Our Philadelphia winter was recently interrupted by unseasonably warm weather. Perfect timing to kick off my hunt for public installations associated with the Barnes Foundation’s Person of the Crowd: The Contemporary Art of Flânerie, which opened on February 25th. The “flâneur” references Charles Baudelaire’s 1863 essay “The Painter of Modern Life” in which he describes … Continue reading
Writer, what kind of words will you fetch to awkwardly describe what drawing can instead perfectly represent? Don’t bother with words, unless you are speaking to the blind…don’t mess with things that belong to the eyes. Don’t try to smuggle them as something belonging instead to the ears. You will always be overruled by the … Continue reading
Recently contributor Leslie Belloso was invited to give the commencement speech at Crisfield High School in Maryland. Her speech below contains more than just advice for high school seniors, it is a moving description of her life so far and the lessons she has learned living it. We create our destinies through the choices we make … Continue reading
Get to know our authors through the new Contributor Series. A group of short posts from Proximity Arts members. Allow us to share our work and our thoughts on making work with you. For the first instillation Ilene has written a paragraph that speaks to the relationships between still life, landscape and the figure. This poetic … Continue reading
Recently I took part in a group project. The assignment, to curate a fictional art show with two other students. We were asked to pick a subject, artists and a format along with writing a curatorial essay and slideshow. My group chose to focus on the phenomenon of alone togetherness… I wish I could say … Continue reading
by Ilene Spiewak Why would Ellsworth Kelly (1923 – 2015) chose to live in the middle of nowhere in Spencertown, NY? It’s a quiet hamlet in the Hudson Valley not far from the Massachusetts border where I live. We’ve driven through Spencertown (not hip) countless times on our way to Hudson (hip) or to New … Continue reading
by C. Eckel We used to stand beside the batting cages licking grape push-popsicles and talking about making prank phone calls. The crash of a foul ball against the chain link fence would make us jump while it rattled back toward the mechanical pitcher. Eventually, error after error, the metallic tremors became no more startling … Continue reading
