Dia:Beacon, in the fall. October 28, 2017. Train departs from the grand, Grand Central Station. Outside the window, a lone kayaker. The Hudson River is a deep gray blue. The trees dark orange and yellow; a yellow just this side of green. Greens are deep green; the sky is a clear strong, purple blue backdrop. … Continue reading
And then I start thinking about what I can buy people for Christmas that is not going to spy on them, because I would not want a gift to spy on me. This might seem like a weird thought, but Christmas really is the spying holiday. First, Santa is watching kids all the time. That’s surveillance. The Elf on the Shelf? A spy… Continue reading
She does the labor of painting. She gets to make the art. She is the vessel. She wrestles infinity to the ground and makes it work. Place your body in relation to a Takenaga painting. Delight in catastrophe. Hover. Wrestle yourself to the ground. Feel good about it. On a beautiful Berkshire … Continue reading
It has been suggested to me (by a well-known Philadelphia artist) that there is a dependent relationship between art and the city and that most great art comes from metropolitan areas. Is this true? Does history support this statement? My gut tells me that art comes down to… Continue reading
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
