The world appears different through glass. A window frames a view. A lens refracts and focuses light. Our eyes, too, have light-bending lenses, shape-shifters that widen to focus close objects into images on our retinas and narrow for distant views. And so vision is embodied; it’s in our bodies. Our eyes and brains recognize the… Read more »
At the Seahawks-Vikings football game several weeks ago, players exhaled clouds of heat and moisture as they lined up for the snap. Their breaths swelled from their mouths, spread away, and then disappeared into the frigid Minnesota air. Welcome to Jupiter, sportscaster Al Michaels quipped. A galaxy away, at the Henry Art Gallery, artist Demetrius… Read more »
One evening, as he is losing the king’s faith and his own power, Cardinal Wolsey counsels his protégé Thomas Cromwell on their present impasse. King Henry VIII will dissolve his first marriage and take Anne Boleyn as his new bride. Wolsey and Cromwell are to find the means to the king’s end. Confounded, Cromwell questions… Read more »
“America’s identity lies in its open spaces, the space of possibility, but also of speed, movement, and unobstructed will.” – Rebecca Solnit, “The Desert: Scapeland,” As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art, page 87 I grew up mostly ignorant of football. My Dad would listen to it on the radio occasionally,… Read more »
Last week, a new pope was selected from among his cardinal colleagues. He is the first Jesuit to assume the position, the first pope from Latin America, and the first to choose Francis as his papal name. Saint Francis, namesake to former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, is something of an anomaly in the… Read more »
At the Wright Exhibition Space in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood, I recently stood in front of a large painting by Andy Warhol, Rorschach, from 1984. I had seen it before in the double-height gallery of the Seattle Art Museum, but in this sparely curated space, the piece took on a new resonance. Part of… Read more »
A few weeks back, I heard a geographer speak as part of a panel about women and the urban environment. She said she’s often asked about the nature of her discipline. In response, she said she talks about thinking about space as structuring human relationships. She talks about how the city has a geography, home has… Read more »
Last month at the Reykjavik Art Museum in Iceland, I saw exhibitions devoted to the careers of two Spanish artists: Antoni Tàpies and Santiago Sierra. Divided by two generations and chosen mediums and subjects, Tàpies and Sierra nonetheless share a basic preoccupation with human bodies. Before he passed away earlier this year, Tàpies built up layers… Read more »