System and Chaos: The Art of Linnéa Spransy
By Essay Issue 89
I am interested in limits, specifically, in their ability to generate surprise, even freedom. —Linnéa Spransy The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings. —Wendell Berry THE CANVASAS IN LINNÉA SPRANSY’S studio explode with images rich and strange: ribbons and lobes reproducing like bacteria in…
Read MoreOnly What You Do For Christ Will Last: A Conversation with Tim Rollins
By Interview Issue 60
Painters Frame Contemporary Painting Painting has died and been resurrected several times in recent decades. Challenged by theory-laden conversations about art’s “post-medium” condition and a welter of deconstructionist propositions, painting seems nevertheless to have thrived in the face of adversity. Some would say it remains as manifold and imaginative as ever. In order to take…
Read MoreA Painter’s Thoughts on the State of Painting
By Essay Issue 60
Painters Frame Contemporary Painting Painting has died and been resurrected several times in recent decades. Challenged by theory-laden conversations about art’s “post-medium” condition and a welter of deconstructionist propositions, painting seems nevertheless to have thrived in the face of adversity. Some would say it remains as manifold and imaginative as ever. In order to take…
Read MoreSomething Happens
By Essay Issue 60
Painters Frame Contemporary Painting Painting has died and been resurrected several times in recent decades. Challenged by theory-laden conversations about art’s “post-medium” condition and a welter of deconstructionist propositions, painting seems nevertheless to have thrived in the face of adversity. Some would say it remains as manifold and imaginative as ever. In order to take…
Read MoreThe Problems of Painting
By Essay Issue 60
Painters Frame Contemporary Painting Painting has died and been resurrected several times in recent decades. Challenged by theory-laden conversations about art’s “post-medium” condition and a welter of deconstructionist propositions, painting seems nevertheless to have thrived in the face of adversity. Some would say it remains as manifold and imaginative as ever. In order to take…
Read MoreLevity and Gravity: The Sculpture of David Robinson
By Essay Issue 88
Sculpture is not made to function, but to make us function —Jean-Robert Ipoustéguy (1920–2006), __French figurative sculptor TEN YEARS HAD passed since I last saw David Robinson, the Vancouver-based Canadian sculptor. The occasion then was a studio visit to select three works for my exhibition A Broken Beauty: Figuration, Narrative, and Transcendence in North…
Read MoreVanishing into the Work: The Franciscan Labors of James Munce
By Essay Issue 54
I think that I am primarily a storyteller. My function as a visual artist is to create a two-dimensional formal structure that will best contain the story being told. I am always trying to create a sense of space that has somehow been altered or transformed by an event. —James Munce THE LACONIC, SPARTAN PROSE above…
Read MoreJack Baumgartner and the School of the Transfer of Energy
By Essay Issue 87
IN LATE FEBRUARY OF 2015, my husband and I left behind the snow and ice of central Indiana to drive ten hours south to the shrubby tree-lined plains just outside Wichita, Kansas—to see a puppet show. Another couple we’d met only the night before accompanied us, a sword maker who operates Cedarlore Forge in New…
Read MoreWalking Man: The Art of Thomas Denny
By Essay Issue 86
Fair Quiet, have I found thee here, And Innocence, thy sister dear! Mistaken long, I sought you then In busy companies of men; Your sacred plants, if here below, Only among the plants will grow. Society is all but rude, To this delicious solitude. Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, Withdraws into its happiness; The…
Read MoreCandy and Copenhagen: Encountering the Art of Jonathan Castellino
By Essay Issue 86
The role or purpose of art in our lives is to serve as a reminder. We have a sense that the world of perception is illusive and created. Through the acceptance of the gifts of beauty we feel that we are able to draw back the veil cast over our senses, if only briefly, and…
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