable is to make those images out of more and more insignificant material: a splash of dried seawater, a rusting can bottom, a handful of sand,…
Read MoreDecay and Resurrection
By Essay Issue 76
Decay and Resurrection: An Engineer on the Ecosystem of Abandoned Buildings THERE’S A DENTIST’S OFFICE captured in photographs that, along with a number of companion images, got quite a bit of circulation in print and on the internet a few years back. The narrow, confined operating room, nested high in an office tower, is…
Read MoreTo Make People Wonder: The Collaborative Portraits of Fritz Liedtke
By Essay Issue 78
HER MOUTH is taped shut. That’s what gets your attention first. At first glance, a photograph like this might trigger alarm or suspicion. But context is everything. Look again, and see how those temporary tattoo lines spiral like fiddlehead ferns from her eye to her ear, and that speck of blue glitter gleams on her…
Read MoreMirrormind: Lia Chavez and the Artistic Process
By Essay Issue 80
Neither the action nor the actors can be anticipated…. They begin as an unknown adventure in an unknown space. —Mark Rothko, 1947 OUR ENCOUNTER with reality is endlessly generative. Both Subject and Object, the contemplative and the contemplated, are replete with a beautiful, orderly complexity. The authentic artwork—glittering, effulgent with metaphysical…
Read MoreThe Avant-Garde and Sacred Discontent: Contemporary Performance Artists Meet Ancient Jewish Prophets
By Essay Issue 83
I RECALL A SUNDAY MORNING when the church lectionary readings included a passage from the prophet Isaiah. The lay reader that morning was a thoughtful, older man dressed in a tasteful gray suit. Standing at the lectern, he opened the Bible and read: At that time Yahweh had spoken through Isaiah son of Amoz. He…
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