Writer Alyssa Cole explains why it makes sense that romance writers came together to raise money for Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock in the Georgia Senate runoff races (Stacey Abrams, who has engaged in massive voter turnout since her defeat at the ballot box in 2018, is also a romance writer under the pen name Selena Montgomery). "As...
When artists drop collections on Instagram, they often sell out in a matter of minutes. Beadwork takes time; there's no way to mass-produce, and that's part of the value. For artist Jaymie Campbell, Anishinaabe, from Curve Lake First Nation near Ontario, "the amount she puts into every piece means it isn’t possible to fully scale up to meet demand,...
Swinging the Dream, a 1939 musical that flopped after 13 performances despite (or because of?) having a cast of 150 and three bands. It's being revived, rewritten, and live-streamed during the pandemic. - The Guardian (UK)
Kambui Olojimi, an artist from the Brooklyn neighborhood Bedford-Stuyvesant, addresses his childhood and his block, and the idea of collective memory, in his work - especially in 177 portraits of the block president, Ms. Arline. "Initiated in grief, the series is a mourning practice that has carried Mr. Olujimi through the political and social turmoil of the last few...
What the actual heck? Well, a lot of people opened bookshops in 2020, during the pandemic, because why not? Their jobs had evaporated, and the bookshops were a long-held dream. But in the UK's third hard lockdown, the numbers may change again - for the far, far worse. - The Guardian (UK)
Thanks so flipping much, pandemic and a government that refused to get its COVID response together in time to save the arts. Owner Joon Lee decided not to renew the lease after it ended in November. It's a serious loss: "'What Joon was able to cultivate there in terms of how artist-forward it was, that doesn’t exist anywhere else...
But not just best pic: "The film won best picture and best cinematography, while Zhao was awarded best director and star Frances McDormand was named best actress." That's a big sweep. - Variety
The Kamoinge Workshop was "a collective of black photographers who formed in 1963 to document black culture in Harlem, and beyond, from live jazz concerts to portraits of Malcolm X, Miles Davis and Grace Jones, as well as the civil rights movement and anti-war protests." - The Guardian (UK)
It's a path that others could follow, if they had the courage (and the funding). "Crossing Delancey is a culturally distinctive romcom, not one that mutes down its differences in an attempt to assimilate, and is all the more enjoyable for it, whatever the audience’s ethnicity. More pickle, less vanilla." - The Guardian (UK)
Johnson, who was also known for her public housing project designs, became famous for her "large-scale public projects, which often involved environmental remediation. For the Mystic River State Reservation, a nature preserve in Eastern Mass., a commission she received in the 1970s, she transformed a toxic landfill into a public park. The John F. Kennedy Park along the Charles River in Cambridge,...
It's desolate, empty streets; bridges with no tourists; the sidewalks near the Seine silent. What wouldn't we give now for the American diners of Hopper's later career, even if they're dysfunctional - at least there are multiple people in them. - Washington Post
Art isn't only for the One Percenters, even if that one percent can afford to buy a ton of multiples to go along with their laser-focused unique pieces. Despite how their allure faded after the 1970s, "Multiples have retained just enough of their 'provocative and disorienting message,' as Celant’s essay put it, to make them a good fit for...
Highsmith - author of The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train, not to mention The Price of Salt (renamed Carol to go along with the movie) - had a dark, dark well of self-hate that affected most of her fiction. And yet: "It feels good to be hunted. If you read the genres of suspense – crime...
The collective that makes the buildings - they call themselves AnonyMouse - are, they said through an interlocutor, "a loosely connected network of mice and men, originating in the town of Mälmo, in southern Sweden." - BBC
