Featured Posts

Peggy Ahwesh into the Night

September 26, 2020

The restless night owl Peggy Ahwesh likes to travel and “have adventures”. So since the “world was topsy turvy this summer,”* she scouted locations in upstate NY during the day, drove out along deserted country roads in the midnight hour [...]

To Copy a Burchfield…

September 17, 2020

…is not easy though I thought it would be. Of course Fantasy of Heat is a watercolor: it is painted transparently with easy fluid brushstrokes and I can’t paint that way. I put some paint down and add and edit, not really knowing what I am doing [...]

“Artforum” by César Aira, Chapter 3: “Subscription”

May 29, 2020

Subscription is the third chapter of a marvelous book! I know that much. But not whether it should it be shelved under Autobiography, Collected Essays or Fiction. Aira is very playful. In Subscription, for example, the author/protagonist [...]

If You Live in Bed-Stuy Do This, You’ll Feel A Lot Better!

May 7, 2020

Staying away from other people in order to keep them safe is an utterly depressing experience. If you are going to the grocery store anyway, and you can afford it, buy some extra things and drop them off at the Golden Harvest Food Pantry, help [...]

The Stoopio Visit: 4:00 pm, Tuesday, April 7, 2020, with Don Doe, Cecilia Whittaker-Doe and Cathy Nan Quinlan

April 9, 2020

Like addicts seeking a fix, we met on the stoop, each carrying a painting we had made in the last two weeks. We stood well apart as if we didn’t care for each other. It felt illegal—the law-abiding crossed the street when they saw us, except [...]

Sketchbook Number Nine: Judith Simonian

April 3, 2020

The first Simonian I ever really saw was Fleshy Pink Room. (see below) It has a marvelous sense of space. At the same time, the elements that define the space are quite beautifully painted. So I looked at the scarf on the back of the couch in the [...]

Sketchbook Number Eight: Clintel Steed

March 26, 2020

Steed’s paintings have a unique surface—interlocking shapes of color that somehow produce a powerful sense of space and depth. Except for a sassy drawing that stays right on the surface of a dollar bill, his sketches show his study of [...]

Sketchbook Number Seven: Liza Phillips

February 29, 2020

It seems uncannily appropriate with China so much on our minds to show, among others, a few sketches that Liza Phillips made at a residence in Taohuatan China last October. Here are her descriptions: Lucky with raised hand and Tai Chi champion, [...]

A Christmas Present from Talking Pictures: “Observando El Cielo” by Jeanne Liotta

December 25, 2019

Christmas, 1958, Tampa, Florida. I was sure Santa would bring a pony, but he brought a tent. My brother, eleven at the time, was supposed to spend the night with me in it in the backyard, but he bailed, I woke up and there I was, five years old, ten [...]

Successes in the Garden for Native Plants: the Monarch and the American Lady, in Brooklyn!

September 16, 2019

A Monarch caterpillar feeding on a Milkweed in our treebed in Bed Stuy. Two caterpillars ate almost the entire plant in a couple days. So I moved them to another milkweed in an empty lot on our block. For 3 years I’ve been weeding out the [...]