He masks up in his bathtub too.
Borges: ‘The Thing I Am’
‘I have forgotten my name. I am not Borges
(Borges died at La Verde, under fire)
Nor am I Acevedo, dreaming of battle . . .
Nancy Masks Up in Her Bathtub
She’s taking no chances. Gary Lee-Nova has been exploring Bushmiller’s work for many years. This particular effort originated in an email exchange with Denis Kitchen who founded Kitchen Sink Press. Kitchen Sink published five volumes of Bushmiller’s work during the 1980s and ’90s. “We’ve been internet pals for several years,” Lee-Nova says. During the early […]
GC CUNY Keeps the Conversation Going:
‘The Future of Health Care’ featuring Margot Sanger-Katz, Jonathan Gruber, Avik Roy, and Dana Singiser; also the Eminent Author Anne Carson on Greek Tragedy
While events are postponed at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York in the heart of Manhattan, videos of recent public programs from its archive will be featured here for your enjoyment. The videos offer illuminating discussions in two main categories: insights into current events and conversations with leading writers and artists.
A Lesson in the Art of Drawing: ‘Taking the Line for a Walk’
The point of the exercise is to wean the young artist off result-oriented copying from photos. ‘Taking the line for a walk’ lets the drawing come about in the process of drawing. The idea is to reduce line to tonal value as opposed to a fixed continuous outline that wraps around the form like a piece of copper wire. The reason is that light on any object will obviously break the outline (contour). The exercise of copying a Daumier sketch is to work with different values of ink and proceed as one would with a sketch.
Postscript to ‘The Art of Drawing’
By a blindfolded painter in his Chekhovian hat who chooses to remain nameless.
The Art of Drawing
For David Hockney “drawing by other means” included the use of lenses and other optical devices as long ago as the Renaissance, and now more recent innovations like photography and digital collage. But drawing by hand still has infinite charms.
Shared Thoughts Rethought
The grand pyannah, glorious
but somewhat out of tune,
awaits my amateur tickling.
It‘s a great distraction.
Tell me you’re distracted,
mowing down the pages
of your rare old books.
There Are Other Nightmares
A friend writes from Brooklyn: “I’ll spare you our preparations for Passover, which begins tonight. It seems weird to celebrate God deciding a plague should pass over the Jews when we’re sitting around with the coronavirus on our heads.” I agree. His comment called to mind my own thoughts about a different observance.
GC CUNY Keeps the Conversation Going:
Milanovic, Piketty, Stiglitz, and Krugman
While events are postponed at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York in the heart of Manhattan, videos of recent public programs will be featured from its archive for your enjoyment. The videos provide illuminating discussions in two main categories: insights into current events and conversations with leading writers and artists. (Courtesy of GC CUNY’s Public Programs archive.)
Trump to the Rest of Us: Drop Dead
President Twitter Fingers had the Center for Disease Control send a mailer to promote himself of course. It showed up in my mailbox yesterday touting his “coronavirus guidelines for America.” But we know what he really means. The caricature is by Donkey Hotey.
Out of Stock
President Twitter Fingers and his cabinet officials. Questions have come in asking if those beak masks are real or a made-up joke. The answer is they are real. The headline and caption are the joke of course.
Artaud for Our Time
“And I told you: no works of art, no language, no words, no thought, nothing. Nothing except a sort of incomprehensible and totally erect stance in the midst of everything in the mind. And don’t expect me to tell you what all this is called, and how many parts it can be divided into; don’t expect me to tell you its weight; or to get back in step and start discussing all this so that I may, without even realizing it, start THINKING.”
What . ? . No Patti Smith?
Just kidding . . .
Last Breath, Memorialized
Cold Turkey Press has printed a card of this photo and poem in a limited edition.
Last Breath
There are things / closer than rain / that keep hope alive— /
tenement flowers / seasoned with heartbreak, / chattering weeds / and the silence of fireflies— / things that may not be / more brilliant / than a wine-stained shirt / and crow’s-feet eyes. / But they will do …
‘I Do Not Think. I Am Thought. I Am Thought in Action.’
I am that I am that I happen. /
I am a resultant. /
—a coincidence of fields. /
Am is my here. /
That is I there. /
What am I here for? . . . /
I am here to go. /
When the magnetic fields shift / There / is no here. / I am gone.